POLLS AND PUNDITS

Last week I looked at how pollsters try to get a representative sample of the population so they can more accurately gauge how the wider population might vote in the upcoming general election.  This week I’ll try to demystify ‘margins of error’ in a poll by looking at the latest one.

Released just two days ago on Sunday 27^th July, the latest ONE News/Colmar Brunton poll reckons that National is still out on its own and has climbed to 52%, while Labour has dropped, they're down to 28%, as have the Greens who are down to 10%.  It also reckons that New Zealand First is steady on 4% as is Internet/MANA on 2%, while the Conservatives have risen to 2%.  And at the tail end ACT is steady on 1%, while the Maori Party have dropped to 1%. 

Do the math and that all adds up to a neat 100% of the representative sample, which in this poll was 1000 eligible voters who live in a house with a landline phone. 

Straightaway we can see that these mainstream polls are practically meaningless for many, if not most, Maori; especially the majority aged between 18 and 25.  Land lines? Pfft. 

Engari, even if those little peccadillos mean nothing to eligible Pakeha voters over 25 years of age, they might still want to know – how accurate is the poll?  This is where the margin of error comes in.

This latest poll took place last week from Saturday 19^th to Wednesday 23^rd July, and it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1% at 95% accuracy.   

Simply put, 95% accuracy with a 3.1% margin of error means that if the same poll was conducted again a number of times during that same period, but with a different 1000 people, Colmar Brunton reckons that 95% of the time the results would be the same – plus or minus 3.1%. 

That also means the initial 52% support for National could be anywhere between 48.9% and 55.1% in subsequent polls.  That will be no comfort to Labour whose initial 28% could be anywhere between 24.9% and 31.1%, which is still not enough to cobble together any kind of government at all. 

Most mainstream pundits are doling out predictions of a National win, backed by Labour’s poor polling.  But our own pundits see it differently.  As one of our whanau from Te Paatu puts it – "only 2 wite guyz repping 4 us – 1 whairawa-as 1 pohara-as lol."  

Straightaway every Maori knows which two ‘guyz’ she’s talking about, and their names aren’t John or David.

So in summary, for Maori the mainstream polls mainly exist to give us an indication of how the majority of non-Maori people might vote.  They also give the mainstream media something to talk about.

However, ultimately, the important thing for all of us in this particular game is to enrol, then vote by ticking our preferred candidate and party.  We can do that, regardless of what either the polls or the pundits might say.

POLLS DON'T TELL THE REAL STORY

“Public opinion polls,” said J B Priestley, “are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they’re growing.” 

Love or hate them, the odds are that you will remember having heard about at least one, if not all, of these polls in recent times; One News Colmar Brunton, 3 News Reid Research, Herald-Digipoll, Fairfax Media Ipsos, Roy Morgan Research.  Ring a bell with you?  That’s because in New Zealand these are the big five, and they’ve been polling weekly since the 2011 election on everything from Party Vote to Preferred Prime Minister. 

But how accurate are they, and how much faith should Maori put in them? 

When done right, political polling is a social science with strict rules about representative sample size, random selection of participants and margins of error. 

It isn't always so scientific of course.  A straw poll alludes to the ancient farming practice of tossing straw in the air to see which way the wind is blowing.  Such polls are run regularly by different media, including this newspaper.  They give a very rough idea of which way the wind of public opinion is blowing on an issue. 

However the big five polling companies in New Zealand use mathematical methods and computer analysis to get the most representative sample of the New Zealand voting public they can get, in order to gauge the political opinion of the entire country.  That means the sample group has to represent the larger population and has to be selected as randomly as possible.

The most popular method for doing that is through random digit dialing (RDD) using a continually updated database of all listed landline numbers in the country.  Engari, if pollsters only called the numbers in the database, then they'd exclude all unlisted numbers, which would muck up the randomness of the sample. So they also programme their computers to randomly dial every possible number combination of all area codes, exchanges and numbers in active use.

To randomise the sample even further, pollsters not only dial random numbers, they also try to choose random respondents. To do that they may ask to speak to the voting-aged member in the whare with the most recent birthday. 

Next week we’ll cut through some of the mystery around ‘margins of error’ in polls.

In the meantime, if you are one of those (un)fortunate enough to be called by a pollster, you no longer have to wonder how they got your number.  But you might want to keep in mind that there is always a ‘but’ to these polls. 

For example, they include landline numbers, but exclude mobiles; so much for representativeness.  And as Helen Clark and the last Labour Government can attest, the polls can be devastatingly accurate.  But as Iwi Insiders, Ipurangi MANA and Winitana know, the ‘polls don’t tell the real story.”

DO WHAT IS RIGHT

Do what is right, the shackles are falling,

Chains of the bondsman no longer are bright.

Lightened by hope soon they’ll cease to be galling,

Truth goeth onward, then do what is right.

This hymn always reminds me of our beloved kaumatua, McCully Matiu, who in 1984 lodged the first Ngāti Kahu claim in the Waitangi Tribunal. In 1986 the fisheries part of his and other Te Hiku o Te Ika claims were heard, and the Tribunal upheld them all in 1988.

Between 1990 and 1994 the lands part of McCully’s claim up to 1865 was heard along with others for the period. The Tribunal upheld them in 1997 indicating that they would make binding recommendations for the transfer of lands and compensation.

McCully passed away in 2001 after leading Ngāti Kahu for more than 40 years. Since then we have returned to the Tribunal twice to have that body implement the recommendations it made in respect of his claims.

To date the Tribunal has refused to exercise its powers. Instead it has urged the Government as the representative of the Crown to restore its honour by putting right the harm it has caused to Ngāti Kahu. In 2013 it went as far as providing lengthy and detailed listings of some of the stolen lands and assets the Government should relinquish as a partial settlement.

Shortly before he died McCully reminded us that the only way to hold on to our lands and put right the thefts committed against us by those acting under the authority of the English Crown was for us to do what is right.

Doing what is right includes giving the Crown every opportunity to atone for its crimes against Ngāti Kahu so that it can restore its honour. Only then will it be in a position to enter into a process of reconciliation with us.

True and meaningful reconciliation will take time, and it will necessarily involve cultural and constitutional transformations alongside the attitudinal changes. That includes changing the current English and western European orientation of the Government’s thinking into a more logical and appropriate Māori and Pacific thinking to reflect the fact that we all live in the Pacific, not Europe.

My generation has now worked steadily for more than thirty years towards true and meaningful reconciliation, and the next generation has worked alongside us in the same way we worked with our kaumatua. 

To date representatives of the Government have been unwilling to embark in any sustained way on the journey towards restoring the Crown’s honour.  In fact quite the opposite.

Nevertheless we say to our rangatahi, as McCully often and cheerfully said to us, “Haere tōnū. Mahia ngā mahi i runga i te tika me te pono, e kore koe e hē.”  In other words;

Do what is right let the consequence follow,

Battle for freedom in spirit and might.

And with stout heart look ye forth till tomorrow,

God will protect you; then do what is right.

4TH OF JULY

Mataariki is for me a great season, not least because it includes my own birthday.  It also includes the 4^th of July which is the anniversary of the successful escape of 300 souls, led by Te Kooti Arikirangi Turuki, from Wharekauri where the government had imprisoned them for the crime of fighting for their whenua and their mana motuhake. 

This year I was invited to spend the 4^th of July up at Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Rangianiwaniwa to commemorate its 21^st anniversary and to tell the Board, the faculty and the student body what Ngati Kahu want for the future, in terms of the education of our tamariki.  Here is what I said.

We want our children to be self-aware; both as individuals and as a part of our collective Ngati Kahu whakapapa and history.  When they are self-aware, they will understand themselves, and that awareness will help them understand the people around them. 

Teach them the power of paradox.  For example, your Kura is built on land stolen from the Popata whanau of Ngai Tohianga and from Kataraina Matenga of Patu Koraha and her Tarara husband Ante Erstich.  The power of this particular paradox is that from the unrectified thefts of the Government and its allies, Ngati Kahu may still manage to squeeze some good.

Help our children to learn that there is no genuine safety in numbers.  They are not a sheep running away from a wolf, they are Ngati Kahu.  As such they need to know that in the long run it’s always safer to stand alone in truth rather than try to hide in a crowd of liars.

Ngati Kahu children must understand that there is just as much honour in being on the edge of the universe as there is in being at its centre.  While it is true that without the centre, the universe might go who knows where, it is also true that without the edges, there is no centre.  Teach them that in many ways the identity and role of Ngati Kahu is based on that truth.

Ngati Kahu want our children to be taught to recognise the defining moments of their lives, because these are what will shape them and the choices they make.  Some of those moments will have already happened, others have yet to arrive, but it is only the self-aware who will recognise them for what they are. 

One thing more I should have said; if it doesn’t already have them within its library, the Kura must get copies (written, audio and video) of every piece of evidence given by Ngati Kahu to the Waitangi Tribunal.

In the end, we don’t mind what our tamariki choose to do, as long as they learn and grow the specific strengths that will support, advance and uphold te mana motukahe o Ngati Kahu. 

Hari huritau ki Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Rangianiwaniwa.  Hari Mataariki kia tatou katoa.  And happy 4^th of July to the descendants of Te Kooti.  He wasn’t Ngati Kahu, but he could have been.

ON THE GROUND

Given it had failed to militarily conquer our tupuna and that hardly any of its immigrant subjects were living on the ground during the period 1840 – 1865, how did the Government get away with stealing more than 302,000 acres from the hapu of Ngati Kahu before 1865?

The answer lies in the fact that during that period, and for some time after, our tupuna simply did not know their lands had been stolen.  Why would they have?  On the ground, nothing changed.  Their land was still being jointly used as per the law of tuku whenua; there was nothing to show that so-called ‘scrip’ or ‘surplus land’ existed; and there was no evidence that either those lands or the so-called ‘Crown grant’ and ‘Crown purchase’ lands had passed to anyone else. 

In fact it was not until decades later that the full scale of Government deceit and thievery was realised on the ground by Ngati Kahu, at which point the fight back began.  To illustrate, we will consider just one case this week.

Tangonge was part of the Ōtararau pre-treaty tuku whenua. Te Paatu whanau lived there as did whanau from Te Uri o Hina and Patu Koraha.  In 1857, Joseph Matthews, who had a Governor’s piece of paper for the Kaitaia tuku whenua, acknowledged that Tangonge was theirs exclusively and estimated the area to be a rather small 685 acres.

Regardless of Matthews’ support for the whanau living there, the Government stole Tangonge anyway, using the ‘surplus land’ technique.  But nothing happened on the ground to cause the whanau to think this land was no longer theirs.

It wasn’t until 1890 (after it was zoned as a Kauri gum reserve) that they found out the Government had stolen it when Timoti Te Ripi, believing it was still Māori land, demanded royalties for the gum extraction and was told the land belonged to the Government.

Te Ripi and 23 others immediately petitioned Parliament, but no hearing was granted.  However they did not give up.  Four more petitions followed and finally, in 1907, the Houston Commission investigated and reported that “otherwise landless” Maori were still living there, and urged the government to make the land available to them.

But the Government stalled and instead referred the matter to two further commissions (McCormack in 1925 and Sim in 1927), neither of which was privy to evidence that the Kaitāia tuku whenua had only been affirmed by the hapu on the condition that Tangonge remained theirs exclusively.

In any event neither of those Commissions resolved the matter and the Government declared it owned Tangonge.  Te Paatu resisted that theft longer than all others, and still does. 

It was not until the late 1960s, more than a century after its theft, that the Government physically forced the last seven Te Paatu families off Tangonge.  

The children of those families are still alive, and they have taught their uri how to fight back and to never give up until they are once again standing on the ground.