Electorate deals have already become something of a sore point early in an election year but after 21 years of MMP, they should come as no surprise to voters.
The Maori and Mana parties this week have sealed a long-anticipated tactical deal aimed at removing Labour from the six Maori seats the party holds.
The Maori Party will stand aside in the far north Maori electorate of Te Tai Tokerau where Mana Party leader Hone Harawira was defeated by Labour’s Kelvin Davis by 743 votes in the 2014 election. In return, Mana will not contest any of the remaining six Maori seats, giving the Maori Party a chance to retain the one it already holds — Waikiri — and displace Labour from the rest.
Maori Party president Tukoroirangi Morgan, himself a former New Zealand First and Mauri Pacific MP, said the agreement is a huge step forward for Maori in the lead-up to the general election.
Maori disunity gifted the Maori seats to Labour in 2013 and Mr Morgan says it is time for Maori to bring all the seats home to kaupapa Maori parties so they can hold the balance of power in Parliament and ensure a strong voice in government, regardless of which major party rules. Both parties will campaign for the party vote.
According to Mr Morgan, the Maori Party has delivered more than $1 billion in funding for initiatives to benefit Maori and asks Maori what 80 years of allegiance to the Labour Party has brought them. As Mr Morgan will know, having been a NZ First MP for a Maori electorate, Labour has not had a complete legacy on the seats. And the Maori Party has also held some of the seats. This time, however, the battle for the Maori electorates will be complicated by the Green Party deciding to stand candidates in the seats, much to the private disquiet of Labour MPs. Green co-leader Metiria Turei, for instance, will stand in Te Tai Tonga, the southern Maori electorate.
The Greens received some condemnation recently for not standing a candidate in Ohariu, giving Labour candidate Greg O’Connor a shot at toppling long-time MP Peter Dunne. National, under the leadership of Bill English, is likely to take a different view of electoral accommodations than former leader John Key. It will not surprise for National to have list MP Brett Hudson stand again and not campaign exclusively for the party vote.
Whether Mr English is prepared to tolerate the presence in Parliament of Act New Zealand leader and Epsom MP David Seymour is yet to be decided. Mr Seymour, like Mr Dunne, can be highly critical of the Government when both rely on National for their political careers.
Labour and the Greens have a memorandum of understanding in the lead-up to the election but so far, the Greens have seen very little from Labour. In a surprise move, both parties are contesting the Mt Albert by-election which Labour’s Jacinda Ardern is expected to win.
The Greens are running a candidate in Auckland Central when a strict contest between National and Labour would give a better chance for a Labour win and a change in government.
Strangely, the purest of all the parties currently is NZ First. Leader Winston Peters is totally opposed to doing any deals until after the voters make their decision on September 23, as he has always done since MMP was introduced in 1996.
Labour is at risk of losing one or more of its Maori seats and will be hurt by the Greens’ decision to continue standing candidates in seats which could possibly go its way. Electoral deals are part of New Zealand’s political landscape and more will come to light as the year progresses. Voters are best advised to weigh up the agreements and make their own decisions on the legitimacy of those deals.
