Key defends National's achievements with Maori Party

Prime Minister John Key is defending the National Government's achievements with the Maori Party, saying real gains have been made which could not have been if the latter was not in Government.

Tensions have been high within the Maori Party following a complaint laid by one of its MPs, Te Ururoa Flavell, against maverick colleague Hone Harawira over a column Mr Harawira wrote criticising the party's relationship with National.

Mr Key said Maori had made progress with the Whanau Ora programme, the adoption of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the speeding up of Treaty of Waitangi settlements and the repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed legislation.

"The main message is that we need to change our focus for the future for New Zealand," Mr Key said.

"Yes, we've got to complete those treaty settlement claims, they're important, but those and the foreshore and seabed are ultimately grievance-based, rearward-looking, parts of New Zealand history, and I want to go to a future focussed much more aspirationally for New Zealand."

Mr Key said Mr Harawira's approach would achieve little.

"As I tried to point out to him, in opposition you can do something, it's called stopping things. But if you want to actually achieve anything, you've got to be in Government," he said.

"If you look at the gains that the Maori Party and the National Party have had together, I don't think they're insignificant over a two-year period. It's step by step and it won't be everything that the Maori Party wants, it never will be, but then National won't get everything it wants.

"Hone Harawira, he can stay his whole life in opposition or as a radical if he wants to, but he'll stop things, he won't actually create things."

Mr Key said one of the main things he wanted to focus on was lifting Maori educational achievements.

"We can't have one in three Maori boys leaving school without even NCEA Level One. We can't have 12,000 Maori youngsters enrolling in school for the first time this year ultimately likely to leave school with very low educational outcomes.

"If you do, you'll get what we've got -- high Maori unemployment, a domination of statistics in the likes of our prisons. You've got to change that."

Mr Key walked onto the marae accompanied by Mr Harawira's mother, Titewhai Harawira, which he said was not an issue for him.

"That's her place and this is her home, she is the kuia of Te Tii Marae and I've always been respectful enough to recognise that, and she was very gracious."

Labour leader Phil Goff was accompanied on to the marae by Green Party MPs, who last year accompanied the Government.

Mr Goff focused in his speech on wealth inequality in New Zealand, which he promised to address.

"One of the things people liked about the past was that we had a fairer New Zealand, where everybody counted, where everybody could get good education and health without regard for ability to pay. People feel this country is going backwards when it needs to go forwards," he said.

Mr Goff said Mr Harawira's dissension "is reflecting is the fact that many Maori people are saying to him what they've been saying to us for some time -- what has the coalition achieved for Maori New Zealanders, apart from rising prices and rising unemployment?"