NZ POLITICS DAILY: Another embarrassing blow to the Maori Party

The news of substantial cuts at Te Puni Kokiri is another embarrassing blow to the Maori Party.

With Waitangi celebrations only a few days away, Sharples may find himself alongside John Key having to answer some awkward questions on the marae.

The Maori Party can’t claim that National sprang this on them. As Winston Peters points out, this is a direct result of the need to fund their other policies, particularly Whanau Ora – listen to Peters interviewed on Radio New Zealand here. The Maori Party has left itself wide open to attack by Mana for doing National’s bidding by cutting public services  – see Morgan Godfery’s Te Puni Kokiri to face cuts and so far they have very little to show for the programmes they claim will replace TPK’s work.

Despite being Minister of Maori Affairs, Pita Sharples failed to go up against Hone Harawira on TVNZ’s Close Up last night, leaving the rather hapless TPK CEO Leith Comer to front the issue. Harawira says the cuts will result in branch closures, redundancies and the removal of most the department’s current responsibilities, dubbing the result ‘The puny kokiri’- see TVNZ’s Head of Maori agency defends job cuts.

The debate around Section 9 continues today, and its significance is becoming clearer. Mai Chen argues that ‘In many ways, the rise of the Treaty and of iwi in modern New Zealand can be traced back to section 9’ and how the issue is resolved could have big implications for the role of the Treaty in future, particularly the constitutional review the Government has committed to with the Maori Party – see: Section 9: Why it matters for asset sales. Today’s Herald editorial makes the case for retaining Section 9 (Treaty tie in hardly takes shine off gilt), while the Otago Daily Times editorial outlines the case against (Treaty entanglements).

A major part of the problem for the Maori Party has been a lack of political management, particularly by Pita Sharples. RNZ’s Brent Edwards says that Sharples not only failed to keep co-leader Tariana Turia in the loop about asset sales, but also missed the significance of the issue when briefed by Bill English last week – listen to Edwards here.

The Government has released the Maori consultation paper on asset sales, but Claire Trevett found the most revealing information came from a draft accidently posted to the Treasury website yesterday. It clearly shows that the Government was initially planning to remove all references to the Treaty.  Also revealing was the change of wording about consultation with ‘iwi leaders’ to just ‘iwi’, reflecting criticsm that Government consultation with Maori is limited to a few corporate iwi figures – see: Asset sale draft plan shocker.

Foreign investment, particularly in land, continues to be debated as sales that previously would have received little public scrutiny are examined in the wake of the Crafar deal. As Patrick Gower puts it (Cameron's NZ move under fire), film-maker James Cameron, who is buying two Wairarapa farms, ‘has walked right into a 'Hollywood-meets-politics' storm’. Having made a stand on the Crafar farms, Labour now can’t afford to ignore other deals. David Parker is drawing the line at absentee owners of land – see: Alex Tarrant’s Labour OK with foreign land purchases as long as new owner lives in NZ…, but opponents argue that there is plenty of ambiguity in such a stance. David Farrar, for example, is pointing out that Labour’s official policy on foreign investment would prohibit the James Cameron purchase – see: Is Labour against this foreign purchase? Clearly, with National having taken a lot of heat over the Crafar deal, their supporters are not going to let Labour get away with selective political grandstanding.

Anne Tolley was a casualty of National’s ongoing feud with teachers, and it now looks like Hekia Parata’s tenure as Education Minister could be just as torrid. Prospective Act leader Catherine Isaac is overseeing the Charter Schools trial, and opposition parties, unions and academics cite this as evidence that the policy is completely ideologically driven – see Andrea Vance’s  Anger at ACT link in charter schools trial. Meanwhile, John Armstrong argues that, given National and Act’s determination to implement the policy, Isaac is actually the right person for the job. He says her appointment is part of a trend for National to farm out new initiatives to task forces and working groups to strengthen private sector input and go around government departments – see: Armstrong’s Isaac best candidate for education task force.

Further incensing teacher unions and academics is the plan to compile official league tables for primary school performance. Parata claims that having the Ministry compile the league table will ensure accurate comparisons are done, but critics claim that as primary school data is un-moderated (unlike NCEA) that data will be ‘junk’ and open to manipulation – see Audrey Young’s Fight looms as Parata touts move on school ratings. But there is one league table the education sector wish the government would take more notice of, and that’s the one that shows New Zealand already gets exceptional performance for relatively low teacher salaries when compared to the rest of the OECD – see: The Dim-Post.

Finally Sam Sachdeva provides a comprehensive account of yesterday’s protest in Christchurch, including a sense of the atmosphere amongst the protestors – see: Protesters threaten rates revolt in Christchurch, while a more subjective account is given by Will Harvie in Protesting with Christchurch's elders.