Divide and lose - the dilemma of Hone Harawira

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2011

Divide and lose - the dilemma of Hone Harawira

At some point today, irresistible force is about to meet immovable object. Paradoxes aside, the disciplinary hearing between Hone Harawira and the Maori Party is one upon which much rests – but there aren’t going to be any winners.

I watched a conciliatory Harawira on Closeup last night and wondered just how the Maori Party can deal with this Ngapuhi man who is being labeled a redneck Maori because of his strongly racist bent. How are they going to find the balance between muzzling a renegade who has no interest in anything outside of his own people and who makes sure everyone knows this in the most offensive manner at times and enabling, through the party’s kaupapa, or constitution, the right for a section of the people who have voted them in, a voice.

There is no getting away from the fact that he’s one-eyed. He’s only interested in the fact that there are 15 percent more Maori unemployed since the year before. Never mind about the increased percentage of the unemployed right across the board. He also doesn’t believe that tangata whenua, people of the land, are that unless they can whakapapa back to their iwi. He firmly does not believe that the Maori Party and National can continue to work together and particularly over the Foreshore and Seabed Act, feels the Maori Party might well have been sold out over it.

I’ve got a lot of problems with this.

Hone Harawira, or as some offer, aka John Hatfield, is no different to a vast proportion of New Zealanders who have both Maori and pakeha bloodlines. Let’s repeat that – the vast proportion of our population. The argument as to whether we in fact have any full blooded Maori left is a moot one. It reminds me of a conversation with a young Ngati Porou radical a few years back who was spitting tacks at the thought of any of his children growing up and marrying someone who wasn’t Maori and his grandmother dryly reminding him that as much as he might like to forget it, his Scottish grandfather was very much a part of his ancestry. The reply was that he'd disowned his grandfather, therefore he didn't exist and he saw himself as a full blood.

This section of the population, the majority of New Zealanders, have no choice; they must either identify as one or the other, they cannot be both. Every single official form underlines this paradox. For all of us who fall in this section and who live comfortably in both cultures, it has become an increasingly difficult time to stand back and watch the repeated efforts of some Maori to divide the nation.

It is right and proper that Maori grievances be heard and sorted and to a large degree, that has happened. Maori now hold more than $16 billion in assets in New Zealand, some of which has been created through earlier efforts of colonization and some which individual iwis themselves have created.

But one has to wonder how much damage the by-product of all this has been in the ‘victim mentality” of “You OWE us” and particularly where young Maori in the low socio-economic groups are concerned.

Not only that, the considerably fostered belief that Maori do ‘own’ things they currently do not. As a fisherwoman, I’ve enjoyed throwing a rod out on many coastlines along New Zealand. But it’s only been in recent times that I’ve come across some fairly alarming happenings.

For example, my Tuwharetoa husband and I were out fishing at Maketu a year or two back, as was an Indian shop owner from down our way. A big local Maori lad came up and remonstrated with him that he wasn’t allowed to fish there, it belonged to the local Maori. The Kaituna Cut most definitely is public land and as my husband knew the Indian, he told the local quite forcefully where to get off. In another instance, my husband and a mate were heading down the coast towards Matata in a four wheel drive to a fishing spot they’d used many times before. A marae sits a little way back from the beach. They were met by a woman with a large rock, telling them the area belonged to the marae and they could not go any further. A look up at the marae and a few men standing there and the pair prudently decided it wasn’t worth the effort of arguing.

This must not happen and it is the reason why the Foreshore and Seabed Act must reflect that the coastline, all of it, belongs to all the people of New Zealand, represented by the Crown. Even those with riparian rights need to lose those – the beach and the sea must belong to us all. New Zealanders have had free and uninterrupted use of this for centuries now; who was here first has to be immaterial in the greater scheme of things.

Which brings me back to Hone Harawira and the large hole he’s dug for both himself and the Maori Party.

The Maori party has achieved a lot since its inception; the advent of Pita Sharples gave it a credibility it didn’t have before and they can ill-afford to lose members of his ilk. But even with the cultural need for a lot of talk before action, the art of politics is such that diplomatic strategy will get you a lot further than screeching like a fish-wife and throwing your toys out the cot verbally when things don’t go your way. It’s about respect, mana. Yet this Te Tai Tokerau MP appears, to me and a lot of others, to have none of that ability. Some strong politicians have come from up there, as too have the radicals. And it is this latter group to which I believe Hone Harawira very firmly belongs.

If the Maori Party are to survive this intact, I believe he needs to be sent on his way as an independent – and it needs to happen now while there are still 10 months left before the next election. They cannot afford a split and they cannot afford to keep him; he will not toe the line.

Whatever and however our nation’s governing structure is run, there can only be room for one, not two and should that event ever occur, it will lead straight to civil war. Racism can have no place in today’s society and Hone Harawira needs to forcibly learn that there are so many of us, both of Maori and pakeha blood, that we far outstrip the numbers in any other population demographic – and that we do not share his dream of Maori both owning and running New Zealand as of First Nations right.

It is time to put the grievances behind us and move on as a united nation with a bicultural balance.