Abolish separate Maori seats, roll
Separate political representation in parliament has existed since 1867, when the Maori Representation Act provided for the election of four Maori MPs by Maori males (including half-castes) aged 21 and over. Disputed ownership of customary Maori land that had no title meant many Maori who wanted to vote could not provide the proof to meet the electoral requirement of individual ownership of a freehold estate to the value of £25. The Act was an interim measure for five years because the Maori Land Court established in 1865 was expected to resolve title issues for Maori within that time.
The 1867 Act was extended a further five years in 1872, and extended again in 1876, this time indefinitely.
Universal suffrage, from 1893, extended voting rights to all New Zealanders, subject only to an age qualification. This meant any practical reason for separate Maori seats disappeared. But separate seats continued, and this separate representation took on a life of its own as political parties courted Maori support.
The Maori Electoral Option, introduced in 1975, allowed for electors of Maori descent to choose whether to be enrolled on the general or Maori roll. This option occurs after every census, and is the only time Maori voters can switch between the general and the Maori rolls. Those wishing to register on the Maori roll must answer a Maori-descent question, and may have only a minute trace of Maori blood.
During the 1980s, the Maori seats became linked with the Maori sovereignty movement.
The Report of the Royal Commission into the Electoral System in 1986 noted that separate representation disadvantaged Maori in a number of ways. In recommending a change from the old first-past-the-post voting system to MMP, which eventuated, this commission predicted that MMP would bring more Maori MPs to parliament, which has also eventuated. This commission recommended abolition of the Maori seats if MMP was introduced.
MMP was introduced in the 1996 election and the Maori seats stayed. Not only did they remain, pressure exerted by Maori nationalist groups meant that the number of Maori seats became tied to the number of New Zealanders electing to register on the Maori roll, creating an incentive to promote registration on the Maori roll.
The number of Maori electorates is calculated by dividing the estimate Maori electoral population by the South Island quota (The SI general electoral population divided by 16).
Several well-publicised taxpayer-funded enrolment drives increased the number of Maori seats from four to seven. In the 2011 general election, only 53 percent of the 233,568 registered on the Maori roll bothered to vote.
The 2011 election resulted in 23 MPs of Maori descent among the 121 current MPs, a 19 percent parliamentary proportion, which means that Maori are slightly over-represented relative to their population proportion. There are 16 Maori MPs in general seats.
Of the 424,000 people who identify as Maori who are enrolled to vote, 234,000 are on the Maori roll and 190,000 are on the general roll.
The National Party quietly morphed from having a policy of phasing out the separate Maori parliamentary seats to leaving it up to Maori to decide.
The Maori Party wants the Maori parliamentary seats to be entrenched in law, and wants every New Zealander classified by ethnicity, with all 18-year-olds of even remotely Maori descent placed automatically on to the Maori electoral roll so as to increase it.
The separate Maori parliamentary seats and separate Maori roll are long past their use-by date and should be abolished..
If Section 45 of the 1993 Electoral Act that provides for Maori representation was repealed - along with all other consequential clauses - the Maori seats would be abolished.