Two-party alliance one step closer

Press, 30 August 1984, Page 12

Two-party alliance one step closer

PA Wellington Mana Motuhake had made its first formal approach towards an alliance with the Values Party, its deputy leader, Mr Amster Reedy, has said. Speaking after addressing delegates at the Values Party conference in Wellington, Mr Reedy, Mana Motuhake’s candidate for Southern Maori at this year’s election, said that the two parties were “developing an awareness of what each other is about and cooperating on issues of social injustice and political matters.”

Values had agreed not to

put up candidates in seats Mana Motuhake was contesting, he said, and Values would be invited to attend his party’s annual conference at Ratana Pa, near Wanganui.

He said that both Mana Motuhake and Values agreed that the political system went nowhere near recognising democracy in the true sense of the word because 'it disadvantaged minority groups and women.

Mr Reedy outlined to Values delegates his party’s policies on the Treaty of Waitangi, the Labour proposal for a Bill of Rights, Parliamentary representa-

tion, and the economy.

He said that Mana Motuhake believed celebration of the signing of the treaty must stop until the document was ratified. It was opposed to a Bill of Rights because it believed the treaty was New Zealand’s Bill of Rights. “If we cannot honour or ratify a treaty that is already in existence, what hope have we got of any other treaty?” Mr Reedy said after his address. He. also gave reasons for wanting, in addition to proportional representation, tribal representation for 28 different tribes throughout New Zealand.