Maoris ‘could vote with feet’

Press, 16 July 1987, Page 12

Maoris ‘could vote with feet’

PA Wellington Maori electors could “vote with their feet” under the present system by moving from the Maori on to the general roll, the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, said. He was responding to a call from Dr Bruce Gregory, Northern Maori member of Parliament and chairman of Labour’s Maori policy council, for the number of official Maori seats to be raised from four to 10. Dr Gregory was reported as saying he wanted the number of Maori seats decided under the same population-based formula as general seats. Mr Lange said this view had not, to his knowledge, become Labour party policy. His own opinion was that the present system allowed Maori voters a choice. “To a certain extent, when it comes to questions of registration, they vote with their feet. They can move to the general roll or remain in the Maori roll,” he said at his weekly press conference. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, called Dr Gregory’s proposal

“totally negative thinking and a racially divisive move.” Mr Bolger said he favoured instead the gradual abolition of the present Maori seats. “The National Party has shown that separate Maori seats are unnecessary by selecting Maori candidates for six general roll seats in the coming election,” he said. "By comparison the Labour Party has refused to select any Maoris in any of the winnable general roll seats, preferring the ‘ghetto’ approach of locking aspiring Maori politicians into separate Maori seats,” Mr Bolger said. The chairman of the New Zealand Party, Mr Stephen Greenfield, said the party was opposed to any section of the community having parliamentary representation legislated to the exclusion of others. Proportional representation would allow all New Zealanders to organise themselves into any group they wished and would achieve parliamentary representation on a ihuch fairer basis than the present system, he said.