THE RATA RESIGNATION

Kaea, Issue 2, 1 March 1980, Page 4

THE RATA RESIGNATION

To Maoridom, to the Labour Party, and to the nation in general Matiu Rata’s announcement of his resignation from the Labour Party was a bombshell. What were his motives? What are the implications? Paul Potiki looks at

From the very earliest days New Zealand has been accustomed to Government exercising a responsibility for the development and destiny of many phases of life, and this has been particularly so in the affairs of the Maori.

It began as early as 1840 when Whitehall endowed Governor Hobson with the additional title of “Protector of Aborigines”. Since then we have been exposed to a sort of administrative dichotomy which on one hand purported to protect us while on the other it used persuasion, force and the law to separate us from our land. Indeed the main rationale for Government interest has been to perpetuate the institutions which make possible the sale of Maori land and which for many years ensured that rents and royalties were substantially below the going market rate.

Only three Maori have ever held the portfolio of Maori Affairs Ngata, Rata and now Ben Couch. Ngata resigned from office following a Royal Commission which found that rather too much land development finance had been diverted into his own electorate.

Mat Rata was appointed by Norman Kirk in 1972. He was then No. sor No. 6in the Kirk cabinet principally, I think, because of his strong working-class and trade union background, and because like Kirk he could read the feeling of the people.

Kirk died. He was succeeded by men more academic in background and outlook and the Ratas and Hugh Wattses gave way to the Rowlings, Tizards and now Langes. Rata therefore had only three years in which to halt and then reverse administrative machinery which for years had been aiming at assimilation and detribalising the Maori, at persuading them to leave the marae and forsake the traditional extended family in favour of the urban nuclear family and the current Pakeha belief in the sanctity of the individual.

Rata had only three years in which to tackle land grievances, to encourage and re-teach youth the cultural values of their people, to encourage the growth and development of land incorporations where previously the people were permitted only a beneficial interest in their ancestral lands by the Maori Trustee in his capacity as statutory committee.

It is a matter of history that Labour failed at the polls in 1975, and in my view they failed because of working-class disenchantment with the Government’s performance generally. In 1975 this disenchantment did not extend in the same degree to the Maori seats. Between 1975 and 1978 however Labour (now in opposition) was inept in its dealings with the Maori and their aspirations and demands, and while its candidates were in no danger at the polls the numbers of non-voters in 1978 was staggering.

In essentially Maori issues Mat Rata has been a consistent voice demanding the settlement of land grievance, the adoption of policies which would re-establish the Maori’s Maoriness and in insisting that the staffing of the department, particularly at higher levels, should be by people largely, but not exclusively, Maori who could understand and respond to Maori aspirations while not neglecting the needs of the bureaucracy.

Was there any correlation between Labour’s failure at the polls, both in 1975 but more particularly in 1978, with the reasons which Matiu Rata advances for his resignation from the party? It is too facile and head-in-the-sand to simply put it down either to personal pique over position in the party or to the mess that the rolls are in.

Mat Rata, for instance, denies that there has been any personal clash between him and the Labour leadership, although he agrees that his stand is a personal one based upon the need to project a new dynamic Maori philosophy stemming from traditional roots and the extended family concept, and the cultural heritage each of us inherits from our tribal forbears.

It is interesting that Mat Rata does not think detribalisation, which was a deliberate policy for many years, has advanced beyond regeneration. Some of us, particularly those of us who have been largely detribalised through long urban contact, and who now cling to and seek put our Maoriness, may not agree with him but then we are much further removed from the influence of our turangawaewae than he is and it is easier for us to look to things Maori generally than to the specific things which are common only to our own tribe or hapu.

Mat Rata has no fight on with the Labour party. He sees Maori support for Labour as being “as natural as the falling rain” and in the house he says he will continue to support the party on day-to-day issues. He does think, however, that the party has put the cart before the horse in Maori matters, that it tends to see form rather than content; and it is apparent that he believes and hopes he will still be able to re-shape the party’s attitude in Maori matters even though he is no longer a member. He believes that if he can produce enough rank-and-file groundswell around Maori aims and aspirations and can polarise the diverse demands of the pressure areas, Labour will be compelled to climb onto a sort of Maori bandwagon. One thing is certain, there was a massive swing against Labour in 1975 and this was maintained in 1978. The swing must be seen as an indication of general disenchantment with the party’s performance in Government. The interesting electoral figures affecting the Maori electorate, however, are not those of the Labour majorities but those which show the proportion of votes cast to the total on the roll, and these are shown in the following table:

Labour Votes Total on NonElectorate Vote Cast Roll Voters Eastern 1972 8,831 12,154 14,131 1,777 1975 8,491 11,477 16,439 4,618 1978 9,085 12,147 23,684 11,306 Northern 1972 6,276 8,076 10,773 2,612 1975 5,988 8,556 14,715 5,949 1978 6,071 8,495 22,933 13,025 Western 1972 9,078 10,355 14,552 4,035 1975 7,708 10,332 18,282 7,669 1978 10,250 12,450 30,966 18,347 Southern 1972 9,555 11,364 15,995 4,333 1975 ’ 10,145 12,436 20,997 8,358 1978 11,176 13,650 33,037 19,098

It is clear that if a failure to vote does indicate disenchantment (and the electoral statistics would support this) then Maori voters are more disenchanted with Labour than are Pakeha voters, and it would seem also that voters in safe Labour seats are more disenchanted, electorally anyway, than are voters in National-held seats. I don’t propose to be diverted by claims that this massive failure to vote can be attributed solely to the obvious confusion of the rolls, although of course this may have contributed. It is a matter of record that Labour conducted special campaigns of enrolment. Indeed, in practice their canvassers do little other than assist people to enrol and they rarely discuss policy when canvassing. I know, too, that in certain marginal electorates Maori may have opted off the Maori roll in order to support the Labour candidate on the European roll and that some of these may not have been removed from the Maori roll by the electoral office. Thus they would, if they voted on the European roll, be shown as non-voters on the Maori roll. However, one cannot explain away the massive non-vote in this way. The non-vote in

Southern Maori for instance, was 19,000. I believe that the figures support Rata’s contention that Labour has failed in Maori issues; that Maori recognise this failure and that unless Labour is to see the Maori questions as important to Maori and see them in the light that the Maori see them, the trend will be further away from Labour in 1981.

This brings us now to the aims, aspirations and demands of organised Maoridom and to whether or not Mat Rata is doomed to the same political limbo which attended Lee, Barnard, Langstone and lately O’Brien when they chose to go it alone.

It is important to remember that Mat Rata was Minister for only three years; that for most of the first year he had to halt departmental policies, re-shape or scrap them and in effect get a bureaucratic machine wound up and heading in a totally new direction.

Some of the bureaucrats were less than helpful. They felt that they, better than he, a Maori, could read the Maori mind, and interpret its aims and aspirations. I personally have had first-hand knowledge of this kind of crass patronage in the Maori Affairs Department after all, I worked there for

twenty-one years. Mat Rata takes some pride in the transformation of Kia Puawai of 1972 into Kua Puawai of 1975, but from a party support point of view it was not enough, hence the numerical voting with the feet in 1975 and particularly in 1978.

Some of the most interesting things to come out of my most recent discussion with Mat Rata were his evident humility and his total commitment to Mana Motuhake, which is a rallying point for his own people in the North. He considers, for instance, that it would be presumptuous of him to take his policies and his ideas out of his electorate into the marae of Waikato or Te Arawa or other areas where there is, as we all know, a tremendous resurgence of Maoriness. He is obviously happy and feels on sound ground when he says that he must help to re-teach some of his own people, particularly the young, their tribal values such as the warmth of the extended family as opposed to the sanctification of the individual and the isolation which goes with the nuclear family.

He says that he doesn’t like, but he understands, the new kinds of tribalism, on the one side Rotary and the Lions and the respectable new tribes and on the other side the Mongrel Mob, the Panthers and the less respectable new tribes. He sees the task ahead as bringing the re-teaching of tribal-tanga to the new generation.

Mat Rata’s political aspirations are obscure. I don’t think that he has thought them out thoroughly in an organisational way. He appears to be taking matters as they come. He does feel confident, however, of a return to the House in 1981, and he obviously intends to use the two years which he still has as M.P. for Northern Maori to cement his political position in his own electorate. He knows, too, that his political future must depend upon how he does between now and 1981. He expects to be something of a polarising factor for a number of Maori groups, each of which has its own aims, its own objectives and its own methods of attaining them. He would be surprised and I think very disappointed if the Ratana movement were to support a candidate (Labour or Ratana Independent) against him in 1981 and I would be very surprised if Labour were to oppose him officially without first obtaining Ratana endorsement of any candidate they put forward. He doesn’t see any analogy between his situation and that of Lee and Langstone when they stood as Independents, at the time of the Savage Government. Indeed Lee was involved in an intense personal clash with perhaps the most charismatic leader in our political history. This clash took place, too, when Labour was on the crest of the political wave. No one in his right mind today would see Rowling as a charismatic Mick Savage or 1980 Labour as anything other than reeling under the defeats of 1975 and 1978.

Time will tell, and my spies would indicate that there is a significant groundswell of Maori opinion supporting Mat Rata. While he has tested it only in the North where organisation and finance are already flowing in, I have detected no small sympathy for his stand in other areas.

I wish him well.

Paul Potiki has been an industrial relations adviser to the Public Service Association for the past four years, the latest job in a rich and varied career. Born in Wellington of a Ngai Tahu-Ngati Mamoe father (from Rakiura) and an EnglishFrench mother, Paul has been a power linesman, a public servant with the Departments of Health and Maori Affairs and President of the New Zealand Race Relations Council. He has long served Maori interests through Maori committees, his tribal trust board and as Secretary of Ngati Poneke.