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Mike Hosking: Push for Maori wards on councils is racist and undemocratic

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 25 Nov 2020, 4:49PM
Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta. (Photo / NZ Herald)
Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta. (Photo / NZ Herald)

Mike Hosking: Push for Maori wards on councils is racist and undemocratic

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 25 Nov 2020, 4:49PM

Here is the great advantage Nanaia Mahuta has over most of the rest of us: we don’t care.

What she is doing in trying to change the law and prevent a democratic action in terms of Māori wards and the ability to have any sort of public say is racist.

She, along with the rest of the apologists on various councils around the country who favour separatist Māori wards, know is that the bulk of the constituency don’t want them.

We know this because when we get the chance to directly vote on them, the no’s win and win by large margins.

Under current law, if a ward is voted for by council, that is the council going beyond their mandate because they know full well it’s not supported by the majority of people who elected them.

So by way of a safe guard, they can choose to put those sorts of decisions to a vote: when they have, they lose.

So now, they not only vote for separate race based wards, they then also vote not to have a vote.

Fortunately, the law allows the public, i.e. the people the council are supposed to be serving, to drum up a petition involving five percent of the local constituency at which point a referendum is forced.

This is where Mahuta comes in. She’s changing that law. She is taking away a democratic right, in order to propel a racist agenda.

They know that what they are doing is not publicly supported, so they’re taking the public out of the equation.

We should of course be outraged, but this is where they have the aforementioned advantage.

We don’t care.

We can barely turn up each three years for local body elections, so pathetic has it become it ranges from a third to a half of turnout.

It’s a chicken and egg situation. Has the representation become so tragic; i.e. Invercargill, Tauranga, Northland, Wellington, Canterbury, Auckland, pick your recent headline and shambles, so we’ve given up?

Or did because we gave up, it becomes the mess it has, i.e. any doofus can get elected and know they’re good for life because no one is going to do anything about it, hence the disintegration. 

Either way, here are some simple facts; if Māori are underrepresented, then stand. Nothing stopping you.

If you want more Māori on council, vote for them. Nothing’s stopping you, the mechanisms are all there.

In a democracy, everyone gets a free shot. What Mahuta and her lot are looking to do is not democracy, its artificial, its racist, its stacking the deck, its making up the rules to suit your agenda.

They are shameless, overt and dangerous, so what now? That ball is in the court of those who currently by in large can’t be bothered, so guess who’s got the upper hand?   

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