Talkin' About Waitangi & Hone Harawira

Time to Talk: The hour-long, news-driven format of TVNZ7's News at 8 - in sharp contrast to the One News shock/horror-entertainment and weather-driven bulletin at 6:00pm - allows for considerably more in-depth discussion on the important issues of the day. It's coverage of Waitangi Day 2011 and the growing rift between Hone Harawira and the Maori Party leadership shows what genuine public-service broadcasting could (and should) look like.

A FRANK DISCUSSION on the subjects of Waitangi Day and the future of Hone Harawira took place between myself and Miriama Kamo on yesterday’s (Sunday, 6 February) bulletin of TVNZ 7’s News at 8.

I don’t know how long this will stay up at TVNZ-On-Demand, but at the moment the item can be accessed here http://tvnz.co.nz/tvnz-news-at-8/video (the interview begins two-thirds of the way through "Chapter 1"). [Sadly, the link no longer takes you to the items in question.]

The earlier interview between Miriama and TVNZ’s political reporter, Jessica Mutch, is fascinating. The young journalist clearly cannot conceive of any style of politics that isn’t bound up with the institutional norms of parliamentary representation. Nor is she willing to explore the more likely consequences of her own (or should that be Pita Sharple's?) predictions.

Is Ms Mutch really so lacking in political and historical imagination as to suppose that if Hone Harawira is forced out of the Maori Party he will depart alone? That thousands (especially in Te Tai Tokerau) will not resign from the Maori Party in solidarity with their MP? That the party will not be riven with angry recriminations?

More importantly, can she not see that any splitting of the Maori Party could only have the most serious electoral repercussions for the governing coalition come November?

A Second Coming?

Been There - Done That: The launch of the NewLabour Party in 1989 was derailed by the antics of the Far-Left. Twenty-two years later, and those contemplating the formation of yet another "New Left Party" (like Sue Bradford and Matt McCarten who were there, as I was, at the birth of the NLP) will find themselves with very little, apart from the Far-Left, to work with. The New Zealand electorate is unlikely to respond kindly.

A NEW LEFT PARTY – hardly are those words out when a dispiriting image out of the late-1980s troubles my sight: somewhere (I seem to recall it was the Overseas Terminal in Wellington) a queue of youthful extremists, their gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, are shuffling their sneakers inexorably towards the microphone, while all around them reel indignant social-democrats – recalling, too late, W. B Yeats warning about the worst being full of passionate intensity.

The Inaugural Conference of the NewLabour Party on Queen’s Birthday weekend, 1989, should have been a triumph. Deploying all of the organisational flair for which he was famous, Jim Anderton had gathered together around five hundred eager refugees from the pod-party Labour had become under Rogernomics. An overwhelming majority of those attending the conference were ordinary Kiwis: workers, students, beneficiaries and pensioners – with a smattering of academics and trade unionists.

I wasn’t worried about them. When they spoke I was confident they would put into words the feelings of outrage and betrayal shared by hundreds-of-thousands of their fellow citizens.

No, the people I worried about (and I was not alone) were the fifty-to-sixty Trotskyites, Maoists, "Permanent Revolutionaries", Treaty fanatics, hard-core feminists and uncompromising environmentalists who would climb aboard this new political vehicle like Baader-Meinhof terrorists boarding a jet-liner.

We tried to warn Jim, but he simply couldn’t see the problem. "Don’t worry," he said, "we’ll outnumber them ten-to-one." What Jim didn’t seem to grasp was how much damage fifty-to-sixty fanatics could do to the public’s perception of his nascent political movement.

And, oh, what a lot of damage they did. In the days following Jim’s announcement of the NLP’s birth, on 1 May 1989, opinion polls showed support levels around ten percent. In the weeks following the hi-jacked Inaugural Conference public support plummeted below three percent.

"Ah, but that was more than twenty years ago," I hear you say, "times have changed".

Indeed they have.

In 2011, New Zealand is governed by a right-wing coalition supported by close to 60 percent of the electorate. The dominant partner in that coalition, the John Key-led National Party, has been supported by more than 50 percent of the voters for two straight years.

Does this sound like the right time to launch a New Left Party to you?

Who would join it?

Not the moderate, social-democratic Left: they have all returned to the Labour Party. Not the moderate, environmentalist Left: they have the Green Party.

This is important – and not only because, between them, Labour and the Greens account for practically all of the Centre-Left vote. They also account for 99 percent of those who have the slightest idea about how to run an effective election campaign.

A crucial element in the success of Jim Anderton (ex-Labour) and Winston Peters (ex-National) was the large number of experienced election campaigners who rallied to their side. These people didn’t have to be taught how to fund-raise, organise a canvassing drive, or run an election-day system – they already knew.

"No worries," say the promoters of a New Left Party, "we’ll just game the MMP system by recruiting Hone Harawira. That way we can avoid the necessity of winning 5 percent of the Party Vote. If it’s good enough for Rodney Hide in Epsom – it’s good enough for us."

Hmmmm? Not sure that’s the slogan you’re looking for, Comrades. Besides, if you really think an electorally poisonous bunch of eco-anarchists, Maori nationalists, unreconstructed ‘80s feminists and hard-core Marxist-Leninists are going to attract anything like Act’s vote in 2008 – then you’re away with the fairies.

Just consider the stats: The combined 2008 vote of New Zealand’s Centre-Left parties (Labour Party, Greens, Progressives) was 975,734 or 41.62 percent of the Party Vote. Altogether, the Far-Left parties (Alliance, Workers Party, RAM – Residents Action Movement) attracted just 3,306 votes or 0.14 percent.

It’s nowhere near enough, Comrades. Even if he won every vote in Te Tai Tokerau, Hone would still be on his own.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 4 February 2011.

Will Key's Courage Provoke Media Bias?

Masterful Performance: If Phil Goff is still wondering how one goes about seizing the political initiative, then he's a very slow learner. The danger now is that the mainstream media will start treating the 2011 election not as a contest - but a coronation.

JOHN KEY’S COURAGE over the past ten days has been extraordinary. Not only did he utter the deplorable word "privatisation", but he also gave us ten months advance notice of the General Election’s precise date. Having surrendered one political advantage the Prime Minister then went on to give away another. By reaffirming his 2008 determination not to enter into a post-election coalition deal with Winston Peters, Key has given New Zealand fair warning that if he cannot win the election on his own terms – he’d rather not win it at all.

If, after this performance, Phil Goff is still wondering how one goes about seizing the political initiative, then he’s a very slow learner. It takes courage. It takes clarity of purpose. And, it takes the ability to speak forthrightly to the electorate. When a reporter asked the Prime Minister what would happen after the Election if Peters ends up holding the balance-of-power, Key replied, simply: "If Winston Peters holds the balance of power it will be a Phil Goff-led Labour government."

It’s this rare ability (in a politician) to give a simple, straightforward answer to a simple, straightforward question that endears Key to friend and foe alike. We are reassured that he’s speaking without mental reservation – hiding nothing. Voters cannot but respond positively to such frankness – so very different from the usual circumlocutory political prattle. The result is paradoxical: by demonstrating his consummate political skills, the Prime Minister convinces us that he isn’t really a "politician" at all. "As some of you have noted", he told journalists, "I’m a different politician to a lot of politicians". Indeed.

It takes a very different sort of politician to hide his intentions in plain sight. Only now, in the light cast by the events of the past ten days, has Key’s strategic plan been revealed to us.

Stage One involved persuading New Zealanders that they were dealing with a very different sort of National Party leader – one they could trust. Everything Key has done since deposing Dr Don Brash in 2006 has been directed towards this end, and he has succeeded brilliantly.

Stage Two requires Key to parlay the trust he has so assiduously cultivated into majority support for a radical manifesto of economic and social change. (This is where we are now.)

Stage Three, to be attempted only after securing an unequivocal democratic mandate, is to implement the promised changes as swiftly and as comprehensively as possible.

Essentially, Key’s strategy is the same as the strategy adopted by the Labour leader, Michael Joseph Savage, from the moment he succeeded the formidable (but rather frightening) Harry Holland in 1932. Most New Zealanders don’t realise that the election which cemented-in Labour’s policies took place not in 1935, but three years later, in 1938. That was the election in which Labour secured the most emphatic electoral mandate in New Zealand’s history – 55 percent of the popular vote. It was a victory built on faith and trust. Key is hoping to repeat Mickey Savage’s triumph.

And, unless I’m very much mistaken, he will be assisted at every turn by a news media which long ago gave away any idea of "monitoring the centres of power" or – God forbid! – holding them to account. Absent also (except among a handful of worthy journalistic veterans) is any conception of the Habermassian "public sphere". The idea that the media’s role is to facilitate a democratic discourse strong enough to interrogate and clarify the political choices on offer finds few, if any, advocates in the upper reaches of the so-called "mainstream media".

Carrying much more weight among news editors and producers is the plebiscitary principle inherent in big media’s reliance on opinion polls. Journalists are increasingly aligning themselves with what their newspaper’s and network’s pollsters tell them is the majority viewpoint. Critical examination of the majority’s claims is strongly discouraged, and media bosses only rarely sanction the presentation of a minority report (unless, of course, such reporting serves the interests of a major advertiser).

With all their polls showing Key well in front of his challengers, the mainstream media’s response will almost certainly be to present the Prime Minister’s political discourse as its own. This was certainly true of Morning Report’s coverage of the Prime Minister’s decision to once again rule out Winston Peters as a potential coalition partner. Radio NZ’s parliamentary reporter, Julian Robbins, was scathing in his dismissal of Peters’ electoral chances. NZ First, he assured us, had just become "irrelevant". Excluded from the Prime Minister’s coalition options, Peters would struggle to gain media attention, opined Robbins.

This was extraordinary stuff – especially since Key himself had already made it clear that if NZ First crossed the 5 percent threshold there was every chance he would be forced from office. The real story is that Peters and NZ First's share of the Party Vote will have a crucial bearing on the outcome of the 2011 election - only becoming "irrelevant" if journalists (especially those working in the Parliamentary Press Gallery) decide to make them so. And if that is their decision, what possible claim can they – or their employers – make to either fairness or balance in their election coverage?

Goff and the Labour Party should protest loudly against this sort of treatment being handed out to any political party – no matter how detested by right-wing politicians and voters. If elements of the news media allow themselves to be used – as they were in 2008 – to do the National Party’s and Act’s dirty-work, then it won’t only be NZ First that finds itself in the cross-hairs of an aggressively partisan media pack, but Labour and the Greens as well.

Vesting Day (In Praise of Nationalisation)

On Behalf of the People: With the privatisation of state assets back in the headlines, it is useful to recall why privately owned industries were nationalised in the first place.

IT’S ONE OF THOSE PHOTOGRAPHS that capture history in the making. Taken by a proud mineworker on 1st January 1947, it records the erection of a large wooden sign outside the gates of a grim and grimy British coal mine. The sign says: "This Colliery is now managed by the National Coal Board on behalf of the People."

Thousands of miners’ lives had been lost to lung disease, gas explosions and cave-ins. The miners’ unions had been forced to engage in some of the most prolonged and bitterly contested industrial conflicts in British history. But at last, after a century-and-a-half of constant struggle, "Vesting Day" – when the proprietary interest in Britain’s coal industry was prised from the fingers of its private owners and vested in public hands – had dawned.

At the little colliery of Berry Hill, near Fenton, in Staffordshire, a group of miners posed for a formal "Vesting Day" photograph. The broad grins beneath the cloth caps bear testimony to the enormous hopes working people all over the world had invested in the nationalisation programmes of their Socialist and Labour parties.

Just a year earlier, and half a world away from Fenton, five thousand trade unionists had marched through the streets of Wellington in support of the New Zealand Labour Party’s long-delayed promise to fully nationalise the Bank of New Zealand. Many of the marchers wanted to go further. They had only to glance at their party membership card to be reminded that Labour’s succinctly formulated political objective was "the socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange".

But what did that mean? What was nationalisation/socialisation supposed to achieve?

At the most basic level it was intended to lift the burden of private ownership from the shoulders of the men and women who laboured in its service. Returning a healthy dividend to their shareholders all-too-often obliged private industrialists to extract more effort from their employees for less reward. Health and safety considerations were similarly subordinated to the owners’ over-riding imperative to increase the rate of return on capital. Public ownership was – at the very least – intended to construct a solid floor under the workers’ wages and conditions.

But that was just the beginning. The workers in nationalised industries also hoped to play a central role in their management. To "socialise" production was to break down the artificial hierarchies separating those who made the decisions from those who carried them out.

Socialisation was also intended to broaden radically the definition of who held a legitimate interest in the nation’s mines, factories, warehouses, shops and offices. "Stakeholders" in these enterprises were said to include not only the workers, their families, and the local community, but also those who worked in the civic, cultural and agricultural infrastructure which sustained them.

Nationalisation would thus allow democracy, hitherto reserved for the ballot-box, to flow inexorably into the workplace, where, the socialists insisted, it has always been needed most.

The historical experience of nationalisation fell well short of the millenarian hopes of the 1940s. Only the most basic expectations of the process were fulfilled. Because, although the State generally proved to be a better employer than the private capitalist, it opted to run the nationalised industries in exactly the same fashion. The strict division between "the bosses" and "the workers" endured, and the latter’s vast store of knowledge about the enterprise’s operations remained as under-utilised in the state-owned industries as it did in the private sector.

In New Zealand, the nationalised industries did acquire an unintended – but important – social dimension by being used by successive governments to absorb large numbers of workers who would otherwise have found themselves unemployed. By soaking-up this surplus labour, the State protected New Zealand society from the manifold curses of mass unemployment: domestic violence; child abuse; family break-up; juvenile delinquency, alcohol and drug addiction, and rising crime-rates.

The great post-war wave of nationalisations was finally broken by the countervailing force of the neoliberal revolution. By the late 1980s, in New Zealand, all publicly-owned entities had been forced to abandon their fiscally unsustainable "social" functions and become profit-making "State Owned Enterprises". Operated as if they were privately-owned business, the new SOEs were required by the Treasury to deliver market-determined rates-of-return to their "share-holding ministers". All of the state-owned banks and insurance companies; the nationalised telecommunications sector; the state airline; and the publicly-owned railways were privatised.

The neoliberal justification for privatising state-owned industries has always been that the private sector, on balance, is more productive. That being the case, it makes more sense to cash them up and use the proceeds to retire government debt.

The miners photographed outside Berry Hill Colliery in 1947 would probably agree. Collective exploitation is clearly a contradiction in terms. Fairness seldom turns a profit. And the coal-master’s girth was always inversely proportional to their own.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 1 February 2011.

Who Doesn't Dare - Loses

Close, but no cigar, Phil: Courage is the only currency that will purchase this election for Labour.

COURAGE is the most valuable political commodity. Without courage, you won’t offer the best policies. Without courage, you can’t attract the best candidates. Without courage, even the best organised political party is rapidly reduced to moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

Last Tuesday afternoon, in the Auckland suburb of New Lynn, the Labour Party leader, Phil Goff, had the opportunity to demonstrate not only the courage of his party, but his own willingness to risk everything for a Labour victory.

He failed on both counts.

What’s really infuriating about Mr Goff’s failure to be brave, is that the policy package he finally decided to offer the electorate was so very nearly enough.

With just a little more courage, the tax reforms Mr Goff announced could have been an electoral game-breaker. With just a little more courage, the moral crusade against greed, inequality and social injustice that waits only for a politician with the guts to lead it, could have been unleashed. With just a little more courage, the stark economic and social alternatives confronting New Zealand could have been thrown into sharp relief. With just a little more courage, Labour could have given us a choice.

Take, for example, Mr Goff’s announcement of a "Tax Free Zone" for low income earners. The policy’s very name – incorporating the language of the Fourth Labour Government’s high-risk anti-nuclear legislation – was clearly designed to raise the hopes and aspirations of the party’s hard-pressed supporters. And, had it encompassed the first $10,000 of income, Labour’s constituency would have stood up and cheered. Here at last would have been irrefutable evidence of Mr Goff’s determination to halt and roll-back the unrelenting transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

A Tax Free Zone of $10,000 would have required the wholesale reform of the way the wealth of New Zealanders is taxed. It would have mandated the re-introduction of gift and inheritance taxes; it would have required the increased taxation of repatriated profits; it would have necessitated substantially increased marginal tax rates for the highest income earners; and, most of all, it would have made sure that the gaping revenue hole, opened up by the refusal of successive governments to introduce a capital gains tax, could finally have been sealed.

The $5,000 Tax Free Zone which Mr Goff did announce is worse than nothing at all. The extra dollars it places in the hands of working people are far too few to significantly lift their living standards, and its $1.3 billion cost is simply left dangling in mid-air.

Oh sure, there are sly hints aplenty about New Zealand’s inadequate tax-gathering mechanisms – but absolutely no firm policy. This simply will not do.

In the current economic circumstances it is politically irresponsible to announce tax changes leading to a $1.3 billion decline in revenue without, at the same time, describing how it is to be made up. Labour’s opponents will, quite rightly, point out that, in the absence of corresponding tax increases, Mr Goff’s $5,000 Tax Free Zone can only be paid for by further increasing the deficit, or cutting back on government expenditure.

Mr Goff’s state of the nation speech was also silent about the crucial issue of Free Trade. While Labour clings, like a frightened child, to MFAT’s apron-strings and refuses to engage in the hard-headed analysis that would allow it to recognise the enormous economic damage this country’s fanatical adherence to Free Trade has inflicted upon its people; all the fine talk about "growing an economy that works for you" is just hot air.

For Labour to reject Free Trade and embrace Fair Trade would require enormous courage. But how brave do you have to be to announce that, upon taking office, a future Labour Government will immediately end the New Zealand State’s relationship with the Westpac Bank, and require every government department, crown-controlled entity and state-owned enterprise to source their financial services from Kiwibank?

Yet, even this tiny gesture was too much for Mr Goff.

It’s sad, because the opportunity to inflict an "Orewa" on John Key’s Government was definitely there on Tuesday. By setting the terms of the debate at this early stage, Mr Goff could have wrenched control of the political agenda from the Prime Minister’s inactive hands.

Had you dared more, Mr Goff, you would have failed less.

Courage is its own reward.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 28 January 2011.

Maximum Damage

Evidence? Why would I need evidence after accumulating 50 years of National Party prejudices? Education Minister, Anne Tolley, refuses to defend New Zealand's national curriculum or its national qualifications system. When confronted with Auckland Grammar's full-scale attack on the NCEA, her response was: "Where's the harm?"

HOW STUPID do they think we are? Do they really expect us to believe that the week in which tens of thousands of young New Zealanders received their NCEA certificates, the headmaster of Auckland Grammar just happened to announce that, in 2011, only his "weaker students" will be sitting the official New Zealand exam?

Come on! Doesn’t it make more sense that the announcement Auckland Grammar will be directing 90 percent of its pupils towards the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) – a decision the school’s Board of Trustees made several months ago – was deliberately timed to inflict the maximum damage to the NCEA?

But, to what purpose? Who are these mysterious "they"? And what is it they’re hoping to achieve? Well, let’s answer those questions by making it very clear who "they" are not.

They are not experts in the field of education. The overwhelming consensus of expert opinion both here and overseas is that the NCEA examination is a highly effective educational response to the cultural and vocational challenges confronting young New Zealanders in the 21st Century.

They are also very far from being representative of the overwhelming majority of school principals and teachers who have worked tirelessly, alongside the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, to correct the inevitable malfunctions and address the (surprisingly few) conceptual and/or procedural shortcomings exposed during the introduction of the new system.

No, the NCEA is not being attacked on educational grounds. The objections "they" have with our national secondary school qualifications are entirely political.

There’s a certain type of New Zealander who views this country’s young people in the same way that a farmer views a mob of ewes and lambs. For these New Zealanders, our school qualifications regime is supposed to operate like the farmer’s drafting race. The kids are funnelled-in, and, as they pass through, the examination system slams the drafting-gate to the left or to the right, sorting out the sheep (to be returned to green pastures) from the lambs (to be sent to the works).

Except this educational sorting system is nowhere near as objective as the farmer’s. At least the cockey divides his flock according to an objective test: is this a sheep, or a lamb? The opponents of NCEA, however, aren’t interested in a system which sorts young New Zealanders according to their abilities. What they're after is one which sorts students according to the socio-economic status of their parents.

And how better to signal to your children’s prospective employers that they have been educated at a private school, or at one of the elite state secondary schools (like Auckland Grammar) than by substituting the CIE for the NCEA? After all, it’s only the very wealthy who can afford to pay the fees of the most prestigious private institutions. Just as it’s only the very wealthy who can afford to own a house in the highly-prized "Grammar Zone".

The CIE is certainly no better, and arguably a marginally less effective predictor of academic success, than the NCEA. But, of course, that’s not it’s purpose. Like the star on the belly of Dr Seuss’s infamous "Sneetches", the CIE qualification is supposed to signal that the bearer is "One of Us": a superior form of life; someone to be preferred over all those unfortunate, plain Sneetches with "none upon thars".

Now, you don’t have to be a genius to see where New Zealand’s going to end up if the CIE becomes associated with high social status, and the NCEA is reserved for "weaker students". In no time flat, this country’s education system will be driven almost entirely by considerations of class (and in New Zealand that all-too-often comes down to issues of race and ethnicity).

Since the 1930s, New Zealand’s education system has been driven by the determination that: "every person, whatever the level of his academic ability, whether he be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has a right, as a citizen, to a free education of the kind for which he is best fitted, and to the fullest extent of his powers."

The keepers of that promise: the guardians of educational equality in this country; have traditionally been New Zealand’s Ministers of Education. And that is why, when the headmaster of Auckland Grammar made his deeply offensive announcement, parents and teachers across New Zealand turned to National’s Anne Tolley. Surely, they reasoned, the Minister of Education will not stand back and watch the NCEA reduced to something only "weaker students" sit? Surely, she will instruct Auckland Grammar, as part of the state secondary system, to step back into line.

But that’s not what Anne Tolley did. The Minister of Education’s extraordinary response was: "Where’s the harm?"

Well, Minister, of one thing I’m certain. The harm unleashed by your unconscionable refusal to defend the NCEA will not be found in your neighbourhood.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 25 January 2011.

The Left's Favourite Warrior

Saviour of The Left?: If Hone Harawira secures control of the Maori Party, the National Party's policy intentions - hitherto blurred by its confusing relationship with the Maori Party - will snap into much sharper ideological focus. NOTE TO READERS: This essay was written prior to the Maori Party caucus laying its complaint against Mr Harawira. Push has indeed come to shove.

HONE HARAWIRA is fast becoming the "Great Brown Hope" of the New Zealand Left. And you don’t have to be a political scientist to see why. His extraordinary column in last Sunday’s Sunday Star-Times makes it brutally clear that the relationship between the National-led Government and the Maori Party will not survive the current parliamentary term.

Unless the National Party is able to do what hasn’t been done since 1951, and secure a majority of the votes cast, the Maori Party’s imminent left-turn places the Government’s re-election chances entirely in the hands of Act – and the Epsom voters. For his Government to endure, the Prime Minister, John Key, not only needs Act’s leader, Rodney Hide, to carry the Epsom seat – but also a fat swag of Act MPs on his coat-tails.

Forcing National into the arms of Act is clearly Mr Harawira’s key strategic objective. The Maori Party’s most important contribution to National (as Mr Harawira himself wryly admits) has been its ability to blur the sharper edges of the Right’s ideological agenda. Without the Maori Party, that agenda will snap into sharp focus. It will then be much harder for Mr Key to persuade voters they have nothing to fear from a second term National-led Government.

But what about the Maori Party’s leaders – Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples? Have they no say in this?

The short answer is: "No."

Since the Maori Party’s Hui a Tau (annual general meeting) at Hastings’ Omahu Marae last October, it has been very clear that the party’s rank-and-file are looking to Mr Harawira for the leadership Ms Turia and Mr Sharples have failed to deliver. His frank exposition of the Maori Party’s shortcomings in the Sunday Star-Times is proof of this. No politician would castigate his leaders in the way Mr Harawira has done unless he’s pretty sure that, should push comes to shove, a radicalised and rebellious majority will be shoving his way.

Besides, the political logic of abandoning National for an alternative, Centre-Left, coalition is as clear to Ms Turia and Mr Sharples as it is to Mr Harawira. National’s own rank-and-file are telling their MPs that the Marine & Coastal Areas Bill is a ‘beach too far’ for many Centre-Right voters to accept. The Maori Party membership also understands that National’s stock of symbolic gestures is fast running out.

Time to steer the waka in a new direction.

You would be quite mistaken, however, to believe that Mr Harawira is paddling towards Labour. His most compatible Pakeha allies (as his own daughter bluntly reminded him by announcing her intention to vote for them) are the Greens.

The Maori Party stands to win many more concessions from the Labour Party by negotiating alongside the Greens, as a bloc, than it does by negotiating separately. Between them, the two parties will control a minimum of 11 seats. Neither Labour, nor National, will be able to form a government without them.

The only complicating factors in Mr Harawira’s strategic calculations are Winston Peters and NZ First. If the electorate suspects a Green/Maori Party bloc would demand too much from Labour, it may decide to give NZ First sufficient support to provide Phil Goff with the same either/or, both/and options which the Act/Maori Party combination gave Mr Key in 2008.

This intriguing prospect supplies all the parties of the Centre-Left with a powerful incentive to mobilise the maximum number of eligible voters. And, as National learned to its cost in 2005: the higher the turnout, the lower the chances of a Centre-Right victory.

It will be interesting to observe how many of these considerations Mr Harawira explores in his forthcoming columns in the Sunday Star-Times. My suspicion is that these verbal sallies will reflect much of the strategic and tactical virtuosity displayed by his illustrious Ngapuhi forebears. There is more than a hint in Mr Harawira of that other great ‘Hone’ of the North – the warrior, Hone Heke.

No wonder the Left love him.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star on Friday, 21 January 2011.