What the Royal Commission really said about the Maori seats

Several people (including National Party spinmeister DPF) have sought to defend John Key's position on the Maori seats by referring to the 1986 report of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System, Towards a better democracy (finally online thanks to the Electoral Commission). The Royal Commission indeed recommended the abolition of the Maori seats if MMP was introduced - but they said a few other things as well. So as with the size of Parliament, I thought it would be worthwhile to review their thoughts on the matter.

The Royal Commission began its chapter on Maori representation [PDF] with a review of the history of the Maori seats. I've covered this topic before, so I'll skip that part and instead cut to the interesting bit. After public consultation, the Royal Commission found near-universal support for the seats among Maori, and thought that any discussion of their future should start from the position that the seats were highly symbolic:

The Maori seats have significance for Maori in ways that go beyond the issue of political representation... Although they were not set up for this purpose, the Maori seats have nevertheless come to be regarded by Maori as an important concession to, and the principal expression of, their constitutional position under the Treaty of Waitangi. To many Maori, the seats are also a base for a continuing search for more appropriate constitutional and political forms through which Maori rights (mana Maori in particular) might be given effect... It is in this context that Maori views concerning the seats should be understood.

They then move on to questions about the representation of minorities in democratic societies and of Maori political interests in particular. They conclude that while Maori share many of the same interests as other New Zealanders (interests in health, employment, the education system etc), they also have distinctive interests of their own related to both the Treaty and their poor socioeconomic position which should be represented in the political sphere. The Royal Commission concluded that these distinctive interests were best represented by Maori MPs. They then moved on to extract five principles of Maori representation:

1. Maori interests should be represented in Parliament by Maori MPs.
2. Maori electors ought to have an effective vote competed for by all political parties.
3. All MPs should be accountable in some degree to Maori electors.
4. Maori MPs ought to be democratically accountable to Maori electors.
5. Candidate selection procedures of the political parties should be organised in such a way as to permit the Maori people a voice in the decision of who the candidates are to be.

These principles must be applied in a manner which meets the requirements of electoral equality and fairness to all political parties, candidates, and voters.

Fairly clearly, separate Maori seats under FPP did not measure up. While they had resulted in Maori being represented by Maori (and Maori well-versed in tikanga at that), they ghettoised the Maori vote, and ensured separatism, not just of Maori, but also of Pakeha. The fact that general MPs were not accountable to Maori voters meant that the interests of Maori were routinely ignored - and not just by National. Labour's utter dominance of the seats meant they could take Maori voters for granted, and so had little incentive to develop policy to appeal to them. Despite all this, they thought that given FPP, they were better than the alternative (no Maori representation at all), and recommended that they be retained (though with a proper Maori option) if the electoral system was not changed.

Under MMP, the story was quite different: the list system would meet all the requirements of the principles, and so they recommended that the Maori seats be abolished if MMP was chosen. However, that did not mean the end of "special representation". Their elaboration of MMP in Chapter 2 included this twist:

In recognition of the special status of the New Zealand Maori population, and of the relatively small number of Maori voters, we have proposed that no threshold apply to parties primarily representing Maori interests. This waiver could be extended to parties representing other minority ethnic groups, such as Pacific Islanders, if this was thought desirable.

The exact criteria for a party "primarily representing Maori interests" was left undefined, but I have no doubt that the current Maori Party would qualify. For some reason, National's spinners prefer to forget this part - mainly because they're more interested in slapping down Maori to pander to the redneck vote than in ensuring fair electoral representation to all.

Finally, and most importantly, regardless of which electoral system was chosen, the Royal Commission recommended that Parliament and the government enter into a wide-ranging consultation with Maori "about the definition and protection of the rights of the Maori people and the recognition of their constitutional position under the Treaty of Waitangi". It was also noted that

The abolition of guaranteed Maori representation under any circumstances... would make [this] even more important and more urgent, given Maori views about the constitutional and symbolic role of the seats.

In other words, while they supported abolition, they explicitly opposed the sort of unilateral abolition by a Pakeha majority advocated by John Key and Don Brash before him. And if the seats were abolished, they felt that some other means would need to be found of ensuring institutional protection for Maori rights, to ensure a Pakeha-dominated Parliament could not continue its past (and sadly continuing) habit of ignoring them. So its rather misleading to say, as DPF does, that National is merely "stand[ing] up for the recommendations of the Royal Commission which recommended getting rid of them".