Editorial: Pita and Tariana's Outrageous Fortune

OPINION: Think of the Maori Party as a family, with Pita as dad, Tariana as mum, and Hone the rebellious teen, who has taken the family car for an unauthorised spin, pranged it, and returned home unrepentant.

It has truly been like watching an excrutiating family-based soap opera in recent weeks as the party's various arms have tried to rein in the excesses of a mutinous lad facing parental fury – and, it seems, parental impotence.

As things tortuously wound to a conclusion this week, the bad boy of the whanau – Te Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira – seemed to have won. Rather than being shown the door, as co-leaders Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia wanted, he is being allowed back into the family home. But perhaps not to trample too much on the leaders' mana, the party, conscious of Mr Harawira's widespread support, has agreed he will return on certain conditions.

Dr Sharples is insistent that Mr Harawira must apologise – again – to Uncle Tom Cobley and all, for bunking off a taxpayer-paid parliamentary trip to Brussels to take the wife to Paris, then spraying with obscenities a party supporter who dared question the wisdom of his actions. He might also have to spend some time on the naughty mat before his elders let him back at the dining table.

In the end, however, this spat and its unsatisfactory outcome have significant ramifications.

It might yet fracture the Maori Party, because the depth of electoral support for this scion of the haughty Harawiras will force Dr Sharples and Mrs Turia, both plainly fed up with Mr Harawira's self-indulgent antics, to keep working with an MP who wants to be a law unto himself.

That is, of course, unless, this near-schism has taught Mr Harawira a lesson in what being a team member really means. Leopards and spots ...

Labour MPs must be enjoying this. They recognise the supreme irony in Mrs Turia now having to deal with an ill-disciplined MP in her own caucus, after she played the same role within Labour – before stalking off to form the Maori Party.

National might also be affected by this mess. The depth of Mr Harawira's disdain for Pakeha and what he calls "white man's bullshit" might make it less inclined to accede to initiatives important to Maori Party voters.

Why would National voters – some already disapproving of Prime Minister John Key bringing the Maori Party into the government tent – back their party doing further deals with one that cannot discipline its most foul-mouthed and racist MP? What will this do to cross-party goodwill?

Mr Harawira's Northland supporters might yet have cause to regret their wish that the MP remain with the Maori Party because it is quite feasible that some of the community-based policy it wants to see negotiated is harder with an unguided missile in the coalition's midst.

Using history as a guide, it seems odds-on that there will be yet more tears before bedtime.

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Dean Hyde   #1   01:17 pm Nov 27 2009

A very well written opinion peice, whislt one can frown upon the Maori Partys' lack of response to such a racist outburst, one has to ask how the Prime Minister John Key can justify a statement that "he is relaxed about the matter". Does Mr Key think it is ok that a Government Member of Parliament can express such views and do so without been held to account? Interesting and disturbing.

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