Maori Party dividing NZ - Peters

Fairfax Media

COMEBACK TRAIL: New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has attacked the Maori Party.

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Maori Party policies are racially divisive and will turn New Zealand into the Zimbabwe of the South Pacific, NZ First leader Winston Peters has claimed.

Mr Peters used a speech to Wanganui Grey Power to launch a stinging attack on the party, targeting renegade MP Hone Harawira's "white motherf.....s" email and the looming repeal of the foreshore and seabed law.

"We should beware of any ethnic or religious group that seeks power.

"The world is cluttered with tragic examples of what happens when race and religion take over politics. Remember Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Rwanda and other such ethnic and religious nightmares.

"These are extreme examples but let's be real - the Maori Party is all about taking resources off non-Maori and grabbing social and economic control.

"The outcome, some fear, could be the creation of a new Zimbabwe in the South Pacific."

Mr Peters said National's agreement to repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Act was a "breathtaking backflip" that would open a "festering racial sore that will infect the whole country".

Mr Peters was instrumental in the wording of the act, which vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the crown but allowed recognition of Maori customary rights.

The attack came as Maori Party officials started a meeting with Mr Harawira in Kaitaia to decide whether to take action over an email in which he said "white motherf.....s" had been raping Maori land for centuries.

The email came after Mr Harawira was criticised for taking a day trip to Paris with his wife when he should have been attending engagements in Brussels as part of an official Parliamentary delegation he was leading.

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia decided not to attend the meeting, but Pita Sharples made a surprise appearance as an "old friend" rather than as co-leader.

Mr Peters' speech was an obvious attempt to make political capital from the backlash against Mr Harawira's comments.

But while accusing Mr Harawira of sowing racial division, he also launched into the growing Asian population, which he said was projected to hit 400,000 in Auckland in seven years.

He said increased Asian immigration and a growing trend towards multiculturalism was a "force for disintegration".

He referred to studies he claimed showed many people born under China's one child policy who now lived here were using immigration policies to bring in their parents and grandparents, turning New Zealand into a rest home for Asian pensioners.

- © Fairfax NZ News