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Maori Party show of solidarity on Takutai Moana Bill
Maori Party show of solidarity on Takutai Moana Bill.
The Maori Party is rock solid on the Takutai Moana (Marine and Coastal Area) Bill announced President Pem Bird this morning. Comprehensive consultation over recent weeks have confirmed overwhelming support for the Bill in all electorates.
It is still being claimed that there is little support for the Bill and that division and disharmony run deep in the Party. This show of solidarity however not only gives lie to those claims but reveals tight unity, inner strength and a steely resolve in the Party at large which bodes well for our future prospects ahead
Opposition to the Bill from the Labour Party in particular is not altogether surprising given their direct genealogical ties to their ugly monstrosity the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act.
They will make great bedfellows with the Coastal Coalition lot whose take on the Bill is clearly a racist one. Their scaremongering punchline 'Maori will get too much' obviously has appeal to others.
How Labour squares this off with Maori will be a stretch even for them naturally gifted as they are at political twists, turns, somersaults and belly flops. A belly up now looms large on their horizon.
Our parliamentary leaders have had to withstand a carefully orchestrated and potentially ruinous campaign of sustained half-truths and misinformation. Worse they have had to endure hurtful personal attacks, taunts and blatantly jaundiced criticism. Both have stood staunch and firm in the face of this withering onslaught.
Pita Sharples and Tariana Turia made a promise to us that they would fight to repeal the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act and to restore access to the courts of the land. Both have worked tirelessly and diligently with Te Ururoa Flavell and Rahui Katenes' loyal and able assistance to that end, an end which is now in sight.
A Bill has been designed that is fit
for purpose. It will remove a grave
injustice from our
statute books. It will honour a promise. And the
Maori
Party make absolutely no apologies for that.
Pem Bird
President Maori Party
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