Maori Party is ‘finished’ says Shearer
Sunday 30 June, 2013
Maori Party is
‘finished’ says Shearer and talk of a challenge to his
own leadership is ‘nonsensical’
Labour
leader David Shearer has told TV One’s Q+A programme that
the Maori Party is finished after placing third in the
Ikaroa Rawhiti by-election on Saturday (June
29).
Labour’s candidate Meka Whaitiri won the
Maori seat comfortably gaining more than 40 per cent of the
vote, followed by Mana Party’s Te Hamua Nikora on around
24 per cent and the Maori Party’s Na Raihania on 20 per
cent.
“I think the Maori Party is finished,
frankly. I mean, I do think it’s going to slide away to
nothing.” David Shearer said.
He said leadership
issues within the Maori Party as well as being in coalition
with National in government has damaged support for the
Maori Party.
But Shearer dismissed his own
leadership woes brought about after a recent poll showed
support for Labour dropping and rumours he had been given
two months to lift his performance or face a leadership
challenge.
Shearer told deputy political editor
Jessica Mutch that he had the full support of the Labour
caucus and dismissed talk of a deadline to lift his game as
“nonsensical”.
“I know what’s out there.
What’s happening is a great deal of volatility and a huge
amount of soft vote, and what it’s doing is sloshing
around, and people are not focused on an election, they’re
not focused on politics. They are moving around. And what
we’re hearing is that the government is out of touch,
it’s not listening, it doesn’t understand where people
are. And they move to us, particularly around the policies
like our affordable housing, build 10,000 houses, bringing
down power bills, creating jobs through boosting our
manufacturing sector. Those are the things that people want
to hear about and want to talk
about.”
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Q+A
JESSICA
MUTCH INTERVIEWS DAVID
SHEARER
JESSICA
MUTCH
Listening to that interview [Meka
Whaitiri] was the leader of the Labour Party, David Shearer.
Thank you very much for joining me in the studio this
morning.
DAVID SHEARER - Labour Party
Leader
Nice to be with you,
Jess.
JESSICA You
needed this win, didn’t you?
DAVID
Look, obviously we needed to
win. Of course we were going out to win. It was our
electorate. It was Parekura’s electorate, and, as you just
heard, Meka’s going to be an outstanding candidate to take
on Parekura’s
legacy.
JESSICA Did
she just win, though, because of Parekura, because of the
Parekura
factor?
DAVID
No, not at all. I mean, this is the whole thing
about this. She was up against two much higher profile
candidates, certainly for the Maori and Mana Parties. She
was virtually unknown around the place, and in four weeks,
has been able to reach out and grab that electorate and
really turn people around. And, you know, by the time the
special votes come in, we’ll be close to a 2000 majority.
That’s really significant, and when you actually look back
at Parekura’s, certainly in 2011, he got a very big
majority, but in 2008, he only got a majority of 1600. So
Meka’s done incredibly
well-
JESSICA But
when you look at it, though, it’s not just her, is it?
It’s the huge Labour machinery behind her. I mean, you
were the only big party competing for that seat. You needed
to win, didn’t
you?
DAVID
Well, we went out for it, obviously, Jess. You
know, I mean this is our electorate. We’ve owned it for
the last 12 years, and we wanted to carry on doing that, so
we tried our best, and we didn’t take it for granted. I
made that very plain at the very beginning. It gave us an
opportunity too to get the Labour machine out and dust it
off and get it working, which is great, because it stands us
in good stead then for next year.
JESSICA Do you
think that the Maori Party machinery hadn’t been dusted
off for a while? Do you think that’s why they struggled in
this seat?
DAVID
I think the Maori Party is finished, frankly. I
mean, I do think it’s going to slide away to
nothing.
JESSICA
Finished? Why do you think
that?
DAVID
Well, because they performed so badly in this
election. Mana beat them easily. The Mana campaign out there
was much, much stronger on the ground. We saw much more of
the Mana people out there. And so the Maori Party really
hasn’t fired. The leadership issues have
been-
JESSICA Do you
think those leadership issues were the main thing here?
Because it’s now had to go around and explain that they
weren’t completely linked with the National
Party.
DAVID
Well, there was partly the leadership issues and
partly, frankly, that they’re in bed with National. I
mean, I was at a house, knocking on doors yesterday in
Gisborne. I met five very smart Maori women who just said,
‘Look, in the past, we might have voted Maori Party. They
say they’re at the table, but they’re just getting the
crumbs off the table. We’re not going to back them
anymore.’ They’re going to vote for Labour. They want a
party that will be able to get out there and really
represent Maori, and so that’s what they went out and did.
And that, I think, is the impression right across the
electorate about the Maori Party. It’s finished. And,
frankly, to be honest with you, John Key, when he endorsed
the Maori Party and couldn’t
remember-
JESSICA
We’ll talk a bit more about John Key later. But,
I mean, you-
DAVID
When he couldn’t even give you the name of the
person standing for the Maori Party, it was the kiss of
death for the Maori
Party.
JESSICA
Looking at it from Labour’s perspective, you
needed this win because of your leadership as well. You
haven’t had a good week. The polls aren’t moving for
you. What do you think’s going wrong
here?
DAVID
Look, the polls go up and down, and when I go out
and talk to people, they never talk about the polls. What
they do talk about is the fact that they’re not being
listened to, that they’re working harder than they’ve
ever worked before and they’re really struggling to pay
things like their power bills. That’s what people talk to
me about. They don’t talk about polls. And, in fact, when
somebody was saying to me, ‘What were the polls five weeks
ago?’ I couldn’t remember either. I do know that we were
higher than we were at the
moment-
JESSICA
You’re 33 with ONE News
poll.
DAVID
Well, they’re bouncing around. I mean, let’s
face it. I mean-
JESSICA
But why aren’t people seeing you as prime
ministerial
material?
DAVID
It takes time, Jess. I mean, this doesn’t happen
simply overnight.
JESSICA
How much time,
though?
DAVID
Well, we’ve got until the election next year, and
that’s the only real poll that actually counts, and
that’s the only one certainly that I’m looking at and
focusing on.
JESSICA
Do you have a time limit, though? I mean, this
can’t be fun for you, doing this week after week after
week. Do you have a time limit that you say, ‘If the polls
aren’t moving, I’ve got to think of other
options’?
DAVID
No. There’s absolutely no- Obviously
not.
JESSICA So that
two months’ timeframe that’s been talked about, that’s
not accurate?
DAVID
Who says that? I don’t know
who-
JESSICA Some of
the MPs that we’ve been talking to behind the scenes this
week have said two months
is-
DAVID
Well, nobody’s spoken to me about it, and I can
tell you, I’d like to know who the MP
is.
JESSICA Well, we
obviously don’t reveal our sources for things like
that.
DAVID
No, but what I’m saying is anonymous people or a
person talking like this, um, I’d like to have a chat to
them.
JESSICA Is it
hard not having the support completely of your
caucus?
DAVID
Look, I have the support of my caucus. I mean, the
fact that you’ve spoken to one anonymous person, and I
haven’t heard of
any-
JESSICA I’ve
actually spoken to several
people.
DAVID
…any of this before, I think, is
nonsensical.
JESSICA
I mean, for you, is there a limit where you say,
‘Right, if I go below 30 in the polls.’ Is that your
cut-off? What are we talking about here? What’s your limit
for saying, ‘I’m just not leadership
material’?
DAVID
Six weeks ago, we were in mid, upper 30s. That was
six weeks ago. The fact of the matter is that polls go up
and down. You don’t change things in every three weeks.
It’s stupid. It’s ridiculous. And, actually, I think you
would accept that as well. You’ve been around the gallery.
This is not something you do without thinking about
it-
JESSICA So
you’re saying no panic yet, is basically your message? Is
that what you’re
saying?
DAVID
Absolutely.
JESSICA
Yeah. In terms of when is enough enough? I mean,
this must have been frustrating for you. At the beginning of
the year, your polls went up. You were feeling a lot more
comfortable, a lot more confident. And now they’ve dropped
back again. Are we just going to see this see-sawing now
until the election? Is that what’s going to
happen?
DAVID
I know what’s out there. What’s happening is a
great deal of volatility and a huge amount of soft vote, and
what it’s doing is sloshing around, and people are not
focused on an election, they’re not focused on politics.
They are moving around. And what we’re hearing is that the
government is out of touch, it’s not listening, it
doesn’t understand where people are. And they move to us,
particularly around the policies like our affordable
housing, build 10,000 houses, bringing down power bills,
creating jobs through boosting our manufacturing sector.
Those are the things that people want to hear about and want
to talk about.
JESSICA
So why aren’t they resonating
then?
DAVID
Look, it’s part of the political cycle. I don’t
think it’s anything more than that. But there is a soft
vote that was not there a year ago, and it’s starting to
move. I know that six weeks ago, for example, that the
National Party was looking at their vote in the low 40s and
panicking. And they were saying, ‘How do we get out of
this situation?’
JESSICA
So they splashed some of that cash
around-
DAVID
Well, they splashed around the cash.
Exactly.
JESSICA
Almost tried to steal your ground a little bit,
taking away some of the wind out of your
sails.
DAVID
Well, they did. They’ve thrown a few things over
the side, um, come around to Labour Party policy, which is
ironic, not through any vision, for example, for
Auckland-
JESSICA
It’s smart politics, though, isn’t
it?
DAVID
But not for any vision for Auckland. It’s just
simply polling, and that’s kind of worrying when the only
real vision that they have is what’s in the next
poll.
JESSICA
Isn’t polling important to you,
though?
DAVID
It gives you an indication, but it’s not about-
You’ve got to look long term. You can’t look week by
week, day by day. It doesn’t work like that. So, the
Auckland issue is now the government has actually endorsed
Len Brown for mayor, effectively. They have given him the
election victory that he wanted, and they’ve promised
stuff 17 years out. You know, $5 billion for a harbour
crossing when to be honest with you, John Key is going to be
in a Zimmer frame by the time that first brick goes in.
JESSICA But it’s
those promises that they
need.
DAVID
But anybody can promise that. Let’s face it,
it’s 17 years out from now. The city rail link he’s
promising to start in
2020.
JESSICA But
isn’t this what people want? Don’t they want to hear
about the plan and the
vision?
DAVID
Sure, but there’s no vision. That’s what I’m
saying. They have not come to this through any vision of
Auckland.
JESSICA
But the polls say he has got vision. (DAVID LAUGHS)
That’s the thing. I mean, the Prime Minister, you’ve got
to say, cares a lot about the polls. You must as well, and
this must be difficult for
you.
DAVID
What I’m saying is that right now, the city rail
link, which for the last four years the government has
bagged and said it can’t work, it doesn’t meet its
costs, over and over and over. It’s done an
about-face.
JESSICA
So they’ve gazumped you,
really?
DAVID
No, of course they haven’t gazumped me. It’s
been our policy for the last four years, for heaven’s
sake.
JESSICA But
it’s taken away that power,
though.
DAVID
No, don’t be silly. That’s ridiculous.
Honestly, it’s ridiculous. What they’re doing is
they’re putting this out to 2020 and saying, you know,
we’re not even in government, because they won’t be in
government in 2020. Everybody knows that. They can make lots
of promises about that. We will, if we’re in power in
2014, we’ll start that drill going in 2016 so that we can
actually have a rail link that starts to work before
2020.
JESSICA But
it’s not silly, though, is it, because if you’re a voter
in Auckland, sitting there and you’re saying, ‘The
government’s promising me the rail link. Labour’s
promising me the rail link.’ It takes away that power that
you would have had next year in the
election.
DAVID
Look, politics aside, this is good for Auckland,
let’s face it. I mean, it is good for Auckland, and I’m
pleased about that. The government’s come to this
realisation either through its polling or through our
policy. They’ve ended up where they are. That’s great
for Auckland, and I’m pleased about that. I mean, let’s
face it, at the end of the day in politics, what we do try
and do is actually make a difference. And if we can get the
government doing the same things as what we would like, with
the same vision that we want for Auckland, that’s great.
And the same thing with food in schools the other day. It
was our policy, and the government took our
policy.
JESSICA I
want to just ask, just to speak to you about this leadership
issue still.
DAVID
Just let me finish this, because it is important. I
mean, it is opposition. You’re obviously in opposition at
lot of the time, and you put your policies up, and often,
you know, they don’t get heard or whatever happens, but
the government takes your policies and uses them for the
benefit of NZ. I mean, that’s
good.
JESSICA And
you’ve got to help that that starts being shown in the
polls soon.
DAVID
Look, yeah, at the end of the day, the big poll is
the one in 2014.
JESSICA
And you’ll still be
here?
DAVID
Absolutely. And
yesterday-
JESSICA I
just want to move
on-
DAVID We
had a great poll. There were 10,000 people that went out and
voted, and they voted for
us.
JESSICA I want
to talk specifically about GCSB. What do you think needs to
change quite specifically for you guys to support the GCSB
legislation?
DAVID
Well, we think it’s been done round the wrong
way. There are some elements of that GCSB Bill that
obviously we support.
JESSICA
So what would have to change for you to vote for
it?
DAVID
The toughening up, for example, of the Inspector
General and the strengthening of that office. But the bottom
line here is something much more significant, and the
significant part of it is that there are changes which have
occurred within this bill. There is a lot of doubt, a lack
of confidence by the public in our intelligence agencies.
And in addition to that, there are major changes that have
taken place in cyber security, and what we need to be able
to do is to give the public the assurance that we’ve got
the best possible set up in order to ensure privacy, on one
hand, and cyber security and whatever security on the
other.
JESSICA But
this is such an important part of legislation. Don’t you
need to sit down with the government, put politics aside and
thrash it out so that we’ve got a lasting piece of
legislation that will actually go beyond the next election
and the next after that? Wouldn’t that be a smart
option?
DAVID
What we’ve said is that let’s sit down- And
I’ve said this to John Key. What we’d like to see is a
wide ranging inquiry, and in 2014, if we’re in government,
we’ll initiate that wide ranging inquiry. They did it in
Australia. They actually got the terms of reference for the
inquiry agreed right across the parliament, and they
reported back to parliament. It was all very public, except
for, obviously, the confidential stuff. And what I would
like to see is that so everybody gets to see what our
intelligence agencies are doing, the bounds in which we try
and hold them within, and on the basis of that, we go
forward with legislation. But at the moment, what we’re
doing is we’re trying to ram through a quick fix that’s
all around Dotcom and all those other
scandals.
JESSICA
We’ll have to leave it there, but thank you very
much for your time this morning, David
Shearer.
DAVID
Thank you,
Jess.
ENDS