Clark made her proposal—which is consistent with the government’s stance toward outstanding land claims and other Maori grievances—in the wake of a well-publicized statement by Donald Brash, the leader of the opposition National Party.

Speaking January 27, Brash condemned government funding for Maori in areas such as health, education, and employment, and claimed that these gave Maori privileges ahead of others and promoted “racial separatism.”

He singled out for attack settlements by successive National and Labour party governments to compensate Maori for stolen lands and other resources. He described land claims as a “grievance industry” that Maori were using for financial gain and corruption. Outstanding claims should be dealt with rapidly, he said.

In the month following the National Party leader’s speech, Labour slipped behind National in public opinion polls.

Brash’s speech, along with the frenzy of endorsement it kicked up among editorial writers, talk show hosts, and other commentators, provided the context and rationale for Clark’s statement. Speaking on the February 23 Face to Face television show, she said, “For quite a long time there has been generally a consensus around how a lot of the issues affecting Maoridom are dealt with. That consensus appears to have been shattered” with the Brash statement and the surrounding controversy.

According to the New Zealand Herald the following day, the prime minister said that “education and particularly Government-funded scholarships had emerged as an area of public concern.”

Clark professed concern about the alleged discriminatory effects of such scholarships. “You have the possibility of someone in the target group [Maori] getting a subsidized education courtesy of the state and next to them is the son or daughter of someone on a low income who doesn’t,” she said.

Simultaneously, Clark created the new cabinet post of Race Relations Minister, effectively downgrading the responsibilities of Parekura Horomia, the Minister of Maori Affairs. Horomia and other Maori members of parliament (MPs) issued a public protest at this act.

Clark was quick to rebuff the MPs, saying: “My message to my colleagues is: ‘if you want to get on board for the ride, get on, because this train is moving.’”

Herald columnist John Armstrong wrote February 28 that the Maori MPs had protested because they have “the unenviable task…of explaining to their constituents why Clark has suddenly deemed it necessary to review social programs targeted at Maori [and] failed to rule out a retreat on the foreshore and seabed”—a reference to Labour’s announcement that in spite of Maori protests it will expropriate coastal lands and resources that Maori representatives have laid claim to.

“In the final insult,” wrote Armstrong, Clark has “appointed her chief hatchet-man, Trevor Mallard, as de facto Minister of Maori Affairs and given him the additional task of neutering the Treaty of Waitangi.” The insult is compounded by the fact that Mallard is pakeha—the common term used here for those of European descent.

Promoted by the ruling class as New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi has been used as the framework for the settlement of some Maori demands.

Following renewed struggles in the 1970s and 1980s, Labour and National governments established and reinforced the Waitangi Tribunal to hear claims by Maori for lands and other resources stolen from them following colonization by Britain and the formation of the New Zealand nation state in the mid-19th century. More than NZ$675 million (US$1=NZ$0.65) has been paid out to Maori claimants by governments over the past 30 years, with claims by many tribes still pending.

As a result of these same struggles, the Maori language is now taught in a range of educational institutions, and Maori language kindergartens and schools have been established—albeit on shoestring budgets. One survey shows that one in four Maori was able to converse in their language in 2001, compared with less than one in five almost three decades earlier. Maori can apply for grants to assist with both secondary and tertiary schooling. The government grants targeted by Clark are only a portion of these. In addition, some universities have set aside places for Maori in courses where they previously had seldom been admitted.

The majority of education and health in this country used to be free of charge. Over the past decades this has come under attack from successive governments, with increasing privatization and running down of the remaining public services. More and more, people have to pay for publicly provided education and health services.

Government spending targeted to meet Maori needs and to help overcome ongoing discrimination is minimal. For example, the Maori Education Trust administers NZ$6.6 million of annual educational grants—a trifle beside the NZ$7.85 billion budget allocated to the Ministry of Education. Today, just 6 percent of Maori hold a tertiary qualification, compared with 14 percent of pakeha. Continuing protests have been sparked by the impact of the economic crisis, which places additional hurdles before working people who are Maori.

In a Herald commentary defending preferential entry quotas for Maori in tertiary education, Khylee Quince, a law lecturer at the University of Auckland, noted that at universities, “despite improved numbers in the 1970s to 1990s, overall enrollment for Maori students has fallen in the past five years.”

Quince pointed out that continuing discrimination saw Maori “making up 50 percent of the prison population, being 1.5 times more likely than Pakeha to be sent to prison on conviction for the same crime, 19 percent of Maori women not having access to a telephone in the house, and 40 percent of Maori children growing up in families with an annual income of less than $20,000.”  
 
 
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