“Our communities are by no means ready for a referendum on Māori wards,” writes Catherine Delahunty. From left to right are Roimata Taimana, Bess Kingi, Tania Wihongi, Andrew Judd, Dale- Maree Morgan and Catherine at the Whitianga comunity meeting on Māori wards. (Photo supplied)
In this local body election, 42 councils around the country are holding referendums to decide if they can keep their Māori wards — a requirement forced by a government law change. Here, Catherine Delahunty reports on the fight to keep the new Māori ward in the Thames Coromandel District Council.
Like many others around the country, my group at Te Tara-o-te-Ika-a-Māui (Coromandel Peninsula) is actively campaigning to keep our new Māori ward.
The campaign here, and elsewhere, has been brilliantly supported by the national organisation Action Station, which has provided great ideas, messages, and resources to help local groups campaign in areas where referendums are being held.
As voting started this week, we’ve been active in our area, the Thames-Coromandel District Council, in the Hauraki rohe.
But we’re starting on the back foot. Many of our community don’t know what a ward is, don’t know that we already have one Māori ward (which our council introduced last year), and haven’t noticed that we’ve never had fair representation.
In each of the scattered towns on Te Tara-o-te-Ika-a-Māui, we’ve been working with small groups of Pākehā and Māori, to try and get the information out there. We’re delivering leaflets, putting up billboards, and asking candidates questions.
But what we’re learning is that our communities are by no means ready for a referendum.
This seems to be part of the coalition government’s strategy — to hold these referendums before our communities have had time to be fully informed.
Tangata whenua don’t need to be told the system is unfair and weighted against them. They know that having one or two seats at a table of 12 is not the fulfilment of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, merely a foot in the door of local government.
Last year, our council voted to support the Māori ward, and we now have our first Māori councillor. Without the efforts of Nanaia Mahuta as the Local Government Minister in the previous government, this would never have happened. We wouldn’t have 43 councils across the country with Māori seats.
But when the mutating virus of racism swept into power, the Local Government Act was amended again. Now, an uninformed majority will decide on the future of Indigenous representation, through a referendum forced on every council that wanted to keep their Māori ward.
There has been a wide variety of responses to this situation across this country.
Out of 42 candidates standing for different council roles in Palmerston North, 30 are in favour of keeping their Māori ward. Here in Thames-Coromandel, we have six mayoral candidates. Only two of them, both with Māori whakapapa, are unequivocally in favour of keeping our Māori ward.
The situation is a reflection of our history of local government racism since the 1850s. The number of Māori who’ve stood on a platform of being Māori and then been elected onto our council is less than three.
Current mayoral candidate Denise Messiter is tangata whenua, with Hauraki whakapapa to Ngāti Pūkenga ki Waiau, Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Tamaterā, Ngāti Huarere, and Raukatauri. She is a staunch protector of Papatūānuku, and walks confidently in both te ao Māori and te ao Pākehā.
Wāhine Māori in Hauraki are ready to lead. The barrier is not a lack of quality candidates — it’s racist voting patterns.
It’s been especially concerning to see the omission of Māori ward profiles in the candidate booklet for the Whanganui Council sent to voters this week. Similar has happened in South Wairarapa, Manawatū and Ōpotiki. What’s worse is that those responsible think that general roll voters don’t need to see these profiles. Even though we have a referendum on this subject, and the omissions mean the public in that district won’t have full information.
In Thames-Coromandel, the general ward booklet doesn’t explain that we have a Māori ward, or that Michael Barlow of Ngāti Maru, the current candidate, was previously elected unopposed — so there is very little information on the local situation.
Last Saturday, our group “Keep Our Māori Ward” held two public information meetings. Our goal had been to reach the swing voters who weren’t sure how to vote. We don’t want the toxic result that happened in the Australian referendum when the right-wing slogan “If you don’t know, vote no” was used to block the introduction of an Indigenous voice in parliament.
But when I walked into a church hall and later into a town hall, I felt disappointed that I knew most of the people sitting in the seats. Most of those who came to our meetings were ready to support the “keep“ campaign and were open to the benefits of having a more representative council.
So we were preaching to the converted. Still, the meetings gave me hope. Andrew Judd, the Pākehā former mayor of New Plymouth, came all the way to Hauraki to speak about the value of Maōri wards. He told us about the attacks on him for standing up for change in Taranaki.
But Andrew is unwavering in his commitment to positive ownership of what racism does in our communities. He believes in the possibilities for change. He wasn’t there to judge other Pākehā — he was challenging himself, as a former racist, alongside us.
He believes that local government will only benefit when Māori leadership is listened to and respected at the local government table. The mainly Pākehā audience was moved by Andrew’s message, which is about changing ourselves — a bigger project than Māori wards.
Dale-Maree Morgan of Ngāti Raukawa and Ngāti Maniapoto has been the Māori ward councillor on the Waipā District Council since 2022. She also spoke at our meetings with a passion and understanding of her role that was inspiring.
Her stories showed us that being one out of 12 councillors requires relationship building and tolerance for all, even those who don’t think a Māori ward councillor should sit at their table.
Dale-Maree is an expert at explaining issues so that Pākehā can grasp the value of protecting whenua and community. It’s tough, and she’s had death threats. But she is resolute. The council needs strong tangata whenua voices, she says.
“One or two voices don’t take anything away — they add. Like rural wards, they add and bring community voices who have never had their best interests advocated for, or valued before.”
Another candidate in our rohe, Tania Wihongi (Ngāti Pūkenga, Ngāti Maru, Ngāpuhi) is a leader at Te Whariki o Manawahine o Hauraki, the women’s refuge, and looks after wāhine and tamariki going through the trauma of patriarchal violence.
Her kōrero focused on the people from her small community whose extraordinary leadership benefits our whole community every day — the wahine who leads their fire brigade, the teachers who reclaim the right of their tamariki mokopuna to be taught in their own language, the Māori who set up Te Korowai Hauora o Hauraki health services across the rohe.
Our audiences included people who had never heard of many of those mentioned by Tania, even though we live alongside tangata whenua and their work benefits us. It was an education about far more than Māori wards.
I realised during those meetings that people who are not Māori aren’t often exposed to the ongoing effects of colonisation. They seldom take the opportunity to listen to tangata whenua. Our discussion was less about voting, than exploring the deeper issues that result from imposing a political system on the people of the land.
We’re in a situation now where the majority rules, and a foot in the door for Māori is a favour that may or may not be granted. Those in power today are “not sure” if having one or two people seated at the table as a minority is a good idea.
There is still one month left to vote on the referendum.
Despite this being a very small step towards fairness — let alone towards constitutional transformation, away from Westminster majority rules and towards Matike Mai — I hope that more people in this country will vote “keep”.
And beyond that, I hope that powerful and challenging conversations have been prompted by this moment.
Voting in the local body elections, including the Māori wards, will end on Saturday, October 11, 2025. See here for information on the Māori wards.
Catherine Delahunty is a Pākehā activist in environmental, social justice, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi issues. She is a writer and a tutor on social change issues, and a grandmother. Catherine was a Green MP for nine years and lives in Hauraki.
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The Maori wards and Maori seats are a small concession, not so much to Maori, as to the principles of democracy.
I have made this point to those who have been campaigning against the Maori ward in the district in which I reside which happens to be the same district as Catherine Delahunty: Thames Coromandel. It might surprise some that I have had some success in that respect, which brings into question as to whether the problem really is “racist voting patterns” as Catherine argues or whether it simply indicates a widespread failure to understand that the Westminster system as applied in New Zealand is not authentically democratic, and that we would in fact do much better for ourselves if we were to radically transform the existing system in ways that would give genuine representation to Maori and all other sectors of society, whether defined by ethnicity, culture or other social determinants.The key point is that not only should Maori be given the right to have their own constituencies in both local and national government; that right should be extended to every other group in society.
There is an alternative to the Maori ward/Maori seat system which would fit neatly within the existing electoral framework and require only very minor changes to the law. Most importantly it would be a huge step towards a more democratic society. It would give representation to Maori, yet would require no Maori wards or Maori seats and would require not a single mention of the word “Maori” in law. Thus it would completely undercut the criticism that Maori wards or seats were somehow undemocratic or constituted an “unfair” privilege for Maori.
Under this proposal an election would be held exactly as under the current system. However when the votes were counted, there would be no “winners” or “losers”. Instead the votes cast for each candidate would become proxy votes to be cast at the council table. So in a district with ten thousand voters we might have say 40 candidates garnering votes ranging between, say, 1500 and 3. Any candidate gaining more than 5% of the vote (500 votes) automatically has a seat on council. That puts the maximum possible number of councilors at 20. In practice it would be something less than that. Each councilor would have a particular number of proxy votes to cast, with the number varying according to the number of votes they received in the election.
What about those who gain less than 500 votes? Under the current system the votes cast for those candidates would fall into the basket of “wasted votes”. In the proposed alternative those candidates would be able to assign their proxies to another candidate. That is, they could allocate their votes to a candidate with more than 500 votes, or to a candidate who would make it “over the line” with the additional proxy votes of the “unsuccessful” candidate. Not actually unsuccessful at all, because the “unsuccessful” candidate would have influence through the proxies given to another candidate – particularly if those proxies could be withdrawn and reassigned throughout the term of council.
What would that do for Maori? It would mean that our local marae could put up a candidate with certainty of success. The candidate would not need to canvas for votes. He or she would expect them as a matter of course because the tangata whenua of the marae would have made their collective decision prior to the formal district wide vote and so long as they maintained their intention the voting process would be a formality. If an understanding was reached with the two other major marae in our district, then proxies could be combined to gain a seat on council if that should prove necessary.
For Maori, this would be much better than a “Maori ward” because it would relate to their actual forms of social organisation (hapu, iwi and marae), but it would not work just for Maori. Any local ratepayer group, or rugby club, or church, or conservation movement, in fact any kind of social organisation could do the same thing.
Every vote would count. There would be no winners and no losers. And no one would be able to claim that it was in any way “racist” or undemocratic. It would be more democratic than anything we have seen through 185 years of colonialist rule.