A Critical Analysis of the Maori Party Kaupapa from a Western Liberal Perspective

Abstract

This thesis examines and analyses the set of ideas governing the policies and attitudes of New Zealand's newest parliamentary party, the Maori Party which was founded in 2004. The party's nine foundational principles and values are encapsulated in the Kaupapa and these are presented as the Maori Party's moral and political template. Represented as a 'Maori world view', this form of ethnic nationalism or radical conservatism first emerged in New Zealand at the end of the 1970s. Traditions, history, territory, ancestry, culture, language, and self-determination, are critical to identify formation and political legitimacy. The Maori Party have now successfully challenged the historic left-wing social democratic alliance between Maori nationalists and New Zealand's Labour Party which first began during the years of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Conservative ethnic nationalism has hitherto not played a great part in modern New Zealand politics although the kaupapa and many of the party's policies are close to those found elsewhere both currently and in the past. Nevertheless, disparities between Maori and non-Maori, including the destabilising effects of uneven socio-economic development, also drive much of the policy making and have played a part in the party's formation - as have on-going delays and problems in the settlement of historic claims made against the Crown by Maori iwi and hapu. Lastly, the attitudes apparent in the Maori Party's literature and rhetoric draw attention to one of the key negative aspects of nationalism; in the process of identifying and unifying an ingroup, a nationalist movement automatically identifies and excludes an outgroup.