Luxon rules out te Pāti Māori – and kicks off a new controversy

His comments about the party have been accused of ‘dog-whistling racism’.

Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Thursday, May 11 by Catherine McGregor. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.

In today’s edition: Tax us harder, wealthy New Zealanders tell government; Auckland Council’s budget shortfall has ballooned again; and a council-owned company is guilty on multiple counts of wastewater neglect. But first, did the National leader go too far in his comments about te Pāti Māori?

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi and National Party leader Christopher Luxon (Photos: Supplied)

A run on ‘ruling out’

All we need is one more politician to rule out te Pāti Māori and we can call it a trend. First it was Elizabeth Kerekere who ruled out joining the Māori Party following her exit from the Greens. Then just an hour or so later, National leader Christopher Luxon took to the podium to announce he, too, was officially ruling out working with the party. To anyone who had been paying attention, the announcement came as no surprise, so why make a big production of it? On the NZ Herald (paywalled), Claire Trevett says Luxon’s move was “naked politics”, marking the day he may have finally become “an actual politician, rather than a businessman trying out a politician’s suit”. The point was to damage Labour, Trevett says, by grabbing the opportunity to highlight the various divisions within the government and its allies – the so-called “coalition of chaos” which, as Toby Manhire notes on The Spinoff this morning, has quickly become National’s attack line du jour. 

Accusations of dog-whistle politics abound

As for the reasons National couldn’t work with te Pāti Māori, Luxon said the current iteration of the party is too extreme. "For example, National believes New Zealand is one country with one standard of citizenship, meaning one person, one vote,” he said. That and another comment about “separatism” had some “hearing troubling echoes of Don Brash’s infamous Orewa speech in 2005”, writes Manhire. Among those who accused Luxon of “dog-whistling” yesterday were Labour deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni, te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Greens co-leader Marama Davidson, who pulled no punches when talking to 1News: “If he wants to talk about chaos, using some lazy dog-whistling racism is pretty chaotic and it's a sign they've got no actual substance and just want to kick up that racism,” she said. Waititi also mentioned the ratepayer roll, which allows people paying rates to a different council than where they live – for example, landlords – to vote in multiple local body elections. Asked whether his “one person, one vote” stance meant he’d be open to scrapping the roll, Luxon said “possibly, yes” – an “about-face from National's previous position”, notes Newsroom’s Marc Daalder.

Co-leaders make waves in the House

Te Pāti Māori were back making headlines later in the day, when a bill banning all seabed mining, sponsored by co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, was heavily defeated in Parliament. Before the vote, Ngarewa-Packer made an angry speech to the House. “It has been insulting to our people that we’ve had to watch these amateurs sit here and talk about things they have no understanding of,” she said, referring to Labour MPs who had voted against the bill. The session also saw Greens co-leader Marama Davidson turfed out of the House for repeatedly interjecting as Act MP Nicole McKee spoke. “After apologising, and again interjecting, Speaker Adrian Rurawhe ordered her out of the House,” Stuff’s Thomas Manch reports.

Lib Dems: in or out?

In the UK, potential coalition partners are also a hot topic – even though the next general election is almost certainly well over a year away. Labour leader Keir Starmer, riding high after gaining over 600 council seats in local body elections, has refused to rule out a deal with the Liberal Democrats if Labour fails to win a majority, but said Labour would not form a pact with the pro-independence Scottish National Party, “because of their politics of separation”. The official Lib Dem position on a possible post-election coalition also remains ambiguous, the Guardian reports, “although much can be read into the fact that their leader, Ed Davey, has definitively ruled out a deal with the Conservatives but not Labour”.

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Tax us harder, wealthy New Zealanders tell government

Almost 100 wealthy New Zealanders have signed an open letter to the government asking to pay more tax. Among the 96 signatories are tech entrepreneur Sir Ian Taylor, Phillip Mills of gym chain Les Mills, company director Rob Campbell, actress Robyn Malcolm and Dame Susan Devoy. The letter follows IRD research showing the very wealthiest New Zealanders pay an effective tax rate of 9.5%, less than those in the lowest tax bracket. The letter-writers say they recognise the current tax system is unfair. “We write as people who are frustrated with how much tax we pay. We want to pay more,” the letter begins. “As people leading financially comfortable lives, we might be expected to be anti-tax. But we recognise tax as a shared contribution to our collective success.”

Auckland Council budget shortfall balloons again

Auckland Council’s projected budget shortfall has grown to $375m, up $80m from the $295m forecast in December when the mayor’s budget proposal was released. Mayor Wayne Brown says the shortfall “has been driven by our huge debt, increasing interest rates and inflation, and the fact that the last council took one-off funding to cover the last year’s shortfall.” As well as a $325m ongoing shortfall, $30m will be required next financial year for one-off storm costs and another $20m to prepare for future weather events, the mayor’s office said. Brown said that covering the shortfall with rates alone “would require an average rate increase of 22.5%,” adding, “Unless we can set Auckland Council on a path of financial sustainability and reduce our debt, then this gaping hole will only get bigger in the years to come.”

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Council-owned company guilty on multiple counts of wastewater neglect

A Christchurch City Council-owned water treatment company has been found guilty of breaches that saw “algal growth, scum and sanitary napkins littered across several seemingly abandoned wastewater treatment plants”, Stuff’s Hamish McNeilly reports. Inspections of a number of wastewater treatment plants have already led to the Clutha District Council being fined nearly $490,000 in December 2021, and late last month a judge ruled against Citycare, the company Clutha had contracted to operate and maintain the plants. One inspector said of the wastewater treatment plants, “they were untidy, overgrown, unmaintained and none were operating properly’’, McNeilly reports. “The plants at Tapanui and Lawrence ‘looked abandoned’, while all of the plants looked to be falling apart.” The company, which faces a maximum fine of up to $600,000, will be sentenced on June 30.

Click and collect

• A rates protest is causing a stink in Stratford after a disgruntled ratepayer dumped the rotting corpse of a goat at the council's front door, RNZ reports.

• Across Auckland, more than120 lightning strikes had been reported by around 10.30pm last night, including a direct hit to the Sky Tower which was caught on video. 

• Grant Robertson’s first pre-budget speech this morning will reveal “how much money ministers have been able to fillet from their departments’ spending”, Thomas Manch of the Herald writes.

• Scandal-plagued US Congressman George Santos is in federal custody after being charged on multiple counts including wire fraud, money laundering and stealing public money. 

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Despite all the advances in medical science in recent years, doctors remain terrible at predicting when labour will begin, writes Anna North of Vox. And it’s not just going into labour that’s a mystery – we still understand shockingly little about the entire process of giving birth.

“We don’t know precisely what causes it. We can’t predict exactly when it will start. And though researchers have identified certain risk factors, we can’t be certain whose body will begin the process prematurely, potentially putting the future child at risk of hospitalization, illness, or death.”