The ACT Party’s latest target is Māori wards. It’s promising to repeal the “race-based” local government equivalent of the Māori parliamentary electorates.
“ACT will restore one person, one vote to local government by scrapping race-based representation altogether,” ACT leader David Seymour said Sunday.
“ACT will repeal race-based Māori wards altogether.”
Seymour said Labour had attempted to force undemocratic Māori wards on “communities that do not want them” and had engineered favouritism based on whakapapa and iwi representation.
“But Labour deliberately engineered the law in order that some people will get elected based on who their great-grandparents were – not on what they do, but who they are; not on the value and the dignity inherent in every individual person, but on membership of a collective. Those are not democratic values.”
The ACT leader said New Zealand could not afford to continue dividing itself along “superficial lines”.
“We must celebrate the common humanity that unites all people and stop seeking ways to divide us with group rights and collective identity.”