Maoris in Australia! Register to vote!

Hinemoa says; "I assemble scaffolding, surf like a demon, play league AND the guitar, and VOTE!"

There's an election coming up in New Zealand. The excitement is palpable. Oh yes.

There's heaps of New Zealanders living in Australia, just under 500 000. That's quite a lot, when you realise that NZ's resident population is 4 million. And most of us ex-pats won't vote. We just won't. Channel Ten doesn't have the rights to NZ version of Dancing with the Stars, and many of the candidates haven't even played for the All Blacks. In short, it's almost impossible to know who to vote for. I voted for Helen last time because I thought she was a lesbian, and gave my party vote to the Greens, because I grew up on the West Coast. QED.

I call myself a Pakeha for the purposes of voting (ancestral fence-jumping aside). Pakehas are the majority in NZ. If I don't vote, I know heaps of other Pakehas will. Basically, my interests will be represented. It's a different story if you're a Maori.

If you are a Maori living in Australia, you really need to vote. You see, there's about 6 million NZers floating about in the world. 4 million live in NZ, 500 000 of them in Australia. Maori are overrepresented in the 'not living in NZ' category. And that's because heaps of them live here. I've seen them! This would be fine if they were the majority at home. But they're not.

Numbers alert! The Maori roll is looking sick.

Where Maori make up about 14% of New Zealanders at home, roughly one fifth of all New Zealanders living in Australia are Maori. On top of that, Maori electoral roll* is struggling to register voters in New Zealand. 47 000 Maoris have been wiped off the roll, 28 000 because they didn't fill out and return their registration packs and 19 000 because they're already registered on the general role. It's also a young population. Children (aged 0 to 14) made up 37 percent of the Māori population in 2001, compared with 23 percent of the total New Zealand population (borrowed from stats.govt.nz).

So, although there's no dramatic Maori absence in politics, they are slightly underrepresented across many areas; lower than average registration on the roll, a younger than average population and a higher percentage of ex pat Maori. It's a death by many cuts.

My message is clear. If you live here, call your Mum, or your Dad. And ask them to call an Auntie who still lives in New Zealand and find out who to vote for. Failing that, you can call me, and I'll ring my cousin. She's on the money.

If you want to enrol on the Maori roll; go here!
http://www.elections.org.nz/maori/enrolment/how-to-enrol-maori.html

*For Australians: New Zealand has a Maori roll, or seats reserved for Maori in parliament. At the moment there are 6 Maori electorates (I think) although the number changes to reflect the number of Maori who register before an election. For everyone else, NZ is divided up into 70 electorates (there's 120 seats in parliament - the rest get filled by those on the party list. The system is called MMP, vaccinates against Measles, Mumps and Representation). The Maori seats were established in 1868 so Maori would always have an easily ignored voice in parliament.

*My cousin reckons that many Maori moved to Australia in the 1980's to escape the racism, poverty, family commitments and stigma, and later, in the 90's to now, for the same economic reasons everyone else leaves. I am sure a exhaustive examination and interpretation of relevant statistics would inform this opinion. I'm also sure it would remain inconclusive. Here's a story outlining a Te Puni Kokiri report that confirms all my cousin's suspicions, and mine, that older female cousins Know Everything. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10466648