Former senior Labour minister Nanaia Mahuta says she hadn't thought about joining Te Pāti Māori, even at the height of the foreshore and seabed debate, because she questions the role of identity-based parties.
In 2004, Mahuta joined Tariana Turia in voting against the first reading of the foreshore and seabed bill.
Unlike Turia, who went on to start the Māori Party, Mahuta stayed in Labour and voted against the bill in its second reading, before voting for it in the third reading out of "pure pragmatism".
Mahuta said she was "not at all" close to joining Turia.
"I think fundamentally, having a political party based on identity can be a challenged space."
She said that while having an indigenous political party is "a positive signal from a country like New Zealand", people also needed to consider its wider implications.
"If we think about the changing diversity of our demographic here in New Zealand, and we have other population groups saying that we want an identity-based political party, we've got to ask ourselves — is that the future we see for New Zealand?
"I could be proven wrong on that and I'm happy to be.
"But actually, I would've hoped that New Zealand is the kind of country that by and large has a view across the centre of public opinion that asks the big questions.
"Like, 'What kind of country do we want to be, in terms of our national identity? How do we bring Māori, as indigenous people, and the rest of New Zealand closer together rather than further apart? How do we articulate that? What's the constitutional basis for all of that?'"
She said political discussions should focus on those aspects, or risk getting "pulled by extreme opinions".
"We only have to look around the world and see how extreme opinions have dented the fabric of democracy but also dented that sense of nation-building, social inclusion, and respect for greater diversity."
Mahuta said the idea of an identity-based party is not one she had entertained because Māori across the country held diverse political views.
She also questioned the role of a political party like that if it kept finding itself in opposition.
"What I've experienced in my whole time of serving my electorate in Parliament is unless you have those political levers to be able to secure gains and be able to promote policies and ideas that will take your people forward, why are you in Parliament?
"I think that's going to be a big challenge. I'm sure the Māori Party — because it has had at least two iterations of articulating its aspirations — they're thinking about that right now.
"It remains to be seen how that evolves going forward," Mahuta said.
In her wide-ranging interview with Q+A this morning looking back at her 27 years in Parliament, Mahuta — a backbencher in 2004 — said she found the debate over the Foreshore and Seabed Act difficult.
"But I also knew that I had to use the political process and my understanding of the process to anchor in interests that would, to the best extent possible, support the aspirations of my electorate.
"We [Tainui] still had outstanding claims for the Waikato River, the West Coast harbours, and then there were other Treaty settlement claims that had elements of what might have been impacted by the Foreshore and Seabed."
Mahuta said she was able to "secure some gains" through the process.
While Waikato-Tainui had settled raupatu claims with the Crown in 1995, in 2004 it had asked for a guarantee from the Government that its harbour and river claims would be "set aside" from the Foreshore and Seabed Act.
Mahuta then ran electorate-only in the 2005 general election to see if she still had a mandate.
"And they put me back in to keep doing the mahi. And I did that."
Mahuta, who also kept herself off the party list in this year's election, lost her Hauraki-Waikato seat to Te Pāti Māori's Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke.
Q+A is Public Interest Journalism funded by NZ On Air
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