Australasian Political Studies Association Conference

Unexpected and dramatic political developments in New Zealand in 2004 have seen populist politics shift indigenous self-determination to the periphery of elite policy thinking. A longstanding and bipartisan cautious acceptance of self-determination has begun to erode as a discourse dismissive of a Maori claim to certain rights on the basis of indigeneity gains popular currency. Maori are not seen as indigenous groups entitled to group rights by virtue of that identity, but as individuals with the same ‘needs ’ as any other individual. Justice is thus realised by addressing ‘need’ not ‘rights’. Notions of indigeneity and the Treaty of Waitangi as politically significant are therefore questioned. It is around principles of individualism and narrow and limiting conceptions of democracy and justice that has emerged a populist discourse antithetical to self-determination. Yet from a Maori point of view self-determination remains to give theoretical articulation to a politics of indigeneity that counters the re-emergence of assimilation as a subtle although not explicit policy objective. The paper explores this clash of objective – popularly and simplistically expressed in the rhetorical language of ‘one law for all ’- as the defining characteristic of contemporary Maori policy debate. It argues that a Maori aspiration to self-determination is theoretically legitimate, even though sometimes at odds with interpretations of underlying principles of the democratic pluralist nation state