David Round

An old adage declares that nothing is as permanent as a temporary expedient. Four Maori seats were established within the New Zealand Parliament in 1867 as a very temporary expedient, originally for a mere five years while Maori communal title to land was converted by the Native Land Court into freehold title. (At that time, only adult males possessing sufficient landed property were entitled to vote, but legal opinion considered communally-owned property an inadequate qualification.) Those four seats remained an established part of the political landscape until the introduction of a proportional representation system (MMP) by the Electoral Act 1993. They were not abolished then, though, as the Royal Commission on the Electoral System had recommended in its 1986 report, but extended, so that the number of Maori seats reflects (by a strange and complicated formula) the Maori population, including the Maori population not even on the Maori electoral roll.