Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi last year described the decision to remove the wards as \u201cracist, targeted attack on M\u0101ori, for being M\u0101ori\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe argument is that M\u0101ori wards will be the demise of democracy. To remove M\u0101ori wards is an assault on Te Tiriti, the only reason a democracy inclusive of P\u0101keh\u0101 could ever exist,\u201d she wrote in the Herald.<\/p>\n \u201cDisestablishing M\u0101ori wards further undermines councils\u2019 autonomy in their rohe. This rings true for the Far North district of Te Tai Tokerau. This rohe alone covers over 6000 square kilometres, a whenua where M\u0101ori make up nearly 50% of the population,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Act leader David Seymour, on the other hand, said he would be voting against the wards if he could<\/a> (there are no wards in Auckland where he lives – read why here<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cFor some reason there\u2019s been a really corrosive obsession in New Zealand with a person\u2019s race,\u201d Seymour said at the time.<\/p>\n \u201dIt\u2019s not really obvious why some people\u2019s background is more important than others.<\/p>\n \u201dI\u2019m not really sure why we take a period of time 200 years ago and decide to privilege some humans over others,” he said.<\/p>\n Read here about some big results and tight races<\/a> across the election – and here about some of the more colourful candidates.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 42 councils that held these referendums had previously established the M\u0101ori wards without a vote. Councils won…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7558,18432,57283,305,14236,23227,809,2720,111,43,139,69,25717,381,2846,61,5905,19791,57284,1959],"class_list":["post-72669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-councils","tag-did","tag-fourty","tag-have","tag-held","tag-interactive","tag-keep","tag-mori","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-referendums","tag-region","tag-them","tag-to","tag-vote","tag-ward","tag-wards","tag-your"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
Act leader David Seymour. Photo \/ Sylvie Whinray<\/p>\n