The election campaign has started and the political parties have published their policies. What follows is where Labour, National, Green, ACT, NZ First, New Conservative, and the Maori Party stand on Hobson’s Pledge issues.

Electoral race-baiting clicked up a gear yesterday when Maori Party co-leader John Tamihere smeared “Pakeha” as "asymptomatic racists".

What stood out in former Labour MP John Tamihere’s opening salvo in his bid to return the Maori Party to Parliament by winning Tamaki Makaurau Maori seat was his unashamed twisting of the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi. He said:

National Party leader Simon Bridges’ apparent intention to ally with the Maori Party undermines his weak concessions to “one law for all” voters announced during the week.

With the census done and dusted, citizens of Maori descent may now choose whether to vote on either the Maori or general roll.

After reviewing our campaign over the past year in light of the general election result, Hobson’s Pledge members chose to continue as a lobby group.

With 46 percent support, National could form a government with NZ First that could look beyond paternalistic policies intended to “improve the lot of Maori”.

A Hobson’s Pledge researcher found in New Zealand’s vast body of legislation an interconnected set of laws, judicial rulings and institutions that has created the race-based administration that we labour under today.

A $4 million fund to help young Maori get their driver licences to get them into work and keep them out of jail, launched this week, makes good sense, but why base the programme around ethnicity?

A Green Party members bill which would end the right for a referendum should a council want a Maori ward was pulled from the member's ballot today, which means MPs could now vote to change the law. Currently, establishing Maori wards in local government can be put to a referendum while general wards are decided on by council alone.