A $100 million grant for marae from the Provincial Growth Fund announced by the MP struggling to return to Parliament is a stunning display of race-based pork-barrelling by a party that normally courts the one-law-for-all vote.

At last, a political leader has asserted that everyone in New Zealand owns the water, and that was National Party Leader Judith Collins.

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.

Many who voted for New Zealand First with their party vote will feel deeply betrayed, Hobson’s Pledge spokesman Don Brash said today. 

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”.

Over the last year, the Hobson’s Pledge Trust has been promoting the message that New Zealanders are one people, with equal rights to live in this land – not two people, Maori and “the rest”, as successive governments have asked us to believe.  Over the last month or so, with the upcoming election in mind, we have been urging people to “use your vote to end National’s race-based policies”.  Not surprisingly, people have asked: how?

First let me explain why voting National won’t end the race-based policies which have been increasingly built into central and local government practice in recent years.

The policies of Labour’s new leader Jacinda Ardern on Maori seats and a water tax should send a chill through Hobson’s Pledge supporters.

Labour has yet another leader and the Green Party is overrun with a leader’s past indiscretions, what is the National Party about to do? One thing they could do would be to match the promise made by Winston Peters to hold a binding referendum of all voters on the future of the Maori seats.

We’ve reached the limits of what Government can do, the limits of Government grants and programmes, Prime Minister Bill English told Ratana members on Monday.

He was attending annual commemorations at the group’s settlement south of Wanganui. The event kicks off the political year.