Te Tai Tonga MP Rino Tirikatene’s Electoral (Entrenchment of Maori Seats) Amendment Bill will, if passed, require a 75 percent majority in Parliament to disestablish the Maori seats.

Consider these absurdities:

• The need for these seats disappeared in 1893, when New Zealand became the first nation in the world to grant universal adult suffrage. The 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System recommended the abolition of these seats.