The party representing New Zealand’s indigenous Maori people will get its first Cabinet posts under a multiparty deal New Zealand prime minister-elect John Key signed yesterday to form a center-right minority government.
In return for the Maori Party’s support, Key agreed to back off on his pledge to scrap the special seats in parliament set aside for indigenous Maori lawmakers.
He also said he would review a law nationalizing the nation’s shoreline — an area Maori claim they had traditionally owned but was “stolen” by a law passed in 2004.
The new government would be sworn in Wednesday, Key told reporters yesterday after signing deals with three small parties, adding the votes of 11 lawmakers to his center-right National Party’s tally to give it 70 votes in the 122-seat parliament.
The coalition deals with the rightist Act Party and centrist United Future Party put the new government in position to carry out Key’s campaign pledges to cut taxes, build infrastructure to boost the flailing economy and soften the ambitious environmental policies of outgoing New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.
“We face very significant economic challenges ahead,” Key told reporters. “And the way out of economic difficulty is through economic growth.”
One of Key’s priorities in government will be to amend New Zealand’s greenhouse-gas emissions trading scheme to make it more favorable to business and farming.
He said yesterday he had also agreed to an immediate repeal of Clark’s ban on electric power generation from coal.
However, Key has said he still wanted to cut New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent by 2050.
He said that the coalition agreement with the Maori Party “is very much about inclusion ... as we will only succeed if we have all New Zealanders rowing in the same direction.”
New Zealand’s complex proportional voting system means there are multiple small parties that usually prevent one party from getting an outright majority in elections, forcing the winner to negotiate support agreements.
The Maori Party, founded four years ago, had previously been allied with Clark’s center-left Labour Party.
In Key’s new government, the party will hold the posts of Maori Affairs minister and Community and Voluntary Sector minister.
Maori have been appointed to Cabinet posts in earlier governments but these will be the first appointments from the Maori Party, which is dedicated to the promotion of indigenous issues.
Maori make up 15 percent of New Zealand’s 4.3 million people but are among the poorest, worst housed, least healthy and suffer higher unemployment and crime rates than most other citizens.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS