Labour’s East Coast loss: Tāmati Coffey to relish being a dad away from politics

Tamati Coffey's career in politics has ended.

East Coast preliminary results:

• VOTES COUNTED: 100 per cent
• WINNING CANDIDATE: Dana Kirkpatrick, 14,971
• 2ND CANDIDATE: Tāmati Coffey, 11,833
• 3RD CANDIDATE: Craig Sinclair, 2195
• MARGIN: 3148
• PARTY VOTE: National Party 38.1 per cent
• 2ND PARTY: Labour Party 29.2 per cent

Labour’s East Coast hopeful Tāmati Coffey is gone for good from politics after losing the East Coast seat to National candidate Dana Kirkpatrick in last night’s election.

“It’s not the results we wanted, but it’s what you sign up to when you enter politics,” Coffey told the Rotorua Daily Post this morning.

Coffey, who was a Labour list MP in the Waiariki region, was a late addition to the election campaign after announcing in March he was to retire from politics after this year’s election to spend more time with his two young children.

But he reversed his decision in July when he was announced as the Labour candidate in the East Coast electorate following seat holder Kiri Allan resigning from her ministerial portfolios and deciding not to stand again after after crashing into a parked car on Evans Bay Parade in Roseneath, Wellington.

Coffey told the Rotorua Daily Post this morning the people in the East Coast and the Labour Party needed an experienced candidate given what the region had been through with cyclone devastation.

When asked if he did it for his good friend Allan, he said she was part of the reason.

“She was going through a tough time.”

Coffey said there was “no Plan B” just yet, except to resort to the original plan of spending quality time with his children.

“There will be other opportunities. Doors close and doors open all the time. I have a beautiful little 4-year-old who is becoming a very articulate young child and an 8-month-old who is learning how to sit up. I’m just relishing the time I have got to be a dad.”

Coffey said they still lived in Rotorua, and it was where their “home and heart” was at the moment.

“But the world is a very big place, and who knows what is around the corner?”

He said he’d spent six years as an MP for Waiariki - first as the electorate MP and then as a list MP based in the region - and had been through four election campaigns. Despite that, he said he had “no idea” how the election would pan out.

He said he was proud he still got more than 10,000 votes and he thanked his supporters in the East Coast for that.

Allan had won the seat in 2020 with a majority of 6331 votes - it had earlier been held by former National MP Anne Tolley.

Before politics, Coffey was a familiar face thanks to his television career as a What Now presenter, TVNZ Breakfast weatherman and winner of television show Dancing With The Stars.

Coffey initially unsuccessfully challenged Rotorua MP Todd McClay in the Rotorua electorate in 2014. He entered Parliament in 2017 when he beat then-Māori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell to take the Waiariki seat, but he lost the seat after one term in 2020 to Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi - the only Labour MP to lose a seat in that election.

Kelly Makiha is a senior journalist who has reported for the Rotorua Daily Post for more than 25 years, covering mainly police, court, human interest and social issues.