If TPM operatives have compromised the privacy of the census, public confidence in supplying any information to government agencies would be undermined.
Perhaps worse are allegations involving the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency and Te Whānau O Waipareira Trust.
During Covid, Ashley Bloomfield’s Ministry of Health opposed providing confidential personal information to either organisation to help with the vaccine rollout, fearing it could be used for other purposes.
Both organisations made solemn promises the information would be used only for Covid.
Many of us cheered when the courts backed grassroots organisations over the Wellington blob. Sure enough, in my view, they proved better than Wellington bureaucrats at reaching local communities.
It is now alleged those solemn pledges of confidentiality were broken, with the information used to promote TPM.
If true, it appears to me that would jeopardise Christopher Luxon’s push for further devolution and localism.
Doubts would emerge about using personal data for National’s social investment approach it has worked on for over a decade and hopes to take steps towards in next year’s Budget.
Even if all the allegations are completely untrue, as TPM insists, their seriousness in my opinion demands a thorough investigation by all relevant authorities.
Depending on what initial checks reveal, that may include the police and perhaps the Serious Fraud Office with its additional powers to compel witnesses to attend interviews and answer questions.
The inquiries must be conducted identically to anyone facing similar allegations.
But there is also a political context, which in my view Luxon and Chris Hipkins can’t ignore.
It appears to me the whole situation could easily be used by TPM and its social media experts to promote what appears to me to be an overall oppression and racism narrative.
Luxon and Hipkins must not do anything to lend support to such talk.
So far, they and Acting Prime Minister David Seymour have been exemplary. It appears that they have acknowledged the seriousness of the allegations without fuelling them politically, instead saying proper process must be followed.
Hopefully, Winston Peters and the Green co-leaders follow that lead.
Some media might also stop covering TPM as if it represents more than a small minority of Māori, sometimes it appears implying bizarrely it is the Crown’s treaty partner.
Like NZ First but not Act or the Greens, in my view, TPM has an outsize influence on Parliament and the formation of governments.
In the past TPM could deal with Labour or National, leveraging its power like NZ First. Fair enough. The Greens and Act have the option of doing the same.
It appears to me that TPM has since adopted the Act and Green stance, positioning themselves as able to work only with Labour.
Nevertheless, MMP’s rules still allow it to secure more power than its party vote justifies. Winning more electorate seats than its party vote supports creates a parliamentary overhang in the left’s favour.
Again, fair enough. The Act, Green, NZ First and United Future parties have sometimes benefitted from similar rules.
TPM has never won more than 3.1 per cent of the overall vote. But, at most, it also represents just 16 per cent of potential Māori voters.
According to last year’s census, around 550,000 people of voting age identified as Māori. Across the country, TPM won just 87,844 party votes. Over 84 per cent of voters identifying as Māori did not vote for TPM.
Even in the Māori seats, just 51 per cent of valid candidate votes went to TPM in 2023.
Despite Hipkins’ party crashing to 27 per cent, there’s no doubt more Māori vote for Labour than TPM. Quite possibly, as many Māori vote for the Greens and perhaps National.
In my view implying TPM speaks for all Māori is even less credible than claiming National or Labour speak for all Pākehā.
Any suggestion TPM is some sort of treaty partner is just as absurd in my view. The Crown’s treaty partner in my opinion is the subtribes or hapū or, more accurately, their chiefs.
TPM does not even represent the mainstream or majority of the tino rangatiratanga movement.
As its Te Tai Tonga MP Takuta Ferris found at last week’s hui taumata at Hawke’s Bay’s Omāhu Marae, there may not be a majority for a Māori Parliament let alone TPM’s more radical agenda.
Even within TPM itself, most of its activists and voters are in my opinion no more extreme than some in Act, the Greens, NZ First and even National and Labour.
Yet tiny numbers don’t mean there’s no danger.
TPM rhetoric has been dialled up, including on social media, to be at least as inflammatory as Donald Trump’s and sometimes approaching that of the local white supremacist right.
Another comparison, it appears to me, might be that the current TPM is our equivalent of Sinn Fein, established in Ireland in 1905. If TPM manages to present the necessary investigations into the allegations against it as state-sponsored oppression, how much longer before we have our equivalent of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), formed 14 years later?
There were never more than 10,000 IRA members even in its early days. When wreaking the most havoc in the 1970s with its bombing campaigns in Northern Ireland and Great Britain, it had just 500 active members. New Zealand’s worst terrorist attack was carried out by just one white supremacist.
The Coalition has inflamed matters with Luxon conceding too much to Act on the Treaty Principles Bill during coalition negotiations.
Its perfectly reasonable decision to save money by abolishing the Māori Health Authority (MHA) now risks being interpreted by Māori through an entirely racial lens now that Nicola Willis has failed to abolish other pointless Wellington edifices like New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the Tertiary Education Commission and most of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
All of these are as irrelevant or averse to trade, enterprise, education, business, innovation and employment as MHA would have been to Māori health. Getting rid of even one might help.
Most importantly, Luxon, Hipkins, Seymour, Peters and the Green co-leaders need to be careful as the investigations proceed, that TPM voters – and the 84 per cent of Māori who do not support TPM – can be assured there is nothing untoward about how they are conducted.
