The high-profile activist accused of threatening staff at Parliament last year says he doesn’t “regret a single thing” over his public feud with Te Pāti Māori.
The party’s president, meanwhile, says Eru Kapa-Kingi and his MP mother, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, need to “determine whether they’re in the movement for self-advancement or not”.
Eru Kapa-Kingi’s comments today follow the party emailing documents to all its members on Monday evening that accused him of making “threats of physical violence” and “inappropriate and vulgar” remarks to parliamentary staffers at a Budget Day protest in 2024.
Some of the comments Eru Kapa-Kingi is alleged to have made include: “You aren’t s***”, “Get f***ed” and “I will f***ing knock you out”.
Te Pāti Māori’s release of the documents was another inflection point in an ongoing dispute between Eru, who as spokesman for the Toitū te Tiriti movement was a central figure at Parliament for the May 2024 protest.
Eru is the son of Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, who was demoted and replaced as party whip last month. Eru previously worked in her office.
Eru broke with the party and this month publicly accused it of having a dictatorial leadership style. He has not directly responded to the allegations in the documents released by Te Pāti Māori, first reported by the Herald yesterday.
In a new post on social media this morning, Eru referenced reports of others in the party being frustrated with the leadership.
“These are the silenced voices, almost all wāhine, I stood up for. I knew I would get dragged through the mud for it, but I don’t regret a single thing.”
He acknowledged some people would be feeling “confused, disappointed, even let down”.
“I suffered through those same emotions for years because I was a die-hard TPM supporter, but then I saw things unfold on the inside. I tried multiple ways internally to fix the problems, and kept coming up short.”
Eru said he didn’t intend to “throw stones at anyone” but instead to “speak truth and stand on kaupapa”.
“Even through all of this, I am feeling so loved.”
He finished by saying, “let’s fix our whare so we can roll this blardy government”.
Meanwhile, speaking to The Bradbury Group online political panel show, party president John Tamihere on Tuesday claimed that, despite the internal turmoil spilling out publicly, “the movement’s going extraordinarily well”.
“The litmus test for that was the outcome in the Tāmaki Makaurau,” Tamihere said, referring to TPM candidate Oriini Kaipara’s victory in the recent byelection.
He also noted the success Kaipara and fellow Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke were having with engagement online.
“All of the indicators are heading in the right direction. We just have to put personal interest and entitlements to one side and bank on the movement.”
Tamihere said if it was a close election in 2026, Te Pāti Māori’s electorate seats could be critical to the left side of politics forming a Government.
“We don’t want to attack other parties, but we do want to hold our vote. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work this out. There’s only one Te Pāti Māori.”
Asked specifically about Eru’s allegations and Te Pāti Māori counter-allegations, Tamihere said, “I don’t want to go there”.
But he did say “the right tikanga is to tell our truth, but not run around all the media, work all the back door, okay?
“We’re a party that is trying to play our tikanga, right? We don’t like heads on platters. Everyone chases those. We don’t have the same way of looking at things, okay?
“Eru Kapa-Kingi and his whānau have to determine whether they’re in the movement for self-advancement or not. If they are, well then go and advance yourself, but don’t do it at the expense of a movement. They’ll work their way through that.”
He said Te Pāti Māori was “on the rage everywhere”.
The allegations against the activist and former staffer were contained in a series of documents Te Pāti Māori emailed its members about 10pm Monday in what the party claims is a response to calls for transparency after it faced accusations of a dictatorial leadership style by Eru Kapa-Kingi. (In separate documents sent by Te Pāti Māori to members, officials raised concerns that Mariameno Kapa-Kingi was in danger of overspending her office’s budget by up to $133,000).
One of the documents included in the email from Te Pāti Māori to members was titled “Te Pāti Māori fact sheet – Eru Kapa-Kingi allegations” and details the creation of Toitū te Tiriti, how Eru Kapa-Kingi was established as spokesman and took on the role of party vice-president before resigning on March 25, citing in a resignation letter attached to the email he wanted to “focus on my own little whānau” and “protect the mana and tapu of the Toitū movement”.
The “fact sheet” referenced Eru Kapa-Kingi’s public claims “alleging Te Pāti Māori was led by a dictatorship, bullying and toxic”.
The document mentions Eru Kapa-Kingi’s contract with Parliamentary Service as a party staffer, which Te Pāti Māori alleged was “terminated for serious misconduct” before he returned, working under a company, Tautoru Ltd, which the party claimed was a “way of circumventing Parliamentary Services termination”.
The document refers to a written account from a Parliamentary Service staffer about an alleged incident on “Budget day”, understood to be May 30, 2024, when Budget 24 was released.
Eru Kapa-Kingi, the Parliamentary staffer’s written account alleges, was abusive and made “threats of physical violence”.
The identity of the person who wrote the account is redacted in the Te Pāti Māori email to members.
The parliamentary staffer alleged Eru Kapa-Kingi used vulgar language and made references to race. Some of the alleged comments include: “You aren’t s***”, “Get f***ed” and “I will f***ing knock you out”.
“The language he used had a very aggressive tone and came across with a lot of hatred and intimidation,” the Parliamentary Service staff member alleged in their account.
“With the combination of the abuse, language and racism displayed by Eru, I firmly believed that he was going to go through with his threats of physical violence towards either myself or [redacted].”
The staffer also claimed Eru Kapa-Kingi said to security staff, “Do you know who I am?”, “Do you know who my family is?”, and “You are going to be so embarrassed and f***ed when you find out”.
“Words such as this I believe were used to try and intimidate [redacted] and myself, hoping that we would back down from the situation, let him get away with what he had done and not take things further,” the parliamentary staffer said in the document released by Te Pāti Māori.
The staffer called for Eru Kapa-Kingi to be “dismissed from his current employment” and “denied the ability to reapply for a ‘family’ access card”.
The staffer also referred to an alleged instance when Eru Kapa-Kingi “tailgated” through Parliament security gates and refused to show his Parliament ID.