Claire Trevett - Te Pāti Māori data-misuse claims are a mess. We still don’t know who’ll sort them out

Political Editor·NZ Herald·

6 Jun, 2024 01:58 AM9 mins to read

NOW PLAYING • Focus: Chris Hipkins on allegations against Te Pāti Māori

Labour leader Chris Hipkins spoke about allegations against Te Pāti Māori during his appearance on Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills. Video / Mark Mitchell

Opinion by Claire Trevett

Claire Trevett is the New Zealand Herald’s Political Editor, based at Parliament in Wellington.

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Claire Trevett is the NZ Herald’s political editor, based at Parliament in Wellington. She started at the NZ Herald in 2003 and joined the Press Gallery team in 2007. She is a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

OPINION

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Welcome to the Politics Briefing, the week in which allegations swirled about Te Pāti Māori’s campaign actions, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon got in some island time, the Government tried to move on from the failure to deliver on cancer drugs in the Budget, and Act leader David Seymour took his first turn on the floor as Acting Prime Minister.

Confusion surrounds Te Pāti Māori claims

At the moment, there is a lot of fog and not much light around the various claims swirling about Te Pāti Māori’s election campaign actions.

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The issue is whether the party used personal data obtained through Manurewa Marae’s work on the Census and Waipareira Trust’s work on the Covid-19 vaccination drive for political purposes.

Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Moana Natasha Kemp was the marae’s chief executive prior to the election and Waipareira Trust chief executive John Tamihere is also Te Pāti Māori president.

Te Pāti Māori has taken the path of explaining is losing – its only public utterances so far have been to reject the allegations and to challenge those questioning them to front up with hard evidence.

The allegations have an impact on a number of government departments and entities.

It is not a small matter and desperately needs to be cleared up. It goes to the heart of public trust: whether the public can have confidence personal details they provide for a Census or health purposes will remain confidential and will not be accessed or used by other bodies.

It remains unclear who is best placed to investigate it all properly – perhaps the Auditor-General – with the power to summon the information needed and to sort any political motivations in play from the facts.

As things stand, we have Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, police, the Electoral Commission and Statistics New Zealand all involved in the different claims.

Statistics NZ has appointed former State Services deputy commissioner Doug Craig to investigate claims by former marae staff that Census forms filled out at the marae were subsequently misused. The terms of reference and powers he will have are not yet clear. The police have also now said they are investigating issues relating to Te Pāti Māori – but will not say what.

The question around the Covid vaccination data was first raised by Labour in a complaint to the Electoral Commission during the campaign. That related to a group text during the campaign urging people to vote Te Pāti Māori.

The Electoral Commission has referred those texts to the police – but only in relation to whether the texts breached the electoral rules requiring a promoter statement at the bottom of election advertising.

Labour’s complaint raised wider issues beyond that, noting that the four-number code used to send the messages was Waipareira Trust’s and was used to send out vaccination texts during Covid. Labour asked whether that meant personal data obtained for the vaccination drive were now being used for political purposes.

It’s a fair question. However, it is not in the Electoral Commission’s area to look into and thus far police will not say what they are looking into.

As for the rest, there is a lot of chat from politicians and government agencies about the “concerning” allegations but, as yet, not much being done about it.

Good health news on top of bad

After the furore over the no-show of National’s promised cancer drugs in the Budget, the Government has promised an announcement on those drugs will come soon and tried to Move On.

Cue a hustle to Waikanae for Health Minister Shane Reti to announce $30 million to make it easier, quicker and cheaper for people to get radiology services. It’s a good move, aimed at improving the lot of those who have to wait for specialist referrals.

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It will allow GPs to directly refer patients where appropriate and remove co-payments on X-rays, CT scans and diagnostic ultrasound. It’s aimed at helping along the Government’s target of improving waiting times for treatment. However, it won’t stop the tick-tock on that other promise.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis was also supposed to be there – but did not turn up, perhaps more concerned about the rating agency Fitch’s review of the Budget.

PM to the Pacific, Actopia at home

Meanwhile, NZ Herald political reporter Adam Pearse has gone with PM Luxon on his trip to Niue and Fiji this week – writing about the serious stuff and the lighter side.

Deputy PM Winston Peters was also overseas and so it was David Seymour’s first tilt at being Acting PM. It’s a recess week, so he doesn’t get to do all the fun bits at Parliament.

However, Act’s newsletter Free Press celebrated the occasion by imagining a world in which Seymour was the real Prime Minister – a world with no red tape, a lot fewer public servants, and not many tax thresholds. Actopia, if you like. Seymour gave a preview of Actopia by launching his first red tape review – of the early childhood sector.

It’s safe to say Te Pāti Māori would not be around in Actopia. On The Country this week, Seymour said he’d be more than happy for Te Pāti Māori to achieve its dream of setting up a separate Parliament – provided it didn’t have the power to tax anyone or do anything – because it would mean the party would leave the building.

Endless Urgency

Te Pāti Māori gave that absence a dress rehearsal last week, when it was notably absent from most of the Budget debate – until its turn to speak – and its MPs were absent from Parliament through most the time it sat in Urgency to pass Budget legislation, meaning their votes were not cast.

Other MPs sat until midnight on Saturday.

Things can get a little bit crazy over those long sittings, so I kept an eye on things and popped in to watch on Saturday afternoon (actually, I ended up talking to MPs in Parliament’s cafe all afternoon instead).

Wairarapa MP Mike Butterick had a three-day-long birthday, courtesy of the rule that under Urgency Parliament is deemed to be sitting on the same day Urgency was called throughout – no matter how long it goes for. His colleagues came to the party – he got a birthday cake and a song on every one of those days. A bit like a shorter version of the Groundhog Day movie.

The House cannot sit on a Sunday, so Labour and the Greens went to great lengths (successfully) to ensure the Government couldn’t get everything through.

Government MPs were under orders to keep their own speeches as short as possible – even just a sentence saying they supported the bill. However, it can be hard to stop MPs talking at the best of times and NZ First’s Andy Foster proved resistant. Cue National MP Cameron Brewer sitting behind him, alternating between nodding enthusiastically and pointedly looking at his watch.

Labour and the Greens managed to drag things out to the point leader of the House Chris Bishop decided to drop three of the pieces of legislation on the Urgency motion and wait for Parliament to return the week after next to push them through.

An extensive search by a helpful Parliament staffer discovered that the last time Urgency had lasted to the dot of midnight was in June 1992 (it came close in June 1994).

The most recent session that even came close was after the 2015 Budget when the House adjourned at a comparatively early 9.52pm.

Quote unquote

“Mr Jones, you’ve been blessed with a very loud voice. I just hope you can be blessed with some judicious use of it as the rest of this debate goes on, with some optimism” – Assistant Speaker Greg O’Connor begs NZ First MP Shane Jones to moderate his booms during the Urgency debate.

Micro quiz

When does Act leader David Seymour take over from NZ First leader Winston Peters as Deputy Prime Minister? (Answer below.)

Brickbat

Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer skipped almost all of the Budget debate. Photo / Marty Melville

Te Pāti Māori for skipping all of the Budget debate, barring its own speeches, and the Urgency session that followed it, failing to speak or cast votes on legislation it claimed was to the detriment of Māori.