Te Pati Maori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Te Pati Maori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by Thomas Coughlan
Thomas Coughlan, Political Editor at the New Zealand Herald, loves applying a political lens to people's stories and explaining the way things like transport and finance touch our lives.
NZ First Leader Winston Peters has ruled out working with Chris Hipkins’ Labour.
The first post-Budget polling shows voters responding negatively to the Budget.
The Parliamentary debate on the Privileges Committee’s report into three Te Pāti Māori MPs’ haka last year was adjourned until June 5.
Budget night is the time for big speeches: the Finance Minister gets to go first, getting their moment to step out of the shadow of their leader. Then the Opposition leader gets to symbolically try to topple the government. As the afternoon turnsto evening and MPs settle in for hour upon hour of Budget urgency, it’s the turn of backbenchers, who must swiftly learn the skill of imbibing just enough alcohol to keep themselves sane, but not so much as to require their party leader to send them home early - and permanently.
But this year, the Budget speech of most lasting significance wasn’t made in the House, it wasn’t even made by a sitting MP.
The speech was made by Te Pāti Māori President, John Tamihere, to a Budget night party held by the Labour Party in its caucus room.
Despite outwardly appearing close, relations between Labour and Te Pāti Māori had been at a low ebb and ebbing lower for about six months.
Polling in early 2025 showed Labour on track to be in a position to change the government with the support of Te Pāti Māori. Te Pāti Māori, however, was not playing ball.
The party’s radicalism is a problem for Labour, which cannot support a Māori Parliament or Te Pāti Māori’s separatist-ish policies, but the most immediate problem for Labour is the party’s Parliamentary theatrics, which occupy a disproportionate amount of the political news agenda, distracting from what Labour thinks are more important political issues.
Labour has a point, most of Te Pāti Māori’s opposition work has centred around scraps involving personality not policy: Rawiri Waititi versus Trevor Mallard over Parliamentary dress standards, Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke versus Winston Peters over wasting blood, and now, Waititi, Maipi-Clarke, and Debbie Ngarewa Packer versus the Privileges Committee over the questions of privilege arising from their haka.
This last issue is particularly frustrating for Labour, as the Privileges Committee’s report on the haka, and the commencement of public debate on it, came just over a week after the Government announced sweeping changes to the pay equity regime. The changes, which are something of a godsend for the Opposition as far as issues on which to campaign go (despite the thorny question of cost), were at times overshadowed by the debate on what to do with Te Pāti Māori’s MPs.
Indeed, some internal polling for the period just after the pay equity announcement showed a slight uptick in support for parts of the coalition - and members of the Government think in part that is to do with the fact a large part of the public takes a very dim view of Te Pāti Māori frequently hijacking Parliament for their own ends, and backs the coalition in its harsh punishment.
A Talbot Mills corporate poll (the firm also does internal polling for the Labour Party) taken in the first 10 days of May and therefore capturing four days of the fallout from the pay equity decision, showed National (just) ahead of Labour for the first time since December, 35% to 34%.
Post-Budget internal polls are not in yet for National (TVNZ and RNZ polls are probably coming soon). If the coalition hasn’t taken a beating after the pay equity decision and one of the most staunchly right-wing Budgets in years (a $12.8b cut to funding for pay equity agreements that paid for a $6.6b business tax incentive) then it will have pulled off a major coup, and the three parties of opposition will need to start asking some quite serious questions.
That said, what post-Budget polling there has been was markedly in Labour’s favour.
Talbot Mills polling showed this to be the first Budget to score a hat-trick of negative ratings since they began polling in this way in 1996. Voters think the Budget will be bad for them, bad for the economy and bad overall. Can Labour convert that negative sentiment into party vote?
Labour Party President John Tamihere. Photo / Mike Scott
Which brings us to Tamihere on Budget night in Labour’s caucus room. He opened with a gag, praising Ōhāriu MP Greg O’Connor for doing what no one else from Labour had the guts to do and kicking Willie Jackson out. O’Connor had, while serving as Assistant Speaker the week prior, booted Jackson from the chamber during a Treaty settlement debate and Jackson, of course, is Tamihere’s great friend and ally in all things, not just politics.
Following that, Tamihere told Labour he understood that it had to do its thing its way while Te Pāti Māori had to do things their way - a significant concession, given the way some Te Pāti Māori supporters have branded Labour’s Māori MPs as kūpapa, a term used to describe Māori who fought on the side of the Crown during the New Zealand wars.
The entreaty appears not to have worked, at least initially.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ steadily ratcheting up of the rhetoric against Te Pāti Māori continued this week. Speaking to RNZ this week, Hipkins criticised Te Pāti Māori for its focus on itself when it should have been focused on the pay equity controversy.
And over on Herald NOW with Ryan Bridge, Hipkins was asked whether he’d implement four controversial Te Pāti Māori policies. His responses in order of the four policies: “absolutely not.. No… No… I don’t even know what that means”.
In follow-up remarks, he even suggested these remarks were “rule-outs”, the most unequivocal “no” a politician can give.
This all matters because of the other big political development this week, NZ First leader Winston Peters’ decision to rule out working with Chris Hipkins for good.
The fact that those two are unlikely to go into government together in 2026 isn’t what’s interesting here. Clearly, the current Labour and NZ First parties are further apart than at almost any point in their history.
Winston Peters can now only work with National. Photo / Mark Mitchell
What’s significant is that for the second election in a row, Peters has overridden his past precedent for fence-sitting and made his position clear prior to the election.
Hipkins and Labour appear to be only a small part of Peters’ decision. A larger part is the company Labour is keeping, mainly Te Pāti Māori (but to a lesser extent the Greens).
Peters’ calculation appears to be that foregoing the strategic ambiguity that NZ First enjoyed and exploited in every election the party has contested prior to 2023 is worth it for the gain enjoyed by making it crystal clear to voters that he will not be propping up any governing arrangement that involves Te Pāti Māori.
With longstanding MP David Parker gone from Labour, the last and strongest link between Labour and NZ First is gone. Others, like Peeni Henare could reforge that bond, but probably not before the next election.
That leaves us with the MMP version of a drag race election: a right bloc headed by Christopher Luxon and a left bloc headed by Hipkins (cross-bench theatrics seem unlikely but not impossible). The UK can have FPP elections that look more MMP than 2026 is likely to be in New Zealand.
Labour’s sensitivity around Te Pāti Māori indicates it is sensitive to this too. As one MP put it, this iteration of Te Pāti Māori is more the successor of Hone Harawira’s Mana Party than the Māori Party of 2004-17. That means that despite having served three terms in government with National, it feels like more of an unknown quantity than the other parties currently represented in Parliament.
The next set piece is next Thursday, when the Privileges Committee issue returns to Parliament.
At the moment, it looks like Labour will not filibuster the debate in support of Te Pāti Māori, and instead walk the line between the defence of Parliament and its rules and the party’s belief that the Government majority on the committee overstepped the line in recommending record punishments to the three Te Pāti Māori MPs.
Labour is also starting to talk tougher on Te Pāti Māori’s attendance in Parliament, and that seems likely to be a point made next week.
In his morning media round this week, Hipkins promised RNZ listeners “a stable government … that is actually going to bring some maturity to the debate”.
A nice idea, but it will be difficult for one party in that government to bring maturity to the debate if they don’t show up for it.
