Public inquiry needed over Te Pāti Māori allegations - Heather du Plessis-Allan

Waipareira Trust CEO and Te Pati Māori president John Tamihere. Photo / Mike Scott

OPINION

A big inquiry needs to be called into the allegations about the Māori Party misusing private data.

This can’t be left to a series of government departments to conduct small investigations into themselves.

For a start, the allegations are too serious and involve too many public service players.

The most serious of the claims is that two sets of government-held data were taken to help the Māori Party election campaign.

The two sets of data are Census information and Covid vaccine information. Both allegations involve the Manurewa Marae.

The marae was a site used to collect Census forms. Census forms are legally supposed to be completely confidential. But it’s claimed that hundreds of those forms were taken into the marae, photocopied and kept. Then, the private information was put into an online database and sent to the Waipareira Trust.

The CEO of the Trust is John Tamihere. He is also the President of the Māori Party.

A group of ex-marae staff and a whistleblower at the Ministry of Social Development have made the allegations. They believe the information was then used to target Māori voters in the race for Tāmaki Mākaurau.

The marae was also a location that offered the Covid jab during the Auckland lockdown. Again, the allegation is that the Waipareira Trust got its hands on private information to do one job – give jabs – but then used it for another – to help the Māori Party.

In this case, voters were allegedly sent texts ahead of last year’s election urging them to vote for the Māori Party.

Tamihere has strongly denied allegations, calling for anyone to produce “hard evidence”.

As if these allegations aren’t serious enough, what elevates the situation is that the CEO of the marae at the time, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, is now an MP. She went on to beat then-cabinet minister Peeni Henare in the seat by only 42 votes.

Still from TikTok video promoting voting at Manurewa Marae during the 2023 election.

The marae also hosted a polling booth for the election. At that booth, Kemp’s votes were more than twice Henare’s when the average across the electorate was an almost even match.

That is one reason why this needs a completely independent inquiry: because the worst-case scenario is that the alleged misuse of private data has affected the make-up of Parliament.

But also, multiple government agencies can’t be trusted to investigate their own stuff-ups.

One of the people making these allegations is an MSD worker sent to work at the marae for the census. This worker claims she told MSD a number of times about the census data allegations. MSD apparently ignored her and then fixed the situation by moving her. It launched no inquiry.

Stats was apparently alerted. It did nothing. It has now launched an inquiry.

The Electoral Commission was told about the Covid data allegations in November. It did nothing about the potential harvesting of private information. It still hasn’t launched an inquiry.

If these agencies are as cynical as anyone else who tries to butt cover, they’ll launch an inquiry designed to find absolutely nothing.

An inquiry has to be taken out of their hands and given to someone competent with no skin in the game. The Auditor-General is a good place to start.

For clearing their own names, all those involved in the allegations should want a proper inquiry.