Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi reshares social media post comparing his lawns to David Seymour

Te Pati Māori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi. Photo / Dean Purcell

• The Act Party has criticised Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi after he circulated a social media post from his wife.
• An Act party spokesperson said: “We have a race-based party that preaches racial supremacy and violence.”
• The two MPs are no strangers to controversy when it comes to discussing the other.

The Act Party has criticised Te Pāti Māori after co-leader Rawiri Waititi reshared a social media post that compared his lawn to David Seymour and said that it’s getting a “good fkn hiding”.

In a recent Instagram story, Kiri Tamihere-Waititi shared a photo of her husband and Te Pāti Māori co-leader trimming the grass at their house.

She captioned the photo: “Home after 3 weeks away, Lawns had a big rest and are now taller than me”.

“I told him to just behave as though every piece of grass is a David Seymour,” Tamihere-Waititi said.

“*Lawns are getting a good fkn hiding.”

The Te Pāti Māori leader reshared the photo on his own Instagram story an hour later.

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi shared his wife's post suggesting that trimming the grass was cutting off David Seymour's head.

The Herald has approached Te Pāti Māori for comment multiple times.

An Act Party spokesperson said: ”Unfortunately, New Zealand needs to face up to a very sad and serious reality".

“We have a race-based party that preaches racial supremacy and violence, and we’ve turned a blind eye to it because they’re Māori.”

The relationship between the two MPs has been strained, particularly after the debate on Act’s Treaty Principles Bill.

During the legislation’s first reading, Waititi and fellow Te Pāti Māori MPs confronted Seymour and other Act MPs in the house with a dramatic haka.

Today is not the first time Act has objected to comments from Waititi.

During a session at Te Pāti Māori’s annual conference in July 2022, Waititi talked about his efforts to change some of the Westminster traditions of Parliament and then got distracted by a karaka seedpod necklace while scratching his neck.

He told the audience the poisonous seeds were still in it.

“These are karaka berries and they’ve still got the poison in them. So next time I go into Parliament this is what I’m going to do. When David Seymour’s not looking, I’m going to go like this into his water.” He tapped a seed pod over an imaginary glass. “There you are, re-indigenise yourself with some native seeds.”

Asked what he thought, Seymour said he did have a sense of humour but questioned whether the joke was acceptable.

He said he was often accused of risking inviting extreme views or actions from those listening to his comments, regardless of how he intended them to come across, and the same could be said about what Waititi had said.

“The thing people always say is that the problem with what you’re doing is how people will react to it.”

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