Photogenic, charismatic, energetic, Moko Tepania ticks all the boxes for the position of Aotearoa New Zealand leader of the future. And as the first Māori and youngest ever Mayor of the Far North, Tepania, 33, is well on the way. Although, he says, “I think it’s sad I’m the first Māori mayor for the Far North, with a majority Māori population.”
Moko the mayor, as he is most commonly known, was also, to his astonishment, named one of five winners in the 2023 One Young World Politician of the Year Award, which recognises politicians aged 18-35 who “are using their positions to have a positive impact on young people in their communities and countries”.
“He exudes confidence,” says Haami Piripi, former chair of Tepania’s iwi, Te Rarawa, “because his old people have confidence in him. He is the prototype of what they would have expected of the next generation.”
In 2019, Tepania was elected to the Far North District Council – a traditionally Pākehā-dominated body, despite the district’s near-50% Māori population – representing the Kaikohe-Hokianga ward. He put his hand up the night before nominations closed and got in by 13 votes. Since then, he’s been driven by the need to “uphold the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and ensure that we allow Māori a Māori voice in our decision-making”.
One means to that end was the introduction of Māori ward councillors, a concept now under threat from the coalition government. Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced that councils that introduced Māori wards without a referendum will need to hold one in the 2025 elections or scrap them.
“It’s hypocritical from this National-led government, who stood candidates in the Māori electorate seats in last year’s general election,” says Tepania, who has shown himself a formidable force for change.
The Far North District is one of the country’s most problematic regions. It has deep racial divides, extremes of wealth and poverty and more serious infrastructure challenges than most. The biggest town is Kerikeri, population 8270, although the council is based in Kaikohe, home to about 5000 people. Tepania lives in the centre of the town.
When he first ran for council, his self-appointed campaign manager, fellow Kaikohe teacher Moana Timoko, kept coming across one criticism of her candidate: “Aw, you just like him because he’s nice looking.” But no, she says, “he actually knows a lot”.
He is and he does. “My whānau nickname has been ‘Mokopedia’,” says Tepania. “That’s because I have so much random content knowledge. I also have a good memory.”
As a councillor, he achieved two vastly different but illuminating victories: one was getting a rubbish bin for Panguru; the other was getting a Māori ward for the council after it had been voted down earlier.
Tepania had whānau in Panguru, on the remote north side of Hokianga Harbour, who convinced him to request a bin by the sports fields in the town centre. He was told there were concerns that “a council rubbish bin will be mistreated”, which he thought was an unjustified value judgment. Then he was told “we can’t have one there because there would be an increase in the level of service in the service contract”.
“So, then I was, like, ‘Take one of the bins from one of our other towns and put it in there.’ And then it was to-ing and fro-ing …”
After 18 months of this, Panguru got its bin. To the best of Tepania’s knowledge, it has not been mistreated.
The case of the Māori ward was considerably more significant. The successful outcome, which saw the establishment of a district-wide ward ensuring four of the council’s 10 elected members are Māori, took all his innate skill plus the knowledge he had acquired in his brief time on council. Piripi says it was “a complete turnaround, an amazing success story and his deftness in handling that was incredible”.
Tepania says it took a lot of strategy to see it through after the ward’s establishment was rejected in 2020 by only one vote. A law change in 2021 presented another opportunity. Historically, when councils have introduced Māori wards, they have been overturned by ratepayer-led referendums (see “Barrier returns”, page 26).
“Council wasn’t keen to put it back on the table. We didn’t go for a referendum, because that was too costly. I thought, let’s not waste $80,000 to get an answer we already know, which will be ‘no’. So, we did a survey. We had 500 responses, and 80% were in favour.
“So … we had all these things giving the message to council to vote on Māori wards. I did a notice of motion to get it back on the table [which forced an extraordinary general meeting of the council]. That got accepted, and we did a heck of a lot of homework around the specific legislation.
“[At the meeting] we needed one more councillor to jump over. We actually thought we had failed, but we still thought it was important to have it come back to the table.”
So did the record crowd of 200 people who attended, necessitating a live stream at the memorial hall for those who couldn’t be accommodated. Perhaps swayed by such a display, then-mayor John Carter and councillor Mate Radich changed their minds on the day.
There had been criticism that a survey didn’t count because only 500 opinions were included. “But that was a lot,” says Tepania. “For our last long-term plan, we only had 800 submissions on how to spend $150 million a year. Those submissions are important for making multimillion dollar decisions.” In the case of the wards, “There’s no financial implications to living up to the Local Government Act provisions to uphold the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi through this mechanism.”
The decision to stand for mayor was no sure thing. “My family were like, ‘Oh, you’re never gonna get Pākehā to vote for you because of your name.’ But I was like, ‘If someone will give me the time to talk to me and have a respectful conversation, I hope I could get across to them. Maybe they do have true fears. What are the concerns and how do we allay those concerns?’ Maybe that’s why I ended up getting enough votes to be mayor.”
Darryl the mayor?
Tepania is one of four children. “It was a really privileged upbringing, surrounded by love and by really close-knit whānau,” he says. “I have a sister, Marie-Chanel, who’s 28. We had a younger brother, Kaweka, who passed away when he was six months and I was 17. And we’ve got a 13-year-old brother, Xavier. Me and my sister grew up in Hikurangi. On Dad’s side, we’re from Waihapa Marae, so we’re Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa. And, on Mum’s side, we’re from Mātihetihe Marae from Mitimiti, so we’re Te Rarawa.”
His father, Darryl, was a civil engineer; his mother, Tearoha, was Winz operations manager for Northland.
He was the first grandchild on both sides of the family, which means “I can remember the birth of every cousin on both sides”. It is also why he was referred to as Moko (short for mokopuna) from day one, a placeholder for whatever Christian name he would be formally given. By the time his great-grandmother decided he should also be called Darryl, “Moko” was too firmly established to shift. Certainly, Darryl the Mayor would not have the same ring.
Although his maternal grandmother was a first-generation te reo Māori speaker, the language was not used at home. But his German great-grandfather, Johnny Kahle, was fluent. “When he was on his deathbed, he called Mum and Dad into the room and said, ‘I want you to promise me that my Moko will learn te reo.’ And they said, ‘Yes, Pop, of course.’ So when I did they were like, ‘Oh, thank goodness.’”
Moko went to St Francis Xavier School and then Pompallier College, both in Whangārei. At the latter “we had compulsory te reo and French in Form 1 and 2, and I picked Māori throughout high school. In Year 12, Pompallier didn’t have a Māori teacher so I had to do it by correspondence. Once I started learning, my nan and her brothers and my great-uncles stopped speaking English to me.”
Tepania was identified early as a leader. “He was already beginning to emerge as an outstanding being, even as a youth, because he had natural abilities and talents,” says Piripi, “[and also] because he was born into one of the leading families in the area. His people gave him good footprints to follow. That’s really good, but at the end of the day, it comes down to how well you follow them.”
Armed hold-up
Local body politics was not part of his upbringing. He can recall only one occasion where it had a direct impact. “Growing up, I was naturally shy. I remember my dad making me ring up Whangārei council because a street sign was broken, to practise having to talk to someone, and it made me cry.”
That was challenging, certainly, but not as challenging as the time 14-year-old Tepania found himself at the centre of an armed robbery. “That was my first ever job. I was a shop assistant at the Four Square in Hikurangi and we got held up by a couple of guys – one with a gun, one with a machete – just before closing. Me and my boss and his brother got our hands tied behind our backs and had tape put over our mouths, and they put us in the milk chiller. They took my boss to get money out of the safe, but they’d just done the banking, so I don’t think it was much. My boss’s dad came out the back and saw them and they ended up running off. One of the guys was caught and I went to court to testify a couple of times.”
Early on, Tepania knew what he wanted to do: “I wanted to finish high school and then go to uni to become a Māori teacher.” After a gap year in Australia, he did a bachelor of teaching (secondary) degree and a BA in te reo Māori and anthropology at Waikato University.
He had enjoyed his time at Pompallier so much that when he qualified, he went back there to teach. “I loved Pompallier and probably could have stayed there forever. That was my nan’s plan: you’re gonna stay at Pompallier, you’re gonna become a priest, you’re going to be the principal there.”
On the side, he worked at a bakery in Kaikohe on weekends. One day, a customer heard him speaking te reo to another patron. “‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘I’m a teacher.’ She said, ‘I’m a principal. You should come and check out my school.’ So I went and had a look.”
The school was Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Kaikohe. Not having been through kura kaupapa, he had always been curious about “this whole other side of education that is all in te reo”. After four years at Pompallier, Tepania moved there to teach and “it was one of the best decisions I ever made”.
There, he met another inspiration: kaumātua Nau Epiha. “He was one of those individuals who was always there for you. He would show the kids the scars on his hands from getting the strap for speaking te reo at school and say, ‘I still have my reo, and I have the scars to show how strong it is.’”
Making a difference
Kaikohe has a reputation as a trouble spot, a place where every social problem is amplified, prosperity is a pipe dream and aspiration is not really an option. Tepania does not see it that way.
“I love going home to Kaikohe. The biggest learning for me from becoming part of the community is how misunderstood it is externally. There’s fantastic people doing fantastic things. There’s also, when it comes down to it, those national trends. Poverty, homelessness, the cost of living are exacerbated in the community. But there’s so many good stories that never get the light of day with the media.”
He’s working on it. “The programmes we have going around health and wellbeing, and the people who are leading in those movements, are fantastic – teams of really passionate community members trying to make a difference.”
No one is working harder to make a difference than the mayor, who still keeps up a part-time teaching commitment. Tepania, who is single, has said he plans to have children but is currently in a “three-year marriage” with the Far North.
“As busy as he is, he has online mahi available for students,” says Moana Timoko, his teaching colleague. “He’ll work in different ways with them. They really value the time they get. And him being able to talk about his extra role as the mayor is quite inspiring. So our students hear that everything is achievable.
“At kura, he was the sort of a person you could rely on to get shit done; you didn’t have to remind him of things. And he’s still doing that in the role he has now.”
Another overlap occurred when he started teaching in Kaikohe and was introduced to maramataka, the Māori way of making decisions based on the phases of the moon. “I was a maramataka denier for the first two years. But I just fell in love with it, like with te reo, so ended up doing my masters in mixing the two together.” Council meetings are now scheduled around maramataka.
A charismatic geek
The Māori ward victory displayed one quality that separates Tepania from the average young leader in the street: his enthusiasm for the minutiae and details of process and procedure.
“He quickly became a local government geek,” says deputy mayor Kelly Stratford. “In the last term, he could recite some of the Local Government Act and standing orders that we have to use for our meeting processes. He learnt really fast how to work the local government system. He showed real courage in getting the resolution for wards back to the table.”
One can learn a rule book by heart. But one can’t learn heart, and that Tepania takes wherever he goes.
“His charisma is wonderful,” says Stratford. “I love being out with him. I know that he can always say the right things and warm up a room.” Speaking in public, he seems to have a relatable personal anecdote for every occasion. “He’s really got that nailed. But I don’t think it’s something that he’s had to try to do. It comes naturally, and I think it also comes from being fluent in Māori.”
Piripi adds: “I think it really endeared the old people, too, that he has a passion and commitment to the language.
“He will always have the demands [of] the wider constituency; it takes a special person to be able to encapsulate that. He’s gained incremental support from various quarters for the way he’s approaching things.
“Before, [Māori] didn’t even have a councillor. Now the council is well endowed with cultural capital.”
Tepania’s primary focus is the eye-wateringly complex issue of the Far North’s dreadful roads. “You would have to be deaf and blind to not work out that that is the No 1 priority for the people of the Far North,” he says. He’s determined to free up the region’s economy by enabling more efficient transport but realises the task is huge and will require much alliance-building.
Stratford says the impact of his election has been “huge. It’s not only because we have Moko as mayor, it’s because we have our four Māori ward councillors as well. In the past, there’s been an appetite to address some long-standing issues and we just couldn’t get any traction through governance. The decisions weren’t supported at the table, but now they are, so staff can implement solutions.”
Her description highlights the reality that there have long been two Far Norths.
“I wanted to be a mayor for everyone,” says Tepania. “I wanted to unite the Far North district, because we’ve got communities of extreme wealth and incredibly impoverished communities as well. We also have an identity crisis of who we are as Far Northerners. I thought, maybe what I can offer is to not just be a champion for the poor little cousin, but also to be someone who the rich cousin down the road could respect, and know that I still will be an advocate for and represent. And that must have resonated with just enough people to get me in.”
“I think he does bridge the gap,” says Stratford, “because he is very conscious that he has to go home and be held accountable, and he’s been held to account on other marae across the district as well.”
‘Race-baiting politics’
All three government parties campaigned on race issues during the election and the move to reverse the 2021 amendment that cleared the way for more Māori wards formed part of their coalition agreement. Simeon Brown describes the law change as restoring “the rights of communities to determine whether to introduce Māori wards”.
“It’s unfortunate that all of this race-baiting politics has been weaponised for votes,” says Tepania. “We’re seeing this change in our country, with our government. They’ve got to do what they’ve got to do, because that’s what they stood for to get in, but I don’t think it’s helpful. We need unity as a nation right now, given the global scenario and given these bloody crises we’ve just come through … Even in the Far North I think we need our government to be that for us. I’m not feeling that.”
The focus on Māori wards, he says, “sends a message to Māori ward and constituency councillors up and down this country that they do not have the same value as their counterparts at the table. They’re second-class councillors compared to others; our geographic [general] ward councillors don’t have the same provision – they’re not being held accountable to the entire public in the same way.”
He sees the move as just one in a continuum of anti-Māori measures being rolled out, including Act’s Treaty Principles Bill that revisits the Treaty of Waitangi itself.
“When you take it as a whole, you feel incredibly threatened.”
The restoration of the referendum requirement, he says, is “inherently unfair. We don’t have that provision for any other representative mechanisms that we employ in local government, only for Māori wards. So, it’s targeting Māori representation, which we do through the Local Electoral Act to give effect to Local Government Act stipulations that we have to uphold the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and ensure that we allow Māori a voice in our decision-making.”
What, if anything, can the Mayor of the Far North do about it? He’s not confident but he’s not defeatist.
“We just have to follow the process that they set. I strongly encourage the government to come out into the region, to get on the ground with us, so they can hear from the people themselves, because they’re incredibly far removed from their thinking.”
In the long term, central government initiatives draw their most significant response every three years. “Ultimately, it’s going to come down to New Zealand deciding at the next general election what they want to see. For Māori wards themselves at the next poll, I think we’ll see a very strong ‘yes’ campaign. But at the same time, we know that there are incredibly wealthy groups who are going to be supporting a ‘no’ campaign. That’s not going to be good for our nation whatsoever when we see that polarisation.”
Barrier returns
Until the 2022 election, if a council voted to introduce a Māori ward to address under-representation among elected members, just 5% of voters who opposed the idea could force a referendum.
The ability to require a ratepayers’ poll proved an “almost insurmountable barrier” to increased Māori participation, noted a 2021 cabinet paper from the office of then-local government minister Nanaia Mahuta.
Of 16 polls held between 2003 and 2019, 15 overturned the decision to establish Māori wards. One, in Wairoa district, survived a poll, and the establishment of a Māori ward by the Waikato Regional Council in 2011 was not challenged. (The Bay of Plenty Regional Council had previously introduced a Māori ward, in 2001, before such decisions became subject to a poll.)
In 2020, Mahuta introduced a bill to repeal the need for a referendum and allow time for more Māori wards to be introduced for the 2022 local elections. After initially rejecting the idea, the Far North District Council voted in May 2021 to establish a Māori ward for the 2022 and 2025 elections, ensuring its 10-strong elected council would include four Māori representatives.
With the passing of Labour’s Local Electoral (Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Act, 38 district and regional councils established Māori wards for the 2022 election. Six more have since agreed to introduce them.
The current Local Government Minister, Simeon Brown, last month said councils that brought in wards under Labour would be required to hold a referendum during the 2025 election, with the results taking effect from 2028. “If councils do not wish to hold a poll, those councils will be given the opportunity to reverse their decision to establish Māori wards or to disestablish those wards prior to the 2025 local body elections,” he said.
A bill would be introduced in the next few months, said Brown. The move would reverse Labour’s “divisive changes that denied local communities the ability to determine whether to establish Māori wards”.
In a survey by stuff.co.nz, councils with Māori wards overwhelmingly thought they had been a positive addition to their organisation. Of the 32 councils that responded, only one, Kaipara, supported the planned change.
A common view was that Māori wards should be treated the same as other wards – none of which relied on referendums to justify their existence.
For more on the young politicians who are an emerging force, see here.