There’s a certain style of left-wing movement – epitomised by the Greens and Te Pāti Māori – that wants more from politics than merely changing the government. They want to change politics itself. This requires an experimental phase as they try out alternatives to the mainstream parties they hope to replace. What does this new party believe? Who runs it? Who are its friends and enemies? Te Pāti Māori is suffering through a very public and messy attempt to answer these questions.
During the Tāmaki Makaurau by-election, Te Tai Tonga MP Tākuta Ferris attacked the ethnic diversity of Labour’s campaign team via a social media post: “This blows my mind!! Indians, Asians, Black and Pākehā campaigning to take a Māori seat from Māori.” This seems to have either triggered a civil war inside his own party, or – more likely – forced an existing conflict into the open.
Ferris stood by his statements, defying his co-leaders’ order to apologise, explaining that electorate MPs enjoyed a kaupapa that placed them beyond the instructions of their party.
Shortly afterwards, party whip Mariameno Kapa-Kingi was demoted. Her son Eru Kapa-Kingi – a former vice-president of the party – then declared that the Toitū Te Tiriti movement – the grassroots organisation that organised 2024’s mass protest against the Treaty Principles Bill – would no longer align itself with Te Pāti Māori, accusing it of operating on a “dictatorship model”.
John Tamihere – a former Labour cabinet minister who became president of Te Pāti Māori in 2022 and seems to enjoy a level of control unmatched by the executives of other parliamentary parties – responded that the claim of dictatorship was “a beautiful thing”.
This was followed by an email – sent by Te Pāti Māori to its entire membership – that will enter New Zealand political legend alongside Jamie-Lee Ross’s betrayal of Simon Bridges and Metiria Turei’s welfare fraud speech as extraordinary acts of public self-destruction.
It documented a cost blow-out in Mariameno Kapa-Kingi’s budget linked to a $120,000 per annum contract to Eru Kapa-Kingi, who was allegedly trespassed from Parliament after abusing two security guards.
Somewhere amid all of that chaos was an attempt at a political reset in which Te Pāti Māori promised it would demonstrate its stability and competence to govern, but this ended three minutes into a press conference when a journalist asked a question that co-leader Rawiri Waititi didn’t like.
Rainbow coalition
A few days after Ferris made the social media post, the Department of Statistics published its ethnic projections data. It showed 2023 was the first year in which the Asian category overtook Maori as a percentage of the population (they’re now at 20% and 17%, respectively).For a normal left-wing politician, high net migration is a good thing: it expands the “rainbow coalition” of ethnic communities that have replaced the white working class as a central constituency of left-wing politics. “Diversity is our strength!”
But what does a political party dedicated to winning back sovereignty and land for Māori think of this future? What is the difference between settler colonisation and mass immigration? And who are Te Pāti Māori’s allies if it’s not the rainbow coalition?
These seem like important issues for the party to grapple with, preferably without making racially charged comments on social media. Who runs Te Pāti Māori? The leaders? The party president? Or is each electorate MP a rohe unto themselves?
There’s a strong generational component to Te Pāti Māori’s support. According to the 2023 New Zealand Electoral Survey, Māori voters over 25 were more likely to party vote for National than for TPM. The most common critiques from this generation are first, that the party often seems more like a vehicle for the personal ambitions of Tamihere than a genuine mass movement, and second, that there’s a hollowness to the project. It’s good at social media stunts and protests but these strengths disguise an ideological incoherence.
Lurid detail
Now we’re seeing those weaknesses play out in lurid detail. The email attacking the Kapa-Kingis is the kind of blunder that splits parties, generating aggrieved factions that peel off and go to war against their former caucus. The Te Tai Tonga electorate – held by Ferris – has called for a vote of no confidence in Tamihere.
Labour’s bind
Obviously, this is terrible for the prospects of a Labour-led government. The problem of centrist voters being scared off by the spectre of a coalition that includes Te Pāti Māori was serious enough, but even if it overcomes that, this isn’t a party that’s ready for government.
Can TPM’s leadership – whoever that is – guarantee support for confidence and supply votes from their own MPs? If they were in cabinet, could they sign up to collective responsibility?
Chris Hipkins is in the awful position of refusing to rule them out – because no poll shows him forming a government without them – while acknowledging what everyone can clearly see: that this is not yet a credible political party.
Te Pāti Māori has obvious strengths. It is good at winning campaigns, at generating viral videos and at provoking Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee, with whom they have a delightful Smurf village vs bumbling evil wizard relationship. But it is bad at talking to journalists who ask them mildly challenging questions, and this points back to the emptiness beneath the stunts (David Seymour and Winston Peters aren’t fond of the media but they’re happy to talk to reporters because they’re confident in their own beliefs).
And, finally, it is awful at allowing the opposition to present itself as a government-in-waiting – and this is a fatal flaw, because everything Te Pāti Māori claims to believe in is downstream from removing the current coalition from power.
