Election 2023: Te Pāti Māori candidate suffers alleged politically motivated home invasion

Hauraki-Waikato candidate Hana Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke’s Waikato home has been invaded, vandalised and left with a threatening letter in an alleged politically motivated attack.

A Te Pāti Māori spokesperson said this is the latest of three incidents to take place at Hana’s home just this week.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time in our history that a politician’s home and personal property has been invaded to this extent.

“When our billboards are vandalised, and when our candidates are verbally assaulted, it is not an attack on them as individuals or us as a political party.

“It is an attack on what we represent: our whakapapa, our culture, and the dreams of our tupuna and mokopuna.”

The 21-year-old Maipi-Clarke sits at number four on Te Pāti Māori’s list and just below sitting MPs Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Rawiri Waititi, and Meka Whaitiri.

She is currently contesting the electorate held by the Labour Party’s Nanaia Mahuta.

If elected, she would be the youngest MP in 170 years.

Speaking at The Hui’s Hauraki-Waikato electorate debate on Friday night, Hana Maipi-Clark had a clear message to the people who entered her home and threatened her: “Don’t be scared”

“The kohanga reo generation are here, and we have a huge movement and a huge wave of us coming through.

“I am not scared… I am here to be a light and a māramatanga to us that we belong in these places” said Maipi-Clarke.

The Herald has approached police for comment.

The issue of race is heating up on the campaign trail with two weeks left to go.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has accused Christopher Luxon of “race-baiting” for votes - one of two paths he says politicians from traditional political parties have taken at elections.

Hipkins made the comments in a passionate scene-setting speech in Kawakawa today to a predominately Māori audience, where he described those pathways as “race-baiting” or avoiding the issue.

“It’s depressing the options have been race-baiting or just keeping quiet.”

Hipkins also fired shots at Act.

“We all assume the Treaty is set in stone,” Hipkins said, claiming Seymour’s “bottom line” referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi threatened to chip away at it until “all they have is a pile of rubble”.

Meanwhile, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has backed Rangitata candidate Rob Ballantyne, saying if a quote by Ballantyne which Labour leader Chris Hipkins used in the Newshub debate related to the “disease of co-governance”, then he was “backing him to the hilt”.

Hipkins had read out the quote, saying that when talking about Māori at a candidates’ meeting, an NZ First candidate had said: “Cry if you want to, we don’t care. We are the party with the cultural mandate and the courage to cut out your disease and bury you permanently.”

Hipkins had then asked National leader Christopher Luxon if he thought it was racist - and if he would be comfortable working with people who held such views. Luxon responded that it was racist, and emphasised Peters was a “last resort” option for him.

In another tense moment on the election campaign trail, Labour’s Taranaki-King Country candidate Angela Roberts said she was slapped by an aggressive member of the public while at a local election debate this week.