A Perfect Āwhā

I have chosen to note the iwi/hapū affiliation of all tangata whenua mentioned in this article, not because I see it as contributing to any particular point I'm making, but because in an article so focused on te ao and Māori politics, now seems a more appropriate time than ever to bring attention to the many different backgrounds and whakapapas that exist within Māoridom.

Part One - Only Once in a Decade

I got lucky.

As the news about Te Pāti Māori has at first leaked and then burst out the end of a Wellingtonian pipe of drama, again and again, I misread the situation at first blush. And each and every time, my bad takes were reserved only for a private group chat. 

It was Rob Campbell, one of the leading lights of New Zealand leftism, who drew the short straw of actually publishing the worst take possible for the present moment.

Perhaps this article was simply written up and signed off on too late to adjust for the latest news. Maybe he saw the smoke billowing out of TPM HQ and concluded that it was too soon to shout fire in a crowded newsroom. 

But the fuse has been burning for a long time. That bright and dangerous light could be sighted well before Monday’s email circulated amongst the members of te Pāti Māori.

I am slow to judge and careful when it comes to committing myself. So often, the news furore of this week is forgotten in the next. Donald Trump almost had his head blown off, and I correctly predicted that it would be quickly forgotten and scarcely affect the election’s outcome. The Greens have had several MPs leave Parliament over scandals in the past few years in conjunction with other misfortunes, and yet their political fortunes remain unscathed.

This news necessitates that I break from form and call my shot. I do not think that you can overstate your reaction to what is happening. I believe that this is the biggest crisis for a political party since Simon Bridges (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Kinohaku hapū) announced an investigation into the transport expenses leaker, and set off the chain of dominoes that led to Jami-Lee Ross (Ngāti Porou) addressing the parliamentary press with criminal allegations against his own leader. Only once in a decade do you see a meltdown this apocalyptic and unprecedented.

Yes, the past few terms have seen larger political collapses, from the Collins nadir to NZFirst’s third elimination from Parliament. Yes, the failures of government policies have caused crises in the lives of everyday people. But this, right here, right now, is a five-alarm fire warning that something is seriously wrong with the entire organisation - not just the basic inability to function, but a beggar of the question as to whether it even should continue in any form approximating what it currently is.

What has gone so horribly wrong for Te Pāti Māori?

Part Two - The Bad News

The short version is that Te Pāti Māori files attached to Monday’s email make two allegations. One, TPM MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi (Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa) engaged in nepotism by employing her son Eru (+Ngāitai, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Waikato) for a total sum of $133,000 from the taxpayer. When he was first found out and the contract terminated, a new contract under different premises was arranged to circumvent this restriction. This excessive spending placed her in a position where her parliamentary budget could no longer afford her relevant duties as a member of Parliament, such as maintaining a well-staffed electorate officer that her constituents could come to with their issues.

Two, Eru abused and threatened a member of parliamentary security, in an incident unavoidably coloured by his connections: the incident took place at a Toitu te Tiriti hīkoi, an organisation he is the director of and which is linked to TPM, and he referenced his mother’s place as an elected leader in Parliament. While you can’t push out or punish an MP simply because her son’s a plonker, these incidents combined raise red flags about connections, corruption and impunity.

Want to really make these incidents pop off the page? Stop looking at the short version alone, and take it all in. Look at how long ago these incidents took place! The alleged initial bullying occurred on Budget Day 2024 - May 30th! That’s over a year ago, and yet Eru only left the vice-presidency of TPM in March 2025. If the leadership had any awareness whatsoever of this misconduct, then that is totally unacceptable to leave unresolved for ten months straight. 

We have a clearer timeline around the overspending allegations, and while that timeline is shorter it also alarms me more. Parliamentary Services, the story goes, alerted Debbie Ngarewa-Packer (Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāruahine, Ngā Rauru) and Rawiri Waititi (Te Whānau a Apanui, Ngai Tai, Te Whakatohea, Ngai Tuhoe, Ngati Awa, Te Arawa, Ngati Tūwharetoa, Ngai Te Rangi, Ngati Ranginui) about their MP’s misuse of funds on the 7th of July. And apparently they didn’t meet with her until the FIRST OF AUGUST! She was sacked from the whip - a job whose purpose is in large part to make sure MPs show up in Parliament every week - on the ELEVENTH OF SEPTEMBER! 

I can’t give you the blow by blow of who was where when. What I can say is that, if a coworker is basically embezzling public workplace funds to her family, it is inexcusable to wait eight weeks to even take a single workplace role off of them. If I don’t show up to a meeting with HR about stealing from the till, they don’t reschedule for the next seven weeks in a row, they initiate the employee termination process. Any boss who can’t enforce discipline in even half that time is about as useful a party leader as Todd Muller and near as suspect as Vernon Tava. Te Ao News suggests that that issue has at least finally, belatedly been dealt with, but the Auditor General may very well have to wade in to clean up the mess.

The simmering conflict between the leadership and Eru exploded into the open on October 2nd, when the latter laid out a series of criticisms of the “dictatorial” leadership in the media. The leadership muddled along, promising a public reset while communicating no visible changes, for eleven days. On Monday, John Tamihere (Whakatohea, Ngāti Porou ki Hauraki) vowed that Te Pāti Māori engages in kōrero about its own issues internally, without the need to air discussions out in the Pākehā media, and that the membership were having productive conversations. The only way I am able to write about these issues is because, by the next morning, dedicated Māori members of the Māori Party had aired these discussions out in the Pākehā media.

This is pretty bad. But you could argue that it’s just another case of a rogue individual - and it’s only Eru here who’s really, publicly lashed out, both with rhetoric and by asserting that Toitu te Tiriti will part ways with the party, no doubt to the displeasure and discomfort of some of that organisation’s members. Even if his mother may be guilty of a financial conflict of interest, political parties across the spectrum have had to deal with controversies such as these for years. No MP MP has publicly turned on the leadership to either call for their overthrow or threaten a split.

What makes all of this much, much worse is how the bad news sits in the context o te pāti.

Part Three - Order of Operations

Te Pāti Māori have sustained an incredible streak for the past half-decade. Political parties are hardly ever so fortunate. Waititi scraped out the only seat taken off Labour in the entirety of the 2020 red tide*. The party vote carried in Debbie Ngarewa-Packer as the other half of a dynamic duo that punched above their weight in the traditional press and amongst Māoridom alike†. The only downsides to TPM’s 2023 election campaign were the alleged data misuse at Manurewa Marae, and the ill-fated decision to recruit Meka Whaitiri (Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Kahungunu) as their one candidate who wound up losing. Besides her, the party swept the Māori seats, winning huge upsets against Labour dynasts like Nanaia Mahuta (Ngāti Mahuta) and Rino Tirikatene (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Hine). 

*Chlöe Swarbrick snatched Auckland Central, yes, but from National, not Labour. After all, Jacinda had lost the seat twice before!

†I wasn’t impressed by Waititi’s clanger on Putin’s aggression in mid-2023, but that has been totally forgotten in the collective political consciousness and it’s not like he’s exercised any impact on the war, so I’ll let this kuri moe lie. More bothersome was his contribution to growing political hostility with his “joke” about poisoning David Seymour (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Rehia hapū) with karaka berries. Seymour is, like, the gold standard for what cracks not to make about political violence since his Pacific Peoples remark. Why would you ever get down in the mud with him?

That triumph was built on the backs of the kōhanga reo generation, who defied one of the strongest axioms of political science - that youthquakes do not materialise. And that passing of the baton was epitomised by Hana-Rawhiti taking the lead in “the haka heard around the world”. That was one of New Zealand’s greatest moments of stature in modern history, garnering hundreds of millions of views on social media. It’s a dizzying rise for a party declared dead in 2017 and buried in 2018 and forgotten in 2019. Neither the Manurewa Marae concerns, nor the constant claims of misuse of charity funds and conflicts of interest that follow party president John Tamihere wherever he goes, even slowed this momentum. 

It was Te Pāti Māori who stood shoulder to shoulder with the Toitu te Tiriti hīkois. Despite polling and history suggesting popular support for the Treaty Principles Bill, TPM completely crushed the bill. They translated an energised slice of the population into a lasting perception that the issue was settled long before the final votes were cast. As even the relatively token Indigenous Voice flailed and died across the Tasman, Te Pāti Māori surged in the polls. Until October, they seemed likely not only to somehow hold onto their incredible haul of six electorates - the biggest for a minor party since the original Māori Party split in 2005 over the Foreshore and Seabed - but perhaps even to approach a clean sweep of all seven. In politics, it just doesn’t get better than this.

And then it got a whole lot worse. 

The passing of Takutai Tarsh Kemp (Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Tuwharetoa, Ngā iwi o Mōkai Pātea, Ngāti Tamakōpiri, Ngāti Whitikaupeka, Ngāi Te Ohuake, Ngāti Hauiti, Ngāti Hinemanu, Ngāti Paki) was a tragedy, particularly given how much of her time in Parliament was overshadowed by the Manurewa Marae allegations. That's not to pass judgement on whether she was innocent or guilty of that particular act, an act without sufficient evidence to prosecute but which continues to be investigated. I’m not in the business of slandering the dead to help nobody and hurt those who cared about them. 

I simply mention the Manurewa Marae affair to say that a fifty year old indigenous woman dying for lack of a kidney transplant is painful enough as is without even factoring in the stress that comes from such a dispute. The allegations were serious and worth investigating but not a matter of life and death. And a small caucus were bound to be hurt by the loss of one of their members. Setting aside questions of wrongdoing and legacy, there is no doubt that this had a real impact on the others.

But the party seemed prepared to regain its form and continue its mission for tangata whenua with the smashing election of Oriini Kaipara (Tūhoe, Ngāti Awa, Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangitihi) in her place. Kaipara often faltered under scrutiny on the trail, most memorably turning to her leaders for help during the debates. That’s…not great. However, in the interests of fairness, it has to be said that MPs rarely receive such attention in their electorates, and many would surely struggle under the same pressure. 

This election was by no means predicted as a likely win for Kaipara: Peeni Henare (Ngāti Hine) is a leading Māori light in the Labour Party, supposedly had a strong ground game, and could promise that, if elected, Georgie Dansey (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) would then enter Parliament on the Labour list. In a seat that TPM only won by 42 votes in 2023 - and, as mentioned before, under murky circumstances that evoke Florida 2000 - to take the win by a two to one margin was the best referendum yet on TPM’s advocacy for tangata whenua, and they passed with flying colours.

Except.

This byelection wasn't the big story of that week at all. Kaipara's glow was completely snatched from her by MP Tākuta Ferris (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kuia, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Porou) reaching the utterly bizarre choice to throw up an Instagram post complaining about Indians, Asians, Blacks and Pākehā trying to take a Māori seat from Māori. It’s like he crafted his statement under laboratory conditions to give maximal offense. Even if you set aside the usual suspects whingeing about TPM's reverse-racism towards tangata waimāero, at a stroke, it still touched on the specific hostility of many Kiwi lefties towards Asian immigration‡, erased Dansey’s identity as a white-passing wahine Māori and Henare’s legitimacy as a Māori Labour tane, and decided to chuck in “blacks” just for the hell of it. 

I waited to see if anybody would take a shot at devil’s advocate, to see if he at least had a point about Pākehā intruding into Māoridom. I wondered if anybody was willing to try to sell his racism as a hard truth, or at least claim that it spoke to a widespread feeling in Māoridom, valid or not. And yet even E-Tangata merely threw into the pot a pair of anodyne takes from non-Māori. Nobody else bothered to treat the remarks as a debate, writing them off as a scandal. Ferris was alone on this.

‡Further speculation on this would stray beyond the ambit of this article, but my theory runs that some left-wingers specifically struggle to emphasise with racial discrimination and human aspiration once a minority group have attained good educational and economic outcomes by traditional metrics. For instance, I believe that Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t hate Jews and thinks anti-Semitism is reprehensible, but he never seemed to get what the big fuss was all about. A lot of the left still needs to figure out a more nuanced worldview on racial discrimination and multicultural inclusion than “poor oppressed and rich oppressor” - from getting to grips with the harm of positive stereotypes, to the geopolitical complexities loaded into the advance of Chinese business interests from here to Angola. 

What should have happened was what you would hope for from any party when an MP makes a racist statement: their party instructs them to retract that statement and make a sincere public apology that reflects on their journey to genuine greater understanding and outreach. If they don’t act, then there are consequences. Instead, Ferris not only shrugged off the instructions but continued with an eight-minute rant at midnight, an incomprehensible and downright concerning move. The leaders completely failed to deal with the issue. 

Not only that, but it turned out Ferris wasn’t alone, because John Tamihere - never one to resist the opportunity to inflame tensions and stick his foot in it - weighed in on Ferris’s side. At this point, I incorrectly presumed that that meant that they were on the same side. From that, I drew the conclusion that an ideological division was forming in Māoridom around this question of non-Māori political participation: whether or not Māori should stick by an archaic, binary view of race where non-Māori cannot serve as auxiliaries under Māori leadership, and there is only a single right way to represent and advocate for Māori interests that no human can augur without the divine blessing of a Māori Party endorsement. (The latter part of which seems to instead be perhaps the uniting principle of Te Pāti Māori political thought.)

So that was how I read the Eru Kapa-Kingi statement at first. I misread his concern as focusing on the leadership’s bungling of this situation. So far as we can tell, that doesn’t seem to have been a key cause, though I’m sure that, just like Kemp’s passing, it contributed to rising interpersonal tensions. Instead, this spat between Eru and the leadership has taken on the usual character of an MP under pressure for misconduct being, like, bummed out about how totally harsh their boss is acting.

But - besides the whole “Eru isn’t an MP” thing - the critical reason why I have recounted this timeline is because we don’t experience events fully in hindsight. We form events based on first impressions. And in the narrative of TPM over recent weeks as the wheels fell off, the first figures tarred were not the Kapa-Kingis but Ferris and, by proxy, Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer. It becomes a lot harder to dismiss any accusations that they are mismanaging the party as being a self-interested smokescreen, when the entire country just watched them mismanage the party. 

And the entire country isn’t even hearing a half-decent defence from TPM, because they have completely abdicated their posts when it comes to public communication. Save for one solid interview with Mihirangi Forbes on MATA that they promptly blew out of the headlines with their own email. Their handling of the media has become utterly egregious: crouching behind the critique that the Pākehā media have been often racist and unfair. That is a statement that is perfectly applicable in many cases, but fails to resonate with their specific case given the aforementioned glowing run they’ve had and the very real concerns that exist right now. TPM have adopted the bunker mentality of radical populists. 

Is it embarrassing and inappropriate to feed an MP lines mid-debate? No, the media are not being fair by…carving out an exemption to how it’s always done? Is it a barrier to accessibility to only speak to the media in te reo Māori during te wiki? Their defense of spreading te reo would make some sense if they actually bothered to show up on the tiles to speak te reo for more than a day during te wiki o te reo Māori. Is it equal parts pathetic and alarming to walk away from questions three minutes into your party’s public “reset”? No, it’s only a reasonable response to the hectoring from the racist media. Because…Maiki Sherman asked them to respond to Eru Kapa-Kingi’s criticism, giving them the opportunity to defend themselves, and Waititi dragged Ngarewa-Packer away while blaming Maiki Sherman…

Okay, okay, hold on…

Maiki Sherman?!

Ngāpuhi?? Te Whakatōhea???

The first and only Māori chief political editor in the history of Aotearoa!?!?

I try not to play the referee on whether people of colour calling out bias is legitimate or not; I wouldn’t be very good at it. But sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. This behaviour is both cynical and ridiculous. If they had good answers, then, presumably, they would offer them. The fact that they keep no-showing legitimate scrutiny, invites the worst possible interpretations of their motives and actions. 

And I feel perfectly confident calling that shot whene it places me on the same side of the fence as Māori political commentators from Liam Rātana (Ngāti Wairupe, Ngāti Kurī) to Māni Dunlop (Ngāpuhi), who are piling in to define the co-leadership’s actions as contradictory to tikanga. Both articles are well worth the read: Rātana's use of "public" and "publicly" a full dozen times summarises his disbelief at such blatant character assassination in parallel to so much of the party's infrastructure outside Parliament moving in secrecy, while Dunlop mourns the ramifications much as I will later and notes that others have privately laid allegations against the toxic leadership culture to her news agency. The leadership are running a playbook of self-interested, short-termist political defense that can only promise hurt, every bit as damaging as Judith Collins’s ugly last attempt to ward off the return of Simon Bridges through weaponising his crudeness to Jacqui Dean.

Do you want to believe the battle lines will sort themselves out soon enough? Do you hope that a scapegoat will eat the sins of the party and that order will reestablish itself? Consider this: Ferris tabled a motion of no confidence in the entire board, and Tamihere, on Monday. Which, we have learned, is the second time such a notion has been floated this year. 

Up is down and left is right; Tamihere can ride to the defense of Tākuta and bite a political bullet back from him within weeks. The leaders can claim that they are about to move past the weeks of division, and then open gaping wounds that seem to genuinely raise the possibility of Kapa-Kingi and Ferris being cast out into the desert as independents, to face messy three-way races against both Labour and TPM’s new candidates next year. There is no hero coming to save the day, no weary Jacinda or put-upon Chippy reluctantly binning another minister. It just looks like chaos. And voters may sometimes vote for chaos to be inflicted on their opponents, but they stay well away from chaos inflicted on the self.

This is really, really bad. The party is in a crisis of leadership.

And they aren’t getting out of it any time soon.

Part Four - So We Still Have Problem

Let’s return to that Greens comparison from earlier. The Greens, again and again, failed to properly vet or manage their MPs and suffered from scandals drawn out longer than they needed to be. But in each case they were able to shrug them off as a bad apple or a regrettable case and move on. Certainly this has contributed to the opprobrium the Greens’ natural opponents hold for them, but the Greens haven’t fallen in the polls as a result. Nor do I believe the Greens have become a major drag on Labour’s chances due to any sense of the Greens being scandal-ridden and falling apart. And I think key to that is the fact that in each case the problem MPs were removed from Parliament without those scandals really redounding onto the leadership. 

Many Kiwis believe that Chlöe and Marama (Ngāti Porou, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) are economically illiterate socialists or woke cultural Marxists who have, sigh, forgotten about the environment. But a minor party can live with most of the public not voting for it - they always do. More important is that few voters think that Chlöe and Marama are fundamentally incompetent political leaders - that their MPs act out without their permission, or that they cannot hash out some agreement with Labour after winning an election. 

Lefties might critique the Greens for not getting enough out of Labour, but the Green co-leaders can clearly, credibly make the case that they do get in government and get things done. After all, their predecessors - Russell Norman and Metiria Turei (Ngāti Kahungunu, Āti Hau nui a Pāpārangi) and James Shaw - spent years and years making a sustained effort to convince the public they were ready to do so, and James and Marama delivered on it in the 2017-2020 term.

Compare that to Te Pāti Māori, whose smaller caucus is in much greater trouble: 

• Rawiri Waititi is not only a higher-than-usual risk as far as MPs go re: making remarks way outside of the mainstream, he’s also completely failed to exercise leadership over Tākuta Ferris and not only shares that problem with

• Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, but both are now under fire from the opposite direction as dictators to a toxic work culture;

• Tākuta Ferris is now the left’s Sam Uffindell: even if his political career survives, he has publicly admitted to and shown insufficient contrition for his sins, will never get so much as a sniff of Cabinet and will serve as an attack line for opposing partisans for years to come;

• Mariameno Kapa-Kingi is facing serious allegations on multiple axes of how she both personally misused funds and is one degree of separation from mistreatment of the staff who protect her from people like Parliamentary lawn arsonists and racists on the internet sending death threats;

• Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke (Waikato, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, Te Āti Awa, Ngāi Tahu) is younger than me, and, you know, good for her, she’s holding up much better than I expected and certainly ever could, but as fascinated as I would be by the attempt, it’s practically impossible to picture her stepping up into leadership or even the whip at eight years younger than Swarbrick;

• Takutai Tarsh Kemp has passed away, being replaced by

• Orinii Kaipara, who, whether her missteps on the trail indicate a wider shallowness of knowledge or not, literally just got here and is also completely unprepared yet to lead or discipline others;

• Meka Whaitiri didn’t even make it into Parliament in 2023, though god only knows if that’d even be helping them right now given her own patchy record.

It is a perfect āwhā. You could not possible design a better combination of outcomes to place a small caucus in a position where every single member is under insurmountable pressure. Te Pāti Māori’s leadership seem incapable of leading the party well; appear incapable of reforming the party; cannot communicate any positive program to the press; have thrown away the benefit of the doubt; are governing a caucus that is half-problem and half-talent in development; and have nobody they can easily step aside for, or turn to as a lieutenant to bring the party back in hand. 

Perhaps if Whaitiri, with a minister’s experience, had won in 2023, then I could here recommend an unlikely emergency backstop if affairs don’t improve by 2026 of calling her up to bat. Maybe if the party hadn’t blundered by shunting aside Heather Te Au-Skipworth (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu), we’d be talking about her as a prospective new face for the party refresh. Possibly, the party could entrust the whip to anybody but one of their own co-leaders, also known as “not beating the dictatorship allegations”. 

Instead, we have to trust in a caucus that has lost all reason for trust.

You could argue that they absolutely could still fix things from here. Not all of the allegations could be true - though, at this point, we’re definitely in a lose-lose situation where at least some are. It could be a bad apple problem that gets picked out.

But it gets worse, because even if the worm is taken out of the apple, nobody is eating it anymore. 

Part Five - That’s Me In The Spot-

At the start of this piece, I compared the current crisis to the Jami-Lee Ross debacle. And a devil might advocate that, after that debacle, National successfully staunched the bleeding. Bridges even saved his own leadership. National entered the 2020 election with a solid shot at victory, right up until COVID changed the calculus as a black swan event. 

But Bridges really did let so black-hearted a figure as Jami-Lee Ross that close to power over the country and the next Prime Minister. He was directly complicit in Ross’s acts, compared to Ngarewa-Packer and Waititi simply mishandling the aftermath from others. He did crudely discuss with him the relative value of different ethnic groups to the party. And that spoke to exactly the qualities that people didn’t like about Bridges: that, in an era of Jacinda-nice, Bridges was constantly combative and never aspired to some higher gravitas. He kept a vicious cabal around him and they couldn’t woo the nation. 

In short, even if Jami-Lee Ross did not stop the National Party cold in 2018, he explained to voters exactly why they should be primed to turn against the party when it came under greater electoral pressure. And the Jami-Lee Ross crisis was a perfect demonstration of the careerist amorality that had become such a cancer on the National Party, leading to everything from the soulless takeover of Todd Muller to the lowest moments from Judith Collins to innumerable candidate scandals in between. It was the smoke and the fire and the fuse all in one.

Te Pāti Māori have entered just such an omnicrisis themselves. And Te Pāti Māori can’t shed this omnicrisis nearly so easily because, as I laid out above, how many members of their caucus are tainted. It’s effectively impossible to do a cleanout of problem MPs, the way that larger parties like the Greens and Labour have each had to over the past few years. Even the National Party of today has room to grow on this front. If they drop Luxon, they have a shot at a surge. (I rank Bishop, Stanford, Brown and Willis as the only four plausible options, in descending order of likelihood. Willis last might seem like a hot take, but at this point what new approach to government does she offer when she’s been so core to Luxonism?)

Over 2025, as the government has foundered on the rocks of economic stagnation and broken public services, the left have enjoyed their high water mark of the post-Jacinda era. And that high water mark, with each of the parties squeezing out basically as many voters as they can in their current circumstances and with each of their unresolved structural problems, has placed them…neck and neck in the polls with a struggling right bloc. 

It’s common copium amongst governments across political science to assert that, when the election draws close, the voters will take a closer look at their options and reject what the opposition is offering. But I genuinely do believe that that will be true next year. I’m simply not convinced that this Labour caucus have spent two years in opposition locking down the miracle packet of policies that will push them into the high thirties. Or that the asset tax issue can be deftly navigated without shedding votes.

And National’s coalition partners, for all their many faults, have proven remarkably politically resilient. NZFirst has found the winning formula (though god only knows what it is) to finally rise in the polls while in government. And while ACT has dipped a little - presumably losing a few conservatives to the Shane Jones (Te Aupōuri, Ngāi Takoto) show - my belief in their caucus quality has been vindicated; outside of a few Trumpian tweets and Seymour’s regular controversies, they have stayed utterly squeaky-clean when it comes to scandals and remain a well-oiled team with nary the slightest hint of selfish jockeying for position.

So: the left are hitting a ceiling while the right have room to grow and a stable floor. And although I have complete faith at this stage in the Greens’ Teflon capabilities...what about Te Pāti Māori? After all, even though NZFirst and ACT have looked after their own voter base, I think it’s pretty safe to assert that they’re part of the reason National has been bleeding centre voters. If their radicalism and controversies are the anchor around National’s outreach to the centre - what are TPM to Labour’s chances? And, by proxy, the left’s?

Part Six -light Losing An Election

Annabelle Lee-Mather (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu, Kāti Māmoe): Te Pāti Māori "said last week as a part of their reset that they had spoken to their membership, they had got the message loud and clear, that their - that their number one priority was to change the government and the events of the last forty eight hours completely make that so much harder, not just for themselves now as a completely fractured party - and to me it seems completely untenable for Mariameno to stay on, but also for Labour! You know, now they’ve just given a whole lot of ammunition to the government, to put the boot into. And rightly so. And to Hipkins about you know, what sort of arrangement can you have with this lot? So if that was truly their mission, then they just got an absolute own goal because they’ve just made it a whole lot harder.”

Ironically, Labour may benefit if TPM’s share of the party vote drops. A high party vote for TPM means their electorate seats aren’t overhangs; ensuring their electorate share outpaces their party vote share is a surefire way to get around the rules and pull off the Epsom trick several times over. However, if Labour do start winning Māori seats back from te Pāti Māori, that does nothing to help the left bloc; it only affects the relative positions of those parties in Māoridom. (To say nothing of the complex scenarios that could play out if Kapa-Kingi and Ferris go the way of MANA 2.0 and we have many possible combinations of outcomes.)

But that’s not the focus of this electoral analysis. Even if Te Pāti Māori are seriously hitting the fan right now, they’ve done so well in the polls these past several years and at the last couple elections that I still feel reasonable confidence that they’ll do all right in the Māori seats. (Gone By Lunchtime, for what it’s worth, predicts that they’re in trouble everywhere outside Hauraki-Waikato, where, ironically for such a longshot target last election, we can all agree now that the voters want Hana-Rawhiti back in Parliament.) No, this is all about one simple question: what % of the left bloc’s chance of winning vanishes thanks to te Pāti Māori’s crisis?

Since the 2023 election my opinion has not wavered: I have always believed that the chance for te Pāti Māori to hit the wall like right now was the second biggest problem facing the left bloc. But number one would be if Labour could seriously convince the public after the failed Sixth Labour Government that they could form an effective government again, after just three years in Opposition and one cycle’s turnover. And Te Pāti Māori could devastate that plausibility, if centre voters cannot possibly imagine any coalition or confidence and supply deal with Te Pāti Māori that would be satisfactory to them. 

Chippy has already begun to back away from TPM - indeed, he landed a more vicious attack on them on Tuesday than Luxon did. Willie Jackson (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Porou) has chimed in to add that TPM look "close to terminal" and a failure to speedily resolve the crisis would make an intra-party split "inevitable". Let’s accept the possible premise that TPM’s approvals are so sharply underwater, and they look so dysfunctional going into next year, that winning an election with them entering government looks impossible. What choices does he have?

As much as this cracks me up, the backlash would be catastrophic - Winston in 1996 by a factor of five. If unpredictable events seriously challenged the government, it might not even survive the term. Heck, can any government involving Te Pāti Māori now be trusted to survive a term? It’s hard to say whether them sticking to the crossbenches would make a government less or more stable, which is an astonishing sentence to type out, but here we are.

So the alternative is to rule them out. Save Labour’s appeal to the centre vote and stay ahead of National. But, even putting aside how that might agitate the Greens (and create unpredictable outcomes in the Māori electorates)...how do you get to 61 MPs then? Because, like I said, I don’t have much faith even in a functioning Labour-Greens-TPM bloc to get it done. Labour and the Greens certainly can’t do it alone barring a miracle. Or, put another way, the government allowing a disaster to play out that’d have to be so bad for the country that we should all be really praying that that doesn’t happen. 

And the longshot idea that the promise by Winston (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) to never work with Chris Hipkins can be navigated around by simply replacing Chippy requires so many things to go right - that Winston isn’t just lying, that Labour’s new leader (Peeni Henare? Barbara Edmonds?) performs well, that the two parties combined can do impressively enough to hit 61 MPs together, and that Winston still decides to change teams instead of sticking with a government that’s working for him - that you’ve already hit a wall long before you have to even consider how this incarnation of NZFirst could possibly be welded together with this form of the Greens. It was hard enough in 2017.

Te Pāti Māori’s crisis is so bad in large part because it guarantees that all of Labour’s options are bad. It is a meteor strike upon the left.

Part Seven - Maybe Tomorrow

In 2023, I was clear in my belief that the government had run out of road. I had plenty of critiques to offer for the opposition, but I couldn’t see what the government’s supporters were seeing in it - what good things it would possibly get done in the coming years. It would be like Mark Carney’s resurrection of the Liberal Party; they may have beaten the other team for a little longer, but so exhausted of personnel and ideas after the years expended in power, how could they improve the country when their track record was already faltering? Heck, Carney at least had the justification of beating back a dangerous Trumpian populist, and Luxon was and is not that.

So I hoped that the opposition would at least fix up some things in the country when they came to power. In my eyes they have largely failed to, even if some of these issues, particularly inflation and unemployment, are a fair bit out of their control. I’ve soured on this government - and, after the pay equity decision, become downright spiteful towards them. I feel that desire for a punishment to be meted out at the ballot box. But I never understood how a viable government was going to come about for the left bloc after 2026, that hallowed ideal that many leftists have been looking forward to for two years straight, feeling vindication in every poll and every government stuffup.

Now, not only do the left bloc look farther than ever from figuring out what they’ll do differently and better from the Sixth Labour Government, but their chances of even winning government in the first place seem to be in peril. In my opinion, Labour should accept what should have been their strategic goal from the moment that Jacinda stepped down in 2023: to prepare for a six-year total overhaul, with 2026 a year for bringing in future talent and developing bright frontbenchers.

So for Labour, at least, there’s a consolation prize. They’ll be back in government, sooner or later. Yet this incarnation of te Pāti Māori seems at times so uncomfortable with the very concept of government as we understand it that its future is impossible to divine. What is their path back from this current crisis? And how can they ever alleviate what it speaks to about what is wrong with the party? And what will they actually do if the left bloc still somehow pulls out the win?

It’s not for me to say what the Māori Party voted in by Māori in Māori seats for Māori is there to do. I can only offer one observation that I feel strongly. The Māori Party have struck me as a fundamentally symbolic party: one that talks a big game but ultimately makes its big stands on matters of procedure and aesthetic, and on a bill that was never going to pass. 

I mean, if by some miracle the left bloc won the last election, what the hell was TPM’s big win in the coalition agreement gonna be? Labour wasn’t going to spring for a wealth tax and TPM couldn’t threaten to walk away to the side of National and NZFirst. “Yes, and”ing Chippy’s peas and carrots policies? And I can never accept that the most important priority for a party should be how its representatives are treated in the halls of the powerful. By all means I object to Speaker Brownlee’s harsh punishments and Seymour’s antiquated snitching on dress codes. Let them wear hei tiki and Jordans as far as I’m concerned. (Perhaps going barefoot as Kaipara did is a step too far-  it makes my health and safety nanny state spidey-sense tingle - but we can talk about this.)

A plum salary within the Westminster system is neither emancipation nor enrichment for tangata whenua. I’m not arguing that the Māori Party are wrong to take up their seats in Parliament or to consider participating in a coalition government. Quite the contrary; I’m arguing that their caucus should not be the ultimate end of the party, whose goal is to keep getting kicked out of Parliament and soft-boycotting Parliament about Parliament's failure to observe tikanga. 

The caucus should be only the means to an end - a handful of brave, smart people making a sacrifice to improve the lot of hundreds of thousands of people facing terrible outcomes in various fields because of the consequences of the much more vicious colonialism of decades past that is still perpetrated in softer forms today. 

Say, for instance, by the National-NZFirst-ACT government, in response to TPM’s current self-absorption, pushing up and rushing through their amendments to the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011…which was TPM’s signature achievement of their first incarnation, their response to their foundational trauma of the Foreshore and Seabed Act, the greatest land grab by this neocolonialist government since 2004. It is an unforgivable dereliction of duty.

I understand the instinct to challenge a discriminatory culture that drives out Māori at every turn - but I think that’s for cultural figures, and private citizens, for whoever succeeds Eru Kapa-Kingi and for you and me. It’s not for members of Parliament; it’s not for the politicians. Goodness knows that they’re clearly capable of getting elected under the status quo. The Māori politicians who face an uphill battle are every Māori representative in the country not amongst the privileged seven who enjoy the security of the Māori seats. What does changing tikanga in Parliament do any time soon for homeless Māori, for Māori victims of abuse in care, for Māori land leases? For the children, the future, the next generation, whose fates rest in the hands of Oranga Tamariki staff?

It feels telling to me that Rob Campbell’s article defends the Greens’ economic program, but simply engages in vagaries of culture and practice around Te Pāti Māori. None of this is to say that culture and bias and institutions do not have a direct and tangible impact on human behaviour that feeds secondarily into economics and other subjects. None of this is to discredit the pain and heartbreak that comes from Māori people having to live lives where your experience and culture is treated as lesser and dispensable and a threat, and the heartfelt desire and real need to change that for the better.

But I simply don’t have faith anymore when I look at the Pāti caucus that they are laser-focused on the many out there on the streets. Whoever is telling the truth and whoever isn’t, they have become transfixed with their own issues in Parliament. In its own way, placing too much emphasis on the rhetorical battle with the system is just as much a way for the system to corrupt you as was the previous Party’s issue of being overly collaborative with colonial power. 

Maybe the few members of Te Pāti Māori’s caucus - at least the core four on the in-team - can make it past their short term crisis. But it all will have been for nothing if they can’t do something for the many.