Minister outside Cabinet Meka Whaitiri is defecting from Labour to Te Paati Māori. Seeing as I don’t even know the last time a current Minister swapped party, this came as a big surprise. I'm not alone in this; Labour appear clueless until the last minute - the Prime Minister found out when he dropped down into London. There are plenty of examples of MPs immersed in Māoridom shifting around parties in this space: from the foundation of the Māori Party itself by Labour MPs like Tariana Turia, to Shane Jones heading from Labour to NZFirst, to Willie Jackson progressing from Mana Motuhake to the Māori Party through to Labour.
There was no information available, however, about Meka Whaitiri’s dissatisfaction with Labour or what her connections to Māoridom looked like. I myself don’t exist within that space whatsoever and won’t have been able to pick up any rumours or impressions on the ground. Here’s what I can offer you: number one, three theories of the case as to why she might have left; and number two, a quick rundown on the consequences.
Theory number one: it’s personal.
Whaitiri has lived an impressive life. Head girl. A national-level sports competitor in multiple sports who bagged a reserve spot with the Silver Ferns. Left to wait for an interview by Minister Parekura Horomia, who hired her as soon as their interview concluded. CEO of Ngāti Kahungunu. A lesbian Māori woman who, from the resume, seems to have always gone up. What happened when she hit the glassy ceilings of politics?
Parekura Horomia was the first ever MP to represent the Māori electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, which is located down the whole east coast of the North Island. In 2013, he passed away. Whaitiri beat five other Labour candidates for the byelection nomination before defeating her main opponent from the Mana Party. Right-wing blogger David Farrar even opined that she "could be one of the better Labour MPs", delivering a “good victory for Labour” at a time of enormous upheaval for the party.
Accordingly, as a rising star, she took her first steps up in 2017 into the Labour Government: Minister of Customs outside Cabinet, various other Associate portfolios, and co-chair position in the Labour Māori Caucus. All of that changed less than a year later when, after some dithering, Jacinda Ardern sacked her over allegations (later substantiated as “probable” by investigation) that she had physically assaulted a person who worked in her office.
Whaitiri's climb has been slow since. She was reappointed as Minister of Customs and got some other positions, like Minister for Veterans, after the 2020 election, but remained outside Cabinet in what was hardly a rapid rehabilitation. The final straw was Hipkins’ reshuffle, in which he only gave her Food Safety while advancing other Māori candidates ahead, such as Willie Jackson (who had fumbled the TVNZ-RNZ merger and lacks as much runway ahead of him) and Kiri Allan (Whaitiri’s ex).
All of that, then, points to an alluring drama: the ultimate climber, a classic politician on the move, beginning a downward spiral from unacceptably lashing out at a staffer, growing weary and hopeless as she watched any chances of advancement dim, and finally having it stuck to her by Chris Hipkins, fourteen years her junior, effectively freezing her career as he implicitly pivots Labour away from prioritising gay people, Māori people, or women (a.k.a “identity politics”). Gaurav Sharma clearly demonstrated the futility of a public meltdown in no particular direction; why not, in a close election year, stick it to Labour in revenge for her treatment by heading to a party that oftentimes seems like their mortal nemesis?
Let’s rewind a sec. Theory the second: it’s personal, down the other side of the sword.
People - even politicians - have personalities and human reactions to situations. We are emotional, irrational, and reactive. However, people - especially politicians - also have brains and goals. We’re calculating, rational, and active. You tend to need to lean into that side of the brain to get as far as she has and do all of the things she’s done.
Look for a more logical explanation for her actions and you can find plenty of reasons. A big party like Labour are not reliant on you and can sack you and stall your career - and you let them do that, biding your time instead of walking the plank then or in 2020, taking what morsels you were offered and seeing if what came next was to your satisfaction. A tiny party such as TPM needs big names like you to grow towards relevance. If Chippy’s shown his hand and it’s not got many Māori MPs in it, and he folds every time the chance comes to go to bat for someone or something controversial, it’s time to cash your chips in and go to another table.
The Labour Party is headed for electoral defeat, and even if they win, they’re looking to renew and refresh with young guns like Ayesha Verrall; you’d be in your 60s by the end of the term, an entirely viable option for Cabinet but not a prospect to help keep a lively Opposition going, never mind set up a future government. Join a kingmaker like TPM as their only MP with ministerial experience since 2017 and you may very well be able to leverage your position to get further in a Labour-led government than you ever could inside caucus with no bargaining power.
Theory the third: forget about the personal and focus on the bigger picture.
Whaitiri cares about things, too. People care about stuff, and politics is, ideally, hopefully, a place for getting stuff done for other people. Labour have been backing away from pro-Māori positioning and you, former co-chair of Labour’s Māori caucus, care about that. (Newsroom has a stronger summary here than I could ever give.) You’re not blind to the needs of so many others in the country - it was your reason for getting into politics, and you’ve seen an uptick in anti-Māori rhetoric over the past several years even as Chris Hipkins surrenders to the critics.
The Māori Party have made a strong case for themselves as pro-Māori advocates over the past several years, and must clearly have put out feelers for you to consider such a risky move; give them a shot and see what more can get done on a policy level if you put them in a kingmaker position. Hell, even to wrap around to personal, emotional satisfaction, if it makes you feel better about the work you do for others on a day-to-day basis, because you feel surrounded by other people who care like you do, working to actually get a difference done, that’s a bonus.
These are three extremely speculative theories. Don’t buy into the trap of accepting this idle speculation just because it logically makes sense. I can tell you that her decision was probably based on all three of these factors, but one or two may not have been decisive, and there might have been some other things I missed. Nonetheless, these are my best stabs at getting to the truth.
We’ll see if we find out more - Labour and TPM have both handled the situation very amicably so far, and so it appears unlikely that the pot will run dry with leaks, or that we would get related dirt dropping on matters like her staffer situation. What I’m more curious to see than hashing out what has already happened is what comes next.
Firstly, to dismiss a couple things that won’t happen. One, whatever legal speculation occurred earlier in the day to hypothesise a potentially farcical situation, it looks like Labour’s assent will ensure that, however the Opposition might complain for a day before moving on, Whaitiri will stay in Parliament, though perhaps technically as an independent rather than a TPM MP for now.
Two, I don’t buy Barry Soper’s claim that NZFirst is suddenly going to benefit more through looking like a more plausible kingmaker. Nobody thinks that TPM is weighing up going with Labour versus National as an even, fifty-fifty chance, and information is incomplete enough that it’s hard to know whether the balance is seventy-thirty or ninety-ten. Even if a significant share of voters did, nobody’s 5-D chessing it to try and pick the most kingmakerish party.
Even if they were, how much voter overlap can there be between this iteration of TPM and this version of NZFirst? There absolutely would’ve been in the past, but right now TPM’s “push back on those deceiving and demonising or people” versus NZFirst’s dabbling with the conspiracy right and dunking on place names in TRM places them as diametrically opposed.
Finally, TPM still look like a strong kingmaker for two reasons. One, this strengthens them. Having a Minister come in, as one of only two MPs to ever represent Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, totally flips the odds of them winning the seat to guarantee their safety (recall that it was not expected that TPM would fall out of Parliament in 2017 either) and contribute to their growth. Now, granted, my prior analysis suggests any TPM candidate may have an uphill battle in a seat like that, not least because Cyclone Gabrielle may produce a deep-seated rally-around-the-flag effect for Labour, but there’s no doubting that it raises their odds.
Two side notes. One, shoutout to Heather Te-Au Skipworth for looking the classiest in this generally well-mannered affair all around by being willing to step aside. Two, it’s comical that Labour now have no representatives in the region of the country that most requires representation right now. Kieran McAnulty is already being kept away from Wairarapa for too long - Labour’s presence in the regions, having done so well there three years ago, has officially been stretched past the breaking point.
As alluded to earlier, Whaitiri provides an obvious ministerial candidate in any coalition deal, though of course that would come with its own undesirable storylines for Labour. This leads into the second fact: Whaitiri doesn’t make a coalition with Labour inevitable. Labour already have connections with TPM to negotiate an agreement and the incentive structure beforehand is clearly disposed in that direction. I’m not going to overthink this - her presence makes it more likely - but as a rogue Labour MP she probably destabilises the process more than she stabilises it, whichever way it’s going to go.
In general, Whaitiri’s departure doesn’t really cleanly fit any narrative to build around Labour falling apart. Opposition hits on Hawke’s Bay being underserved are strong and deserved, but lose their lasting impact by the absence of any byelection. Canned lines about the Prime Minister losing control of his caucus feel forced - they’ve had three rogue MPs and sixty-two loyal, and Stuart Nash quickly came to heel after his astonishing outrages. Questions from the media about whether the caucus is too big to control made me think about what a “problem” it is to have won too many MPs.
Whaitiri’s departure has been handled with enough grace to make this look frankly like a win-win for the left bloc: Labour’s problem-to-be sorts herself out and may help them in the future, and TPM snag an enormous step forward in their pursuit of Labour’s people. The question this raises going forward is about who walks next from Labour. Kiri Allan disclosed she was asked to come along, but nobody seriously believes a star going so far in Labour as to be talked about as a potential Prime Minister would drop all of that when Whaitiri already represents her side of the country.
TPM called on Nanaia Mahuta to come next. As a wahine Māori linked to the Kīngitanga, she cares about Māoridom and she has seen how impossible the “mainstream” politics of Labour make advances for co-governance, or for Māori to the highest levels of the party with her own failed leadership bid. It is not out of the question to imagine that, frustrated with her demotion and seeing no future for herself either, she brings Hauraki-Waikato.
There are even rumours that Louisa Wall, as well as Māngere activist David Letele (full disclosure: no idea who this bloke is, relying on other sources here) will head to TPM. At the point that that happens, before or after the election, the narrative is well and truly sealed: Labour brings in enormously talented Māori, disregards their contributions and keeps them down, and then acts surprised when they return to their whakapapa. It’s exactly the story that Te Pāti Māori want to tell, and Whaitiri has just opened up Wix and created the article. Time to see how well they write this one.
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