What Killed The Māori Party?
Happy Wiki o te Reo Māori! I’m doing the iwi awareness thing again that I did in A Perfect Āwhā.
The First Act: In My Mind
It’s 2017. Election night.
Eruini Paranihi (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Raukawa) offers Marama Fox (Ngāti Kahungunu), the co-leader of the Māori Party, the microphone.
Marama Fox is losing her seat.
In fact, as she speaks, the entire Māori Party are being tossed out of Parliament. Replaced by Labour Party apparatchiks.
“...what I think the whanau have done, is they’ve gone back to the mothership, they’ve gone back like a beaten wife, to the abuser, who has abused this coun- our people, over and over again!”
This is the death of the first incarnation of the Māori Party. A room full of grief, and a leader laughing miserably, in disappointment and sheer disbelief, that Māori voters would return, after a 13-year experiment, to Labour.
And yet, she promises:
"I don't concede because conceding means that we let red and blue governments rule our people like they’ve done so for a hundred and fifty years - I don’t concede to that, not ever, we'll be back to fight another day.”
The rebirth doesn’t start here - that takes a lot longer. (In 2026, the reformation of the second incarnation, Te Pāti Māori, has not even begun.)
Yet the question is already being asked.
Why did the Māori Party lose?
What needs to change to win again?
In this first act, I’ll explain the conventional answer. In the second, though, I intend to express (with full permission) a friend’s theory as to what really went wrong. And in the third act, we’ll come at last to Te Pāti Māori today, and say - if they learned the wrong lessons, have taken the party in the wrong direction towards its second downfall, then what could the third act for a party of mana motuhake look like?
In 2004, the courts set off a crisis for Helen Clark’s Fifth Labour Government that more conservative critics eagerly exploited. The question was how easily iwi and hapū should be able to reclaim their historical rights to their segments of the foreshore and seabed. The answer that Clark settled on was “not at all”: with support from New Zealand First, the Foreshore and Seabed Act was passed into law to vest the entire foreshore and seabed in the Crown. And if it belonged to the Crown, then it couldn’t very well belong to Māori, could it?
The Māori electorates had practically always voted for Labour MPs. The same government that had recently capitulated on its pro-Māori “Closing the Gaps” program was now using its power to restrict Māori rights and control. It was a profound betrayal. Labour MP Tariana Turia (Ngāti Apa/Nga Wairiki, Tuwharetoa, Nga Rauru, Whanganui) voted against the bill, and resigned. She found her new calling in Pita Sharples (Ngāti Kahungunu - Ngāi Te Kikiri o te Rangi, Ngāti Pāhauwera): a well-respected academic who had long been calling for an independent voice for Māori. Together, they formed the Māori Party, and won most of the Māori electorates off Labour’s hands.
Now what?
They couldn’t very well go into coalition with Helen Clark, or her heir, Phil Goff. Traitors!
So that left the alternative: the National Party.
National never needed the Māori Party. ACT and United Future were already available as coalition partners, and NZFirst and the Conservatives both threatened to break in in the wings. John Key took the Māori Party. in simply to build a good relationship with a potential ally, and to weaken the negotiating power of other coalition partners - just as ACT and United Future weakened the Māori Party.
The Māori Party got some wins. Whanau Ora budgeted holistically for whanau health improvements. The Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) reopened a narrow pathway to claim recognition of customary rights.
They only had so much negotiating power. Centre-left voters interested in preferential treatment for Māori found themselves working with a centre-right party that had some tolerance for this approach, but an overall “race-blind” attitude.
At every single election after going into government with National, the Māori Party lost seats. The correlation was easy to see. And 2017 confirmed that. If the Māori Party were ever going to return to Parliament, they would have to distance themselves from the National-Māori confidence and supply arrangement.
In 2020, Rawiri Waititi (Te Whānau a Apanui, Ngai Tai, Te Whakatōhea, Ngai Tuhoe, Ngati Awa, Te Arawa, Ngati Tūwharetoa, Ngai Te Rangi, Ngati Ranginui) was the only candidate to take a seat off of Labour in their 65-seat landslide. His maiden speech promised Parliament a new kind of Māori Party:
“You know what it feels like to have a pebble in your shoe? That will be my job here. A constant, annoying to those holding on to the colonial ways, a reminder and change agent for the recognition of our kahu Māori.”
The Māori Party worked to create a more effective Parliamentary caucus for pro-Māori policy than Labour’s. They lost their seats. The popular diagnosis: for a Māori political party to submit to either major political party is poison.
Te Pāti Māori is different. They’re not interested in compromise and dealmaking. They’re there to sit in Opposition, or on the crossbenches, and to criticise. They need to win seats and hold them, and that is not compatible with coalition or confidence and supply.
Is the well of Parliamentary cooperation poisoned?
The Second Act: A Red Painted Barn
With the full permission of a friend who did not wish to be named (Ngāi Tūāhuriri, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha, Ngāti Kotarani), here’s a different theory - my words to express his ideas:
The decline and fall of the Māori Party was not due to the decision to work with National.
It’s easy to point at data points on a chart moving in one direction - the Māori Party steadily deflating from 2008 onwards.
Yet the Māori Party chose to work with National in 2008. Voters had their chance in 2011 to register their dissatisfaction. Over half stuck with the Māori Party, keeping them in three of their five seats from 2008 to 2011.
You could still argue that, the longer that the National-Māori government continued on without sufficient gains for Māori, the more fatigued the voters grew.
You could just as easily counter that the foreshore and seabed anger with Labour subsided over time - in fact, it must have, for the Māori electorates to so resoundingly approve of Labour in 2017 after rejecting them a decade prior. (Not to mention Jacindamania supercharging the Labour vote.)
We need to test other theories as to why 2011’s voters who chose National-Māori over Labour later abandoned them.
It would, of course, be ridiculous to suggest that if the Māori electorates had ranked-choice voting, that most voters would be ranking:
Māori
National
Labour
After all, most of these Māori Party electorate voters were also party voting Labour.
Instead, what this demonstrates is that we have to look beyond binary red-blue party affiliation, and to what makes the Māori electorates unique: their strong emphasis on the quality of individual candidates.
Until 2014, the Māori Party was led by Sharples and Turia. Their departure was a critical loss of mana. Mana also explains the sharp drop from 2008 to 2011: as the Māori Party lost 1.5% of the electorate vote, the newly formed Mana Party won 1.4% of the electorate vote. Hone Harawira (Ngāti Hau, Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Hine, Te Aupōuri, Ngāpuhi, and Ngāti Whātua) clearly split from the Māori Party due to personal grievances and interpersonal conflicts more than ideology - certainly he was more radical than him, but it was very much a “you can’t fire me, I quit” sort of situation. And Hone Harawira, not the Labour Party, was the main beneficiary from Māori Party defectors.
Some voters no doubt switched to Mana to express their militantly left-wing and anti-National positioning. Yet across the Māori electorates, Mana did not win. Only Hone Harawira himself won in Te Tai Tokerau. The Māori Party candidate came in a way-distant third to Kelvin Davis (Ngāpuhi - Ngāti Manu). Those are exactly the kinds of circumstances in which an anti-Labour Māori Party voter might tactically vote for Harawira, so even Hone’s own majority cannot be taken as pure condemnation of 2011’s Māori Party. His strong personal brand outran the desire to push pro-Māori, anti-National politics further left.
The Internet-MANA disaster killed off Hone’s career in 2014, and cleared the field for a wide-open referendum on the National-Māori government versus a pure Labour alternative. Both Labour and Māori strategists adopted new tactics. After all, Labour couldn’t eliminate the Māori Party solely by bashing the National connection: whenever Labour finally pushed National out of government, that would be the Māori Party’s chance to regrow their strength.
Labour rejuvenated its electorate campaigns with younger, fresher candidates. Meka Whaitiri (Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Kahungunu) took Ikaroa-Rāwhiti in a 2013 byelection, and while Marama Fox’s growing profile made the rematch closer in 2017, it wasn’t enough. Where Labour had embarrassingly lost Tāmaki Makaurau in 2011 by running Shane Jones (Te Aupōuri, Ngāi Takoto, Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa), Peeni Henare (Ngāti Hine) seized the seat in 2014 to hold comfortably in 2017. And, of course, where Rawiri Waititi failed to defeat Te Ururoa Flavell (Ngāti Rangiwewehi, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Ngararanui, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Te Ata) in 2014, Tāmati Coffey knocked out Flavell in 2017.
Over time, the balance of campaign and candidate quality simply tipped from the Māori Party to the Labour Party. And the Māori Party’s new strategy just wasn’t enough. In 2017, the Māori Party lurched to the left. They bought into this very narrative we have been discussing: that they weren’t getting enough out of National. They clearly signalled their intent to try out the first Labour-Māori government - to put the foreshore and seabed issue behind them, even Andrew Little calling them “not kaupapa Māori” that very year, just to advance Māori material interests.
And the voters did not give them that chance. Thousands of Māori electorate voters in 2014 said “I’d rather have a National government where John Key works with Te Ururoa Flavell than a Labour government where David Cunliffe is accountable only to his own Māori caucus”. In 2017, they were of a new mind: “I’d rather have a Labour government where Jacinda is accountable only to her own Māori caucus than a Labour government where Jacinda works with Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox”.
Jacindamania was always going to be tough to beat. It was Jacindamania atop good, smart campaigns by refreshed candidates in key seats. And voters wanted the real thing - pure Labour Coke - more than they wanted to pop a Māori Party mentos in their Code Red.
The Māori Party took the wrong lesson away. They blamed themselves for being too collaborative and not confrontational enough, instead of accepting pedestrian concerns about candidate and campaign quality. So much so that they sacrificed “fresh” for “pugnacious” with the disastrous error of dredging up John Tamihere (Te Whakatōhea, Ngāti Porou ki Hauraki) - fresh off his “I say sieg heil to that” mayoral campaign in Auckland - as co-leader.
In one of those marvellous cycles of history, Rawiri Waititi wound up the new master of the ground game to defeat Tāmati Coffey in Waiariki in 2020. Te Pāti Māori brilliantly weaponised that toehold to expand its presence and strength, but their 2023 electorate sweep was not against the tide - it was very much racing with it. Voters were falling over themselves across the country to vote out anybody with Labour next to their name: two in three voters chose electorate candidates not from Labour.
With even safe seats in Auckland going down, we shouldn’t be surprised that voters biting the cost of living hardest, and most desirous of a hard line against the right-wing opposition, kicked out their Labour MPs. In fact, the only TPM candidate to lose was Meka Whaitiri - who, of course, had the association of Labour all over her.
Te Pāti Māori credited their willingness to confront and scrap and stand up unapologetically for Māori for such sweeping success. They pledged to continue that, and drew another lucky hand: the government plowed ahead with the Treaty Principles Bill, vindicating everything Te Pāti Māori had been saying and providing them with the easiest punching bag in the world.
And now that Te Pāti Māori have melted down - not over grand ideological divides or great questions of strategy in Parliament, but due to a total systems failure on pedestrian personal and interpersonal and managerial obligations - nobody knows where to go next. The playbook that worked in fair weather has been snapped shut by foul winds. The Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Act sailed through last year, restricting Māori customary rights once more, as MPs in Parliament set aside confrontation and criticism, collaboration and compromise, to just bicker with one another.
If they somehow sort themselves out, and lift their eyes from their own navels, where might a different history of the Māori Party lead them to?
Even if the caucus patches up these latest wounds, is there a great big taiaha bleeding out the party?
The Third Act: Get Something
This revisionist narrative of Māori Party history flies in the face of common understanding. Yet now that I’ve repeated somebody else’s counternarrative to you, I’ve noticed that, underneath the many little pieces of data it relies on, the entire theory rests on one fact of Māori politics: that most Māori roll voters vote strategically.
Or, to put this another way: TPM’s uncompromising oppositionist posturing rests on the idea that Māori roll voters will not trust them to reach any sort of compromise or deal, will not understand what a coalition requires, will punish them for strategic politics.
Let’s not yank the taiaha out TPM’s belly too quickly. Even if TPM somehow reformed overnight into a moderate, collaborative party, working with the National Party of today would be a swift decapitation strike to their own neck. Joining a coalition with ACT and NZFirst would be asking them to torture themselves.
Could the Māori Party benefit from looking like the more reasonable party - by pressuring National over their unwillingness to cooperate - by horsetrading more over individual bills? Sure, but I can’t mount a realistic argument for moderating hard right now, any more than I could for Green-National cooperation. We’re not living in the land of Key and English anymore.
In A Perfect Āwhā, I concluded that coming to Parliament to criticise just devolves into well-paid MPs duelling over dress codes, and making out Gerry Brownlee to be the most dangerous obstacle to progress in all the land. That does not materially improve the lives of struggling and disenfranchised Māori.
I’m not just saying that because I take any opportunity to link my best work. I want to “yes, and” my point. Not only do TPM overrate their stunts, they undervalue the alternative.
I laid out earlier how little leverage they had with National. The Māori Party chose governance over being oppositional under terrible conditions for doing so. Let’s not get distracted debating whether they still did the right thing by working with National. The point is that, back then, one major party was always huge, and a lot of little governing partners orbited around them.
In the 2020s, Parliament looks very different. Both major parties are sagging at the same time, with big partisan partners lined up on either side. That means that the Māori Party can exert far more leverage. Labour can’t threaten to go with NZFirst instead, or make Peter Dunne a minister again, or trot Jim Anderton out to vote through a Foreshore and Seabed Act. Even if Opportunity get in, there’s still a good chance that Labour will need the Māori Party’s numbers to form a government.
Here is what the voters and MPs, activists and candidates, of the Māori Party should be thinking:
If the left bloc is fortunate enough on election night to get rid of the most anti-Māori coalition in decades - to restore the strength of Te Tiriti and unwind the yawning gaps of inequality - are we seriously going to sit on the crossbenches, destabilise the new government, and relinquish our power to demand much of anything from that new government?
Te Pāti Māori wants leverage from sitting on the crossbenches. This would rest on the idea that, if Labour and the Greens did not govern to their satisfaction - and, come on, it’s Chris Hipkins’ Labour, he’s not going to raise nine new taxes and Barbara Edmonds will deliver quite an austere budget - then Te Pāti Māori would collapse the government, causing new elections, quite possibly delivering the right bloc back into power.
Compare what Winston (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) did in 2023: get inside the tent, team up with another minor party, and maximise combined leverage. Heck, Winnie and Seymour (Ngāpuhi - Ngāti Rehia) didn’t even like each other. On what are Marama Davidson (Ngāti Porou, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer possibly gonna disagree? These guys love each other! What funding could they secure together in the coalition agreement: for more Māori to get good health and education and social housing, for greater Māori co-governance in institutions across the country, for the restoration of Treaty Principles across legislation?
Why is it more important that Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke (Waikato, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, Te Āti Awa, Ngāi Tahu) sit on the crossbenches, making viral posts critiquing the government, than that she become Minister for Youth or Mental Health? When we think about the Māori Party of future years, could we be looking at future Ministers of Māori Development, of Māori-Crown Relations? Could they lay the groundwork for the day we see a TPM Minister of Treaty Negotiations, or of Courts?
TPM’s rhetorical positioning is not just founded on a myth about Aotearoa’s modern political history. It’s a dead end. It doesn’t serve Māori, long-term, to believe that this is the way to get and keep MPs in Parliament. Keep them there for thirty years if you like; it doesn’t mean a thing if the life of one Māori person on the street doesn’t get better thanks to that politician’s speechmaking.
Te Pāti Māori are welcome to concoct their best-laid plans to overthrow the neocolonial Westminster government still violating the Treaty and seizing Māori land to this day. They can do that at the same time as they wield the enormous influence of up to seven Māori seats, in the balance of power, to turn the tables on red and blue and do things differently.
The Māori Party are in shambles. They had best get it together soon, because at this election or the next, they’re on the cusp of a golden opportunity like they’ve never had before - not a political opportunity, not an opportunity to gather votes and rack up Reels views, but to improve Māori lives. And if they waste that, then they’ll deserve to get binned again.
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