I'll be back - Harawira

Mana leader Hone Harawira. Photo / Christine Cornege

Mana Party Leader Hone Harawira - who was ousted from his Te Tai Tokerau stronghold last month - says he will stand for Parliament in 2017.

Mr Harawira has also indicated he continues to have a positive relationship with controversial German millionaire and Internet Party found Kim Dotcom despite the widely held belief the deal between the two parties cost him his seat.

Mr Harawira narrowly lost his seat to Labour's Kelvin Davis at the September 20 election with many commentators citing strategic voting aimed at preventing Internet Party MPs getting into Parliament on his coattails.

Asked this morning on TVNZ's Q+A whether he would run again, Mr Harawira said: "Unless this Government is going to be good enough to take giant steps towards eliminating poverty and housing the homeless, I think there's going to be a need for a voice stridently pushing for those kinds of issues... and yes it will be me".

He would "absolutely" stand in 2017, he said.

Mr Harawira acknowledged this morning what he told Mana members three weeks ago that he had little appetite for another term in Parliament as Mana's sole MP.

"If I went back in and it was just me, then I probably would have resigned because it's a tough enough job doing it just by yourself."

However he qualified that by saying he would have seen out the term and tried to build the party in other ways.

He said the tie up with Dotcom's Internet was a risk worth taking to try and increase Mana's presence in Parliament.

Mana and the Internet Party's alliance would go the formal review process within a few weeks as per their agreement. He had been in discussions with Dotcom about working together in the future on IT scholarships for young Maori.

However, Mr Harawira said Dotcom's ongoing involvement in Internet Mana's election campaign, which Dotcom himself acknowledged was "poison", did not help it.

"I just think that in hindsight his presence during the campaign could have been managed better but I certainly don't blame him for the loss, and I think that the mainstream media went out of their way to persecute him, and we were persecuted by association.''

Specifically Mr Harawira said Dotcom's 'Moment of Truth'' could have been better timed.

"It probably would have been better to have it raised a lot earlier, or perhaps after the campaign so that we could focus on the campaign.

"It would have been better if we had more strategic focus on the election itself, rather than on events. There's a whole lot of things that could have been done better, but I'm comfortable that the risk we took was a risk worth taking to try to grow the audience, to try to grow our numbers. We weren't successful but would I do it again? In large part, absolutely."