An explosive email sent by Te Pāti Māori detailing allegations against one of its own MPs has brought the party’s private disagreements into the light. It risks sowing more internal trouble just days after the party announced a ‘reset’. So how did Te Pāti Māori go
Te Pāti Māori internal chaos: How the party has collapsed into controversy and infighting
Analysis by
Jamie Ensor is a political reporter for the NZ Herald, based at Parliament in Wellington.
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Its MPs presented a united front, but it’s since become clear that discord was brewing in the background.
Tensions within the party became apparent after the Herald revealed MP Tākuta Ferris’ now-infamous social media post targeting individuals of minority ethnicities campaigning for Labour in the by-election.
The party’s leadership initially apologised, but Ferris continued to make comments of a similar nature, without the co-leaders seemingly taking any action. The party’s president, John Tamihere, questioned Ferris’ framing of his argument, but backed the substance.
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From that point onwards, there has been a steady stream of rumours spreading about dramas and disagreements within the party, particularly relating to its MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi after her sudden, initially unexplained, demotion as party whip.
Those strains boiled over on Monday night. Te Pāti Māori emailed members a raft of documents, making allegations against Kapa-Kingi and her son Eru, the high-profile face of the Toitū Te Tiriti activist movement. The party said this was in response to Eru’s own allegations against the party, including saying that it had a “dictatorship leadership” style.
This happened just days on from the party promising a “reset”, more emphasis on policy, and a desire to work with Labour and the Greens to take power next year. Instead, Labour is now questioning the state of the party that polls show it would need to rely upon to form a future Government.
Here’s a look back at some of the key moments in Te Pāti Māori’s rapid rise, and now its internal strife.
ELECTION 2023
By co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s own admission last week, the party didn’t expect to do as well as it did in the 2023 election.
The Māori Party – as it was known at the time – fell out of Parliament in 2017, before Rawiri Waititi won the seat of Waiariki in 2020. The party’s vote meant he was able to bring Ngarewa-Packer into the House off the list.
Three years later, much of them spent campaigning from home and online due to Covid restrictions, and the party landed six of the seven Māori seats at the 2023 election. That included Maipi-Clarke taking Hauraki-Waikato away from then-Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Kapa-Kingi winning Te Tai Tokerau from Labour’s Kelvin Davis.
At the time, the party didn’t anticipate that level of success. It meant a caucus of two MPs – who had only completed a term in Parliament – expanded to six. That came with more resources and a greater presence.
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But as Ngarewa-Packer put it, the party also began to experience its own issues.
“We’ve had growth spurts and growing pains, and we’ve been broken. We’ve been tested in ways we’ve never been tested before as a movement.”
TREATY PRINCIPLES BILL
While the party settled into a groove of scrutinising many of the Government’s actions and marking out issues it wanted to own – such as the repealing of Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act and seabed mining – it was with the Treaty Principles Bill that Te Pāti Māori’s opposition went global.
The party, alongside Toitū Te Tiriti, was instrumental in activating people to turn up to several large protests, including on Budget Day last year. While many of these demonstrations were general in their nature, opposing the Government’s agenda on issues particularly affecting Māori, by November, the focus has narrowed onto the Treaty Principles Bill.
The hīkoi to Parliament that month, primarily in opposition to the Government’s legislation, has been described as one of the largest protests in New Zealand in recent memory. The streets of central Wellington were flooded with people, with Te Pāti Māori MPs being key speakers.
Among them was Maipi-Clarke, who earlier in November, had received international media attention for her actions during the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill.
When the vote was occurring, the MP initiated a haka that disrupted proceedings. Footage of the event went viral, viewed hundreds of millions of times globally, but the demonstration also led to the young MP, as well as Ngarewa-Packer and Waititi being suspended from Parliament temporarily.
BY-ELECTION
In July 2024, Kemp, the party’s MP in Tāmaki Makaurau was diagnosed with serious kidney problems and took leave of Parliament for a period while she underwent treatment.
However, in June this year, just days after celebrating her 50th birthday, Te Pāti Māori confirmed Kemp had died. The passing sent shock through Parliament, with the House adjourning early to acknowledge the loss.
Kemp’s death meant a by-election in the seat, which she had won extremely narrowly in 2023 over Henare, the incumbent at the time.
Te Pāti Māori selected former broadcaster Kaipara as its candidate, while Henare stood again for Labour. Ultimately, Kaipara won out with 6948 votes compared to Henare’s 3429, a significantly larger margin than Kemp’s 42-vote victory in 2023.
The electorate had earlier been the focus of authorities amid allegations personal data had been misused at Manurewa Marae to help Te Pāti Māori’s election chances. Kemp was the chief executive of the marae before entering Parliament.
While an investigation found failures in public agencies’ handling of personal information, police said there was “insufficient evidence” to prove corruption. Tamihere always denied allegations his party had misused data.
FERRIS’ COMMENTS
While the by-election was seen by some commentators as solidifying Te Pāti Māori’s hold over the Māori seats – bar Ikaroa-Rāwhiti - it was also when the public began to see some internal differences playing out in public.
During the last week of the by-election, the Herald revealed Ferris has taken issue with non-Māori volunteers campaigning for Labour in Tāmaki Makaurau. He posted on social media an image of the volunteers which he said ”blows my mind”.
“Indians, Asians, Black [sic] and Pākehā campaigning to take a Māori seat from Māori,” he said, adding multiple “exploding head” emojis and pictures of himself looking confused and shaking his head.
Te Pāti Māori said at the time it “does not condone the language used in that post” and asked Ferris to remove the post, apologising “for any hurt it has caused”.
While that seemed to have nipped the issue in the bud, Ferris just the next week doubled down. He said it was “unacceptable” for people of other ethnicities to campaign to “take a Māori seat from the Māori people” and accused Labour of “erasing Māori”.
This time, unlike when Ferris made his initial social media post, Te Pāti Māori leadership didn’t provide any immediate public comment condemning the language.
Instead, Ngarewa-Packer is said to have apologised in private to Labour and the Greens and said Ferris’ comments didn’t represent the party’s view.
But this was thrown into question when the party’s president, Tamihere, said that while Ferris’ framing was “far too aggressive”, the “substance... was right from my perspective”.
The next day, Waititi told journalists, “we don’t support the way in which Tākuta made his comments”. But he said it had sparked “significant and pleasing discussions” with ethnic groups.
Last week, the Herald asked Kaipara whether she agreed with Ferris. She wouldn’t say, but noted she believed “we must respect and honour everybody despite the colour of their skin and despite what language they speak.”
Labour’s Chris Hipkins criticised Ferris’ language throughout and warned how Te Pāti Māori dealt with the matter “will have a bearing on Labour’s ongoing working relationship with them”.
KAPA-KINGI’S DEMOTION
While the focus was on Ferris’ remarks, it also emerged that Kapa-Kingi had been removed from her role as the party’s whip. The role was suddenly listed on Parliament’s website as being held by Ngarewa-Packer.
When the Herald caught up with Kapa-Kingi, she said she couldn’t speak about the decision but it was one “made by our leadership”.
“I quite liked the work, but yeah. Things are changing,” she said, not elaborating on what had prompted the change.
The demotion caught some by surprise, with the MP being mostly well-liked around Parliament and seen as having been diligent in her duties as whip.
The Herald’s Audrey Young said last week that it exposed deeper issues within the party.
It was reported that a trip to Japan which Kapa-Kingi accompanied Speaker Gerry Brownlee and other MPs on in June had been the subject of debate within Te Pāti Māori, with some expressing the view that it was a luxury inconsistent with party kaupapa.
It was also understood that some party members had sounded out the possibility of Kapa-Kingi as a future leader, a suggestion that got back to party leadership.
While Te Pāti Māori initially didn’t comment on the demotion, it eventually said it was making changes following Kaipara’s election and ahead of the election campaign.
ERU SPEAKS OUT
With Kapa-Kingi removed the whip role and keeping mostly quiet about, it was her son, Eru, who next made waves.
At the start of October, he went public with concerns about Te Pāti Māori leadership, telling Te Ao Māori News it had a “dictatorship model”, among other criticisms. This was denied by the party.
Eru also said there was a “need for distance” between Toitū Te Tiriti and Te Pāti Māori, which was seen as a cutting of ties with the political party by what had been one of its biggest grassroots supporters and an influential player on social media.
Following Eru’s comments, Toitū Te Tiriti issued a statement on social media saying that while it has “roots connected to Te Pāti Māori”, it was always intended as an “independent kaupapa”.
“Commentary circulating in the media beyond this reflects individual views, not the collective of Toitū Te Tiriti.”
Te Ao Māori News’ report noted that Kiri Tamihere, the daughter of president John Tamaihere and the partner of co-leader Rawiri Waititi , is among Toitū Te Tiriti’s leadership. According to the Companies Register, Kiri Tamihere is the single shareholder in Toitu Te Tiriti Limited.
RESET?
Last week, following the maiden speech of the new MP Kaipara and a haka that drew criticism from the Speaker, Te Pāti Māori held an event to “reset” the party.
In a speech, Ngarewa-Packer acknowledged the party’s leaders had heard the need for clearer direction in how it could work to unseat the coalition Government. She stressed that parties on the left – Te Pāti Māori, the Greens and Labour – needed to work together to “make this the last term of this Government”.
“We’re tightening the lashings. Clarifying roles, front-footing communication, and you’ll see it and you’ll feel it,” she said.
But there was little detail shared by the party about new roles or any practical changes that would be made as a result of the “reset”.
A little later in the day, when asked about the allegations of a dictatorial leadership style, Waititi cut short the press conference and pulled a seemingly reluctant Ngarewa-Packer away with him. Waititi had previously warned any questions not related to the “reset” wouldn’t be answered.
Kaipara later that evening told the Herald that “every family has its ups and downs”.
“We have our dramas, but at the end of the day, the way I really, really am proud of Te Pāti Māori is how we deal with it, and we have been intent on dealing with our internal problems.”
LATE NIGHT EMAIL
Late on Monday night, Te Pāti Māori emailed its members a series of documents that contain serious allegations against both the MP Kapa-Kingi and her son, Eru. The party said it was in response to Eru’s claims.
Among the allegations made by the party was that Eru made “threats of physical violence” and “inappropriate and vulgar” remarks to Parliamentary staffers on Budget Day last year.
The Parliamentary staffer alleged he made references to race. Some of the alleged comments include: “You aren’t shit”, “Get f*****” and “I will f****** knock you out”.
He is yet to respond directly to the allegations, but has posted on social media saying: “Those who know us know there is no question of integrity, and we will continue to be side by side with our people.”
Other allegations related to MP Kapa-Kingi previously being in danger of overspending her office’s budget by up to $133,000. Ngarewa-Packer told the Herald the budget issue had since been resolved.
The stream of internal issues has led to questions about Labour’s ability to potentially work with Te Pāti Māori. Hipkins has reiterated on several occassions that the party looks far off being “able to play a constructive role in Government.”
On Tuesday, he said: “At the moment it is not clear how many Māori parties there are at the moment.”
“It seems there are a number of different segments to the Māori Party and it is unclear whether they actually form a cohesive whole at this point.”
Labour intends to make clear closer to the election what parties it could or could not work with, but members of the National Party believes it’s time for Hipkins to rule Te Pāti Māori out.
“It is always disturbing to see civil conflict within a party. A party that can’t manage itself certainly can’t have a role in managing the country,” said senior National MP Nicola Willis.
Jamie Ensor is a senior political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist this year for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.