Tākuta Ferris breaks silence, refuses to apologise over ‘racist’ posts
Friday, 12 September 2025
Te Pāti Māori MP Tākuta Ferris says he has nothing to apologise for, despite his own party publicly apologising on his behalf after being accused of making “racist” posts.
The MP for Te Tai Tonga is now effectively tripling down on those comments, and has dismissed the apology his party made after the original post last week.
His latest comments, made to Stuff on Thursday night, show his continued refusal to back down despite his own co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, going on damage control and apologising on his behalf.
Such open defiance of your own party leadership is rare in New Zealand politics. But Ferris said he had the right to make his own call on this issue - as he had just as much mana as any other Te Pāti Māori MP, including the co-leaders.
He said he only agreed to delete the first post given fears it could impact Oriini Kaipara, who was in the final days of her by-election campaign for Tāmaki Makaurau. But he said he stood by the comments he made in that post, and in the late-night monologue he posted justifying it after the by-election.
Speaking to Stuff at Wellington Airport, Ferris also revealed he hadn’t spoken to either co-leader following his latest video.
While Ferris claimed the co-leaders hadn’t contacted him, Labour leader Chris Hipkins and Green co-leader Marama Davidson both said Ngarewa-Packer had called them following the video. They said she’d assured them his comments did not reflect the views of Te Pāti Māori.
In that clip, he again lashed out at Labour for having non-Māori supporters helping their campaign.
Hitting back at Labour’s Willie Jackson - who said the first post was “racist” - Ferris said: “Guess what, Willie. I don't give a crap who you care about or what you care about. In the Māori seats, it's about the Māori people, Māori only.”
His first post said it was mind blowing to see “Indians, Asians, Black and Pākehā” supporting Labour’s Peeni Henare in Tāmaki Makaurau. He said those non-Māori supporters were “campaigning to take a Māori seat from Māori”.
Asked why he was defying his co-leaders by leaving the video online, Ferris said: “Well, they haven't said anything to me.”
He said each Te Pāti Māori MP was there because of the support they had in their electorates and rohe, and so they could make their own decisions.
“I mean, that's not how we work in te ao Māori. There are six seats in Te Pāti Māori. They all represent individual rohe. All of those rohe have the same mana,” he said.
“They haven't said anything to me. And the post isn't an attack or anything like that on multicultural New Zealand. It's an attack on the way that the major parties in this country use multicultural New Zealand to diminish Māori rights.”
By claiming Labour was trying to “take a Māori seat from Māori”, Ferris denied he was suggesting that Henare and Georgie Dansey, who would have entered Parliament had Henare won, weren’t Māori.
“No, no, no, I'm calling out Labour's use of multicultural New Zealand to diminish Māori rights,” he said.
He said he was aware of criticism from across Parliament that his posts had been “racist”. He rejected that, saying he wanted to discuss a “real issue” about how the political system was built to limit indigenous rights and Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
“I've seen them all say it's racist. I mean, are we going to take advice from Winston Peters on what's racist,” he replied.
Ferris also dismissed concerns about the timing of the post, which was around midnight on Tuesday night, and his appearance - which NZ First’s Shane Jones described as “some sort of lost soul on the side of the street”.
He said the timing of the post was due to him being “a busy father” with “not enough hours in the day to sort everything out”.