Te Pāti Māori leaders survive the toughest test of their leadership

Tuesday, 4 November 2025

Iwi leaders have sent in a peace-broker and the co-leaders of Te Pāti Māori have finally fronted up to try and stop their party spiralling further with its internal warfare.

The deeply divided party’s co-leaders, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, alongside party president John Tamihere, survived one of the toughest tests of their leadership on Tuesday as they returned to Parliament.

The peace-broker, sent by the most powerful group in te ao Māori - the Iwi Chairs Forum - told Stuff he did not think the co-leaders needed to resign to restore stability to Te Pāti Māori. Iwi leaders met with them, and the Te Pāti Māori executive on Tuesday afternoon. But Stuff understands Tamihere didn’t attend the meeting, despite being invited and travelling to Wellington for it.

The co-leaders returned to Parliament amid a backdrop of rumoured leadership coups and continued mud slinging between Tamihere, who is their party president, and their own MPs and party supporters who have lost faith in their leadership and want Tamihere to resign.

But the leaders of a supposed coup in Te Pāti Māori have gone to ground, avoiding questions - and in one case, Parliament itself - as the party’s co-leaders moved to protect their positions.

Tamihere, after launching another round of explosive allegations against his own MPs - Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris - wasn’t keen to talk to reporters on Tuesday. He ran away from journalists in the morning, then dived inside a garage to avoid answering questions.

On Monday, he claimed that those two MPs had conspired to try take over as co-leaders of Te Pāti Māori. Neither MP has denied that allegation. And on Tuesday, Waititi said he stood by Tamihere and vouched for his claim that those two MPs had attempted a leadership coup.

Kapa-Kingi, one of the alleged Pāti Māori coup leaders, avoided journalists on Tuesday, although she sat behind Waititi in the debating chamber. Meanwhile, her alleged co-conspirator, Ferris, was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t at work and didn’t reply to requests for comment.

Waititi told Stuff there was no reason for Tamihere to resign.

“If you can prove to me why [he] is a distraction, or provide any reason why he should resign, then that would be good. But people throwing out allegations of toxicity, bullying and dictatorship, without any evidence - I think that’s something for you fellas to look into,” he said.

He shared that support before walking into a daunting meeting with Ngāti Kahungunu chairman Bayden Barber, who was sent by the Iwi Chairs Forum to try and broker a peace deal between warring Te Pāti Māori factions.

Barber spoke to Stuff on his way out of that meeting. He said there had been “a lot to discuss” during that two-hour hui, but he left thinking that the co-leaders could remain in their roles.

“They want to move forward. And their main priority is the Māori Party being in Government next year. That does need to be the main focus…

“We were very happy with how it went. Of course, you've got to work through the layers. And, you know, there's a lot of mamae (hurt) there, but I would say, hopefully, it’s not insurmountable,” Barber said.

He and the Iwi Chairs delegation would also be meeting Kapa-Kingi and Ferris, who weren’t present at Tuesday’s meeting. He also confirmed that Tamihere wasn’t at the meeting.

During an early morning radio interview on Tuesday, Tamihere downplayed the significance of a petition - launched by the party’s own Te Tai Tonga electorate committee - calling for him to resign. By that evening it had garnered 715 signatures, which he suggested was not much.

Speaking to reporters at Parliament, for the first time in weeks, Ngarewa-Packer said it had become clear that the issues in her party could not be sorted out behind closed doors.

She and Waititi had been refusing to answer questions about the state of their party, even as internal divisions became increasingly clear. These issues have been bubbling for months, yet Ngarewa-Packer and Waititi have repeatedly refused to give their side of the story.

On Tuesday, she said: “What we were trying to do was hold dignity and allow everyone internally to be able to address it, and that was becoming really obvious that we weren't able to that.”

She said the MPs had challenged their leadership, and were refusing to toe the party line.

“We need leadership's decisions to be respected - when they're not, that becomes problematic. And I think that's what's played out,” she said.

That tension played out publicly when Ferris refused to back down after hitting out at Labour for having non-Māori supporters backing Māori electorate candidate Peeni Henare’s campaign in Tāmaki Makaurau.

The party apologised on his behalf, but Ferris told Stuff he did not need to apologise because the leaders had no more mana within the party than he did.

While the party’s co-leaders started the process for some sort of reconciliation on Tuesday, it was unclear how the party’s president, or the two MPs he labelled “rogue”, would respond.

The Iwi Chairs Forum planned to bring all sides of the party together later this year, and it was also set to hold an AGM in early December.