‘I’m honest’: Oriini Kaipara wants to be a different kind of politician

Saturday, 23 August 2025

It’s now a cliche for an aspiring MP to say they want to be a different kind of politician.

But Oriini Kaipara, the former journalist and broadcaster, really seems to believe she will be.

Speaking to The Post in a cafe near her west Auckland home, Kaipara, who is contesting next month’s Tāmaki Makaurau byelection for Te Pāti Māori, says she’s unapologetically honest, “can’t lie”, and doesn’t want to be an MP that won’t answer a question.

She has a particular insight there, too, having for a short time hosted Newshub Nation - the former weekly political panel show that saw her go toe-to-toe with decision-makers adept at swerving from curly questions.

Kaipara seems to have taken that mantra of honesty a step further, revealing she has her sights set on being in Government, not just Parliament.

“I'm an honest woman. I'm gonna look you in the eye. I don't play games. I'm not here to play any games. I’m serious about this. My answer is, yes.”

She even acknowledges and, to some extent, agrees with criticism that the party she’s standing as a candidate for - Te Pāti Māori - has made a habit of drawing unwanted attention and being, in her words, “very rah rah”.

“I’ll be frank with you, because I’m an honest person, it has been off-putting to many of us Māori, but also non-Māori as well, because there’s so much fight,” she says.

That doesn’t mean she won’t bring a bit of that energy herself. “I am rah rah, just in my own way. I rah rah when I do Matatini, I rah rah when it comes to celebration.”

Nor does it mean she isn’t fully committed to the Te Pāti Māori kaupapa, the “only party” she believes has been “pushing and prioritising” Māori culture.

“It’s only [when] the hīkoi arrives in Auckland that you see the Labour bandwagon jump on … and then claim the clout for it.”

Instead, her view is that sometimes the battles worth fighting aren’t those in the political arena.

“I think there's just so [many] attacks from the Government that that's really where Te Pāti Māori’s energy has been directed - on shutting down the attacks,” she says.

“I'll go back to the rah rah. It's almost like, pick and choose our battles. We know what David [Seymour’s] like …. he’ll say things to get under our skin and we’ll allow him to. It is true that that is the perception from the outside looking in. Let it wash [away].

“As a presenter and a journalist, who has been confronted by racism point blank to my face … I know when to pick and choose my battles now.”

Kaipara is a familiar face to many. While at TVNZ1, she made headlines for becoming the first broadcaster with a moko kaue to present a mainstream bulletin.

Her decision to leave broadcasting, which also included time as a newsreader and host for Newshub, was about stepping away from the limelight, but it wasn’t a “spur of the moment” call to re-enter it via politics.

“The conversation was actually sparked by my … stepdad, who, up until the last general election, had never voted before - and he's hitting 60 soon,” Kaipara says.

“He sat me down and said, ‘When are you gonna run?’ That stopped me in my tracks, because I was like, ‘What?’”

That was followed by her own kids urging the same, and suddenly others were joining in.

At the Olympics, where Kaipara was working as a cultural advisor for the New Zealand Olympic committee, someone asked if she was “the MP lady” - referencing Te Pāti Māori’s Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke.

“Me leaving broadcasting, and the changes happening within the industry … right across Aotearoa - the timing, it was just all timing. I take signs very seriously, especially if they're in my house, coming from people who never speak about voting or politics.”

Next month’s byelection comes with a tinge of sadness, with the seat only becoming vacant because of the sudden death of Te Pati Māori sitting MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp.

Kaipara says, in te ao Māori, “we don’t just put you in the ground and forget about you”.

She intends to honour Kemp’s legacy.

“It's not just dealing with the seat alone. It's dealing with the real human that occupied not just the seat, but held a role and responsibilities for all of Tāmaki Makaurau in a short period of time. But then also having her family, her children, her parents, come through our marae,” she explains.

Her main competitor in the byelection is Labour’s Peeni Henare, the long-standing MP who held the seat for three terms until being dethroned by Kemp in 2023 - by just 42 votes.

Henare, who this week countered his party’s stance on whether to repeal the Government’s gang patch ban (Henare told a debate he would scrap it), previously told The Post that people were getting “tired of the tribalism that the Māori Party’s talking about”.

Kaipara calls that comment offensive. “Who says that about their own people, ‘tribalism’? That's almost a quote from a bloody pre-colonial book that says Māori are savage. That sounds like, to me, not a Peeni Henare quote, but something from the Labour machine.”

She continues: “We won't compromise on our cultural identity. When you say, ‘Oh, can you do a karakia, but make sure it's 10 seconds, because we've got something else’. No, that's compromise. You want a karakia? I'll do the karakia my way.”

Nevertheless, she feels Henare is speaking to different voters to herself on the campaign trail.

“Peeni hasn’t felt struggle and pain on the grass floor, you know, on the bottom floor … it's always been either in the middle class or in the upper class,” says Kaipara.

“He's never known what it's like to not have food in your cupboards, what it's like to not make ends meet, what it's like to have to sacrifice your own children to get a job just to put kai on the table.”

Kaipara feels she’s speaking especially to women, who she describes as “constantly overlooked, undermined, undervalued and underpaid”.

It’s also a presumption, she adds, to think that older, more middle-class voters were more likely to turn out at the ballot box.

“[Labour’s] been saying, this is our vote, the older generation - but it's not. Hana [Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke] turned all those older voters to her in Hauraki-Waikato. That is proof that what Labour says isn't actually reflecting the truth of our reality today.”

Our interview closes with another moment of honesty from Kaipara. If she doesn’t win on September 6, will her name be on the ballot again at next year’s general election?

For starters, she doesn’t expect to lose this time.

But would she continue if she does?

“That is up to my whanau, the process I started with. It'll come down to that conversation - a real one - with my family, especially my kids, because they're on this journey with me too.”