By-election win somehow sends Te Pāti Māori into chaos

Friday, 12 September 2025

Henry Cooke is deputy political editor of The Post.

OPINION: It should have been a banner week for Te Pāti Māori.

A week the party’s MPs put their doubters to shame, when they proved their massive wins at the last election were not a flash in the pan, and that the Labour Party had better start taking them seriously as the only path to Government.

It should at least have been a week to show up in Parliament and crow a bit. Lord it over Labour’s Willie Jackson, who was openly shocked by Te Pāti Māori’s huge win in the Tāmaki Makaurau by-election; and lord it over the news media, who had put the party’s candidate through an excruciating Q+A interview but had not actually sunk her candidacy.

Instead, there is chaos. Outspoken Te Tai Tonga MP Tākuta Ferris kicked it off with a late-night Instagram video on Tuesday, where he reiterated widely-condemned comments he had earlier made about which races should be allowed to volunteer in Māori seats. His co-leaders had already personally apologised for these comments to Labour, but now the by-election was over it was back to the races, with Ferris saying it was “unacceptable” for people of other ethnicities to campaign in a Māori seat - even when they were doing so for a Māori candidate.

It didn’t stop there. The co-leaders, clearly not on the same page as Ferris, met with an anti-racism NGO that had been critical of Ferris’ comments, according to RNZ. Then it emerged that the co-leaders had fired the party’s whip Mariameno Kapa-Kingi earlier in the week - no small thing given the job comes with a roughly $20,000 pay bump and a lot of responsibility to manage the party’s MPs. A party spokesperson told The Post the whip came amongst a wider reshuffle as the party looked forwards to winning every Māori seat at the next election.

Ferris was doorstopped by Stuff in Wellington Airport on Thursday night, where he did nothing to resile from his comments, and said he hadn’t talked to the co-leaders since his post.

Instead, Ferris suggested that they couldn’t really control him anyway, as the MPs were all essentially equals.

“There are six seats in Te Pāti Māori. They all represent individual rohe. All of those rohe have the same mana.”

Now on Friday, rumours abound within political circles about a more serious split within the party caucus, between MPs aligned with party president John Tamihere and those who are not. These are entirely unconfirmed, and could be entirely mischievous and off the mark, but have circulated so widely that even the National-aligned KiwiBlog has referred to them. Tamihere refused to comment either way when contacted by The Post on Friday.

It’s worth nothing as president Tamihere has a very large amount of power over the party for a non-MP. The party’s 2023 constitution gives him a role in any decision on party leadership, but provides no formal role for the existing MPs to act as a body, as they do in other parties. He is listed below the co-leader but above the rest of the caucus on the party’s website.

If the rumours are false and there is no serious split within the party, there is clearly a discipline issue. New Zealand politics in the MMP era has always abhorred any MP defying their leaders so openly, and usually when an MP does it they are either angling for a leadership spill or about to leave their party for good.

You could make a strong argument that New Zealand needs a culture of MPs standing up to their leaders and forging paths on their own. It’s just a much harder argument to make when that principled stand is over attacking minority ethnic communities for handing out some pamphlets.

Through it all one has to feel for new Tāmaki Makaurau MP Oriini Kaipara, who managed a stonking win against the massive Labour Party machine. This week could have been about her - instead it’s all been about a man and his Instagram.