Te Pāti Māori’s ‘reset’ next week will shape next year of politics

Friday, 3 October 2025

Te Pāti Māori have promised their members some kind of “reset” next week.

ANALYSIS: For most MPs, a maiden speech is a huge deal, a chance to place a marker before starting their career, but thankfully not a national news event.

The gallery is full of friends and supporters, the media are only interested if they’ve sniffed out something very interesting about you, and even the other side will forgive you a few stumbles or malapropisms.

Brand new Te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara will not enjoy that privilege. Her maiden speech at about 3pm next Thursday will be closely followed and picked apart. It will be seen as part of what her party has planned to directly follow it - a sorely needed “reset” announcement following weeks of news about ructions within the party, the sudden firing of its whip, and now a split with a social movement that has been essentially interwoven with the party.

This is not the first time drama within her party has overshadowed Kaipara's impressive win against the Labour Party machine in Tāmaki Makaurau. Just days after the win her new colleague Tākuta Ferris was back in the news repeating comments he had made earlier about his belief that non-Māori should not campaign in Te Pāti Māori seats - even when they are explicitly campaigning for a Māori candidate.

Now, MPs step out of line from time to time. Usually the leader or leaders of a party are able to step up and establish something like discipline, the MP apologises, and things move on.

Eru Kapa-Kingi has come out swinging against TPM.

This had seemed to be the case when Ferris first made the comments - his co-leaders had apologised on his behalf to Labour, whose volunteers Ferris had been criticising, and the whole thing had faded into the normal news diet of a by-election campaign.

But things got stranger when Ferris repeated the comments. Te Pāti Māori went to ground, suddenly announced their whip had been fired, and generally continued to ignore requests to talk to media, other than emailed statements that did not address any of the questions asked.

We got some pips and squeaks. Party president John Tamihere, who the constitution gives an extraordinary amount of control to, told Waatea News he backed Ferris’ overall message but not the way he had delivered it. His son-in-law Rawiri Waititi, co-leader of the party, showed up in Parliament to deliver a similar message - trolling the largely Pākehā press gallery by refusing to speak in anything but te reo.

It looked a little bit like some kind of reconciliation between whatever forces were fighting within the party was reachable, and potentially reachable soon.

Then on Thursday night Te Ao Māori news reported a bombshell.

Eru Kapa-Kingi, the spokesperson and seeming driving force behind the huge Toitū Te Tiriti movement that organised the massive hīkoi to Parliament last year, said the movement was cutting ties with Te Pāti Māori.

And he didn’t just say it was time to grow apart - he accused the party of being “dictatorial,” noting that their annual meeting was late and proper meetings with electorate offices weren’t happening.

It’s worth noting how intertwined these movements were. Kapa-Kingi served as a vice president of the party. His mother Mariameno Kapa-Kingi is a sitting party MP - indeed, she is the one who was fired from her whip role. Waititi’s wife, who is also Tamihere’s daughter and general manager of the party, is on the leadership group of Toitū Te Tiriti - reportedly she wasn’t at the meeting where it was decided to cut ties.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of this huge protest movement with all its mana splitting from the party so publicly. You could compare it to Labour’s affiliated unions suddenly ditching the party and complaining of it being dictatorial in public, but Toitū Te Tiriti is a far larger force within this voting bloc than the unions are within Labour’s.

It’s also worth noting that Kapa-Kingi’s intervention takes away the excuse that it was just the nasty mainstream media and other political parties questioning Te Pāti Māori’s kaupapa. This could not be sold as a simple “us v them” moment to the movement any more.

In the wake of this, silence was no longer an option. The party is now promising its members some kind of “reset” speech after Kaipara’s maiden speech. They suggest they will address the concerns raised.

Labour is the big potential winner or loser in this reset.

If the chaos continues in this bumpy way, the Labour has a huge problem. Te Pāti Māori will likely remain a huge electoral force in the Māori seats, with many people happy to party vote Labour but seat vote Te Pāti Māori. Labour will have to distance itself from the chaos to win enough centre voters without moving to a point where it loses its own Māori voters, or makes even a confidence and supply agreement with the party impossible.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said on Thursday that Te Pāti Māori were “quite a long way away from being ready to play a constructive role in any future Government”. This of course leaves the door open wide enough for National, ACT, and NZ First MPs to use any opportunity they can to tie Hipkins to Te Pāti Māori. It’s an okay line for right now but it won’t hold closer to an election where the only path to Hipkins being Prime Minister again requires support from Te Pāti Māori.

If this reset goes right for Te Pāti Māori - with some kind of discipline established by its co-leaders and its MPs aligned on fighting the Government again, instead of other parties in Opposition, then Hipkins can go back to saying some variety of “we’ll work with whatever parties we can to stop this Government”. Labour’s Willie Jackson may well be able to get his old mate Tamihere to keep the party’s MPs somewhat in line. It’s hard to see this quite happening, but it was hard to see the Māori Party partnering with National back in 2005 - Kiwis politics is never entirely predictable.

If, on the other hand, a full-blown civil war engulfs the party entirely, Hipkins can hope that voters in the Māori seats might get sick of it all and make their way back to voting for Labour and the Greens, giving him a far clearer path to power next year.

The “reset” next week might not deliver full clarity on how these things will go. But it will be, just like the maiden speech before it, a line in the sand.