Court to decide whether Mariameno Kapa-Kingi still a Te Pāti Māori MP on Friday

Thursday, 4 December 2025

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi is challenging the decision to expel her from Te Pāti Māori.“

Ousted Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi will find out at 4pm on Friday whether she is to be reinstated to the party by the High Court ahead of the party’s annual meeting on Sunday.

Kapa-Kingi was expelled from Te Pāti Māori (TPM) last month alongside fellow MP Tākuta Ferris.

She was in the High Court in Wellington on Thursday seeking an interim injuction reinstating her to the party - and removing John Tamihere as party president.

A substantive hearing on the matter will be heard on February 2, but Kapa-Kingi was seeking to be reinstated into the party before then.

Her lawyer Mike Colson, KC, said that Kapa-Kingi had an “overwhelming” case that the expulsion was unlawful and thus she was still an MP for TPM.

He argued that the party’s National Council did not have the power to expel her, it had not even met properly, and that the allegation that Kapa-Kingi had misspent party funds was wrong.

He also argued that Tamihere was no longer lawfully the party president as he was elected to a three-year term in June of 2022 that had now expired.

Tamihere’s lawyer Danny Salmon, KC, noted that the party’s 2024 AGM had seen Tamihere’s presidency affirmed - with Kapa-Kingi present.

He said the expulsion was lawful under broad powers the party had to expel members bringing the party into disrepute and that the courts should tread carefully before interfering in politics.

Kapa-Kingi’s lawyer: No ‘party funds’ misspent

The allegation of overspending or misspending of funds appeared to be TPM’s principle grounds for expelling Kapa-Kingi, according to her lawyer.

Colson pointed to an email from the party to Kapa-Kingi in September that indicated that her parliamentary budget overspending - said to be $133,000 at the time - could still be brought “back into line”.

He said this didn’t gel with a later letter sent by party secretary Lance Norman on October 16 accusing of her misspending “party funds” - which he contended are very different from the allocation given to MPs by Parliament, which was the spending in question.

Kapa-Kingi also pushed for party president John Tamihere to be removed from his role.

“There was no misuse of any funds, let alone for personal gain,” Colson said.

Kapa-Kingi has since provided evidence that suggests her budget was eventually brought into line - with what Colson described as an underspend of $1.

Colson said that Kapa-Kingi had been tracking to overspend her electorate funds because she was helping to take on work from the late Takutai Tarsh Kemp, who was ill at the time.

He said this was remedied with a transfer from Kemp’s electorate, signed off by co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

Salmon said the matter of the funds was in fact far more complex than had been presented and that the party had to take into account that any allegation of misspent funds would be like a “red rag to a bull” for some sections of the news media.

He presented a text message from Kemp which he said suggested that she was uncomfortable with the funds being transferred.

Justice Radich noted that the matter of the funds had been resolved with Parliamentary Services ahead of the expulsion.

Lawyer for the party Davey Salmon, KC, argued that the courts should tread carefully before intervening in politics. (File photo).

Salmon agreed but said the case for the expulsion was far larger than simply the funds and involved the “disharmony and disrepute” the expelled MPs were bringing to the party.

Defence: Courts should avoid meddling in politics

Salmon said the case was not as overwhelming as presented by Colson, suggested the courts should tread very carefully into political matters, and said that there had not been time to prepare a proper response ahead of the hearing on Thursday.

Salmon said Tamihere was in transit when notified of the action.

He suggested the court “hurry up a bit more slowly” and did not need to make an interim motion to reinstate her ahead of the AGM.

“An interim position would be prolonging the pain and avoiding both parties moving on,” Salmon said.

Salmon pointed to cases that suggested that courts should defer to politics as a “no-go zone”.

“In politics, to make a large omelette eggs get broken,” Salmon said.

He also argued that natural justice principles - which Kapa-Kingi’s lawyer argues were breached - did not apply as strongly in politics.

He said parties clearly had a right to decide who and who would not be a member and there should not be an assumption that anyone had a right to be a member.

“There'll be political parties who don't want some of us as members, no matter how much we largely comply with the membership criteria,” Salmon said.

Process for expulsion challenged

Colson challenged the resolution made by the party’s National Council to expel her, saying there were “many flaws” with the process.

He argued there was no power in the party’s constitution to exclude her electorate executive from the meeting, and that far more people should have been in the meeting - including the party’s MPs, and four delegates from each electorate, not just the chairpersons.

“There are meant to be up to 39 members of the National Council present,” Colson said.

He also argued that the National Council should not have had a role in any expulsion and that there was no meeting of a “Disciplinary and Disputes Committee” which should have adjudicated on the matter.

“All roads lead to the Disciplinary and Disputes Committee.”

Salmon pointed to a different clause in the party constitution which suggested the National Council had a strong power to expel members if they wished to - and argued that the expulsion was made on grounds outside of just the dispute over funds.

He said this clause gave the executive broad powers to act - especially after Kapa-Kingi and her son Eru started to criticise the party publicly.

“For whatever reason - her and her son Eru began speaking publicly in a negative way….It was no coincidence, something had happened internally that meant he was speaking,” Salmon said.

He said the party had attempted to deal with the party in a consensual way but that Kapa-Kingi had responded in a “glib” way to this outreach.

A more substantive hearing is set down for either February 2 or 3 next year.

Both sides decry lack of face-to-face meetings

Speaking following the hearing, Kapa-Kingi said she had been reluctant to take the matter this far but it was good to have her “day in court”.

She said she would have preferred to sort out the matter directly with the party.

“It saddens me, because there has been constant attempts from others, from my electorate, from Ngāpuhi, to resolve this. But it hasn’t worked out that way, so we’re here,” Kapa-Kingi said.

Party secretary Lance Norman told media he was comfortable that the party followed the proper process in its expulsion.

“You can't say disparaging comments about the party - we followed that rule. So hopefully the judge goes the same way,” Norman said.

“We would rather have not been played out in the media or in a High Court. We would have liked to have had face-to-face opportunities, but we weren't really given that opportunity, because the media had hit us, and then social media hit us,” Norman said.

Ructions, ‘reset’, rupture

The two MPs’ expulsion from the party came after a period of chaotic infighting, including an unsigned email sent to all members detailing allegations against Kapa-Kingi and her son Eru Kapa-Kingi - a former staffer for the party who had fallen out with party president John Tamihere.

Ferris had publicly criticised non-Māori Labour supporters campaigning for candidate Peeni Henare to win the Māori electorate seat, and then doubling down on the criticism after the party co-leaders apologised to Labour.

Kapa-Kingi was then demoted from party whip, which Tamihere on Monday said was due to iwi leaders wanting to see her in the electorate more.

Her son, Eru, a former party vice-president who leads the Toitū Te Tiriti protest movement, then publicly declared the movement’s split from Te Pāti Māori, calling its leadership a “dictatorship”.

After the reset, four weeks ago, the party sent out an unsigned email to members alleging that Kapa-Kingi was overspending her parliamentary budget by $133,000 and that Eru Kapa-Kingi had been barred from Parliament after an incident with security staff.

Ferris said there “wasn’t a consensus” about issuing this explosive email.

Ferris’ Te Tai Tonga electorate executive publicised a petition that called for Tamihere to “stand down immediately”.

Tamihere then publicly urged Kapa-Kingi and Ferris to “do the honourable thing” and split from the party, levelling further accusations against the pair, including that Kapa-Kingi had been exploring a possible leadership bid.