Te Pāti Māori must reinstate Mariameno Kapa-Kingi as MP, High Court rules
Tuesday, 10 March 2026
Te Pāti Māori (TPM) unlawfully expelled Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and must reinstate her, the High Court has ruled.
Kapa-Kingi has been reinstated as an MP and the party ordered to tell Parliament’s Speaker that she is once again a member.
The party has already written to the Speaker to do that, saying the party would respect the decision of the court.
Kapa-Kingi was expelled in November but took this decision to court, seeking a judicial review. She won an interim reinstatement in December ahead of the full hearing in early February.
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The High Court ruled her expulsion involved “fundamental errors of law and breaches of natural justice”.
Kapa-Kingi also sought to have John Tamihere removed as party president, arguing that the party’s constitution suggested that the presidency rotate between people. The High Court ruled against her on this point.
Justice Paul Radich was scathing of TPM’s process for expelling Kapa-Kingi in his judgment, suggesting that the party did not follow its constitution at all in doing so ‒ in particular by not allowing representatives from her electorate into the meeting or giving her a proper chance to respond to allegations against her.
“[P]erhaps most fundamentally, the relevant tikanga principles – which must inform the way in which a decision-maker considers the Kawa’s [constitution’s] rules – were not applied in any way,” Radich wrote.
“To convene a meeting which would play a fundamental part in determining Ms Kapa-Kingi’s future with the Pāti without involving her, without giving any indication that a resolution to suspend her was on the table, without allowing her an opportunity for a substantive response, and in the absence of the members of her electorate council, could not on any view be seen, for example, as elevating and enhancing relationships, as working together with respect, as promoting whanaungatanga, as working for unity, as developing an environment that nourishes wairua or that reflects the attributes of rangatira,” Radich wrote.
The party said in a statement it would respect the decision and would be moving forward with “repatriating” Kapa-Kingi back into the party.
TPM co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said Kapa-Kingi would be the party’s candidate in Te Tai Tokerau for the upcoming election.
Tamihere said the party would not be appealing the decision.
“I’m happy that our whole movement can start focusing on November the 7th.”
How each side argued their case
TPM argued that her expulsion was necessary thanks to worries over a projected $133,000 overspend of her parliamentary funds and because she was bringing the party into disrepute ‒ in part because her son had gone to the media to describe the party as “dictatorial”.
Kapa-Kingi argued that the problems with the funding only came as a result of her covering for the duties of a dying fellow MP - Takutai Tarsh Kemp who died in June after battling kidney disease - and were in any case resolved to the satisfaction of the Speaker.
She also argued that she could not be blamed for the public actions of her son.
Her lawyer, Michael Colson KC, argued that Kapa-Kingi was improperly expelled from the party ‒ as the decision-making body that expelled her was not able to under the party’s constitution, was not meeting legally in any case, did not follow the proper procedure to expel her, was breaching the general tikanga (customs) requirements of the constitution, and that the party was now applying a “revisionist” view of how the expulsion had happened.
TPM produced a text message from Kemp showing that she too was not happy with how money for her electorate was being spent.
TPM’s lawyer, Davey Salmon KC, argued that Kapa-Kingi and her son had put the party into a sustained crisis.
Salmon quoted British TV show House of Cards when arguing that Kapa-Kingi had not sufficiently distanced herself from comments her son made about the party being run in a dictatorial manner, with Salmon comparing her to fictional character Francis Urquhart saying “you may well think that, I couldn’t possibly comment” as essentially a way to confirm something
He said he and the judge could not really adjudicate on the political decision-making process of leaders.
“We’re not experts in politics and PR. We don’t have the justifiable sensitivity that perhaps Mr Tamihere has about how badly nepotism and misuse of public funds can play in an immediate sense.”