I want to start this kōrero somewhere that might seem a long way from the events of the past six months. But it isn’t.

As I have written before, it is the early 1990s. I am at Te Whānau o Waipareira with my uncle, Syd Jackson — one of the most principled Māori leaders I have ever known. We are there to represent kaimahi. To give workers a voice in their own workplace. It should have been a straightforward kōrero. It wasn’t. John Tamihere refused to discuss a collective agreement. When the conversation became uncomfortable, he called security. They escorted us from the building.

I have thought about that moment many times in the years since — not with bitterness, but because of what it taught me. There is leadership grounded in respect for people. And there is leadership grounded in control of them. That day, those two things stood in the same room, and it was very clear which was which.

That moment came back to me sharply in the weeks after my earlier articles were published, as I watched what unfolded around Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. Not because it was surprising. But because the pattern was the same. Different room. Same architecture.

Ko Wai i Muri? — Who Is Behind This?

Before I name what I am seeing, let me name what I am not doing. I am not saying that every man who has commented on this situation has done so cynically. Māori political life is complicated, and genuine disagreement is real. Nor am I suggesting that Mariameno and her whānau are without complexity — politics never produces uncomplicated people, and I have never claimed otherwise.

What I am saying is this. Since Mariameno was expelled from Te Pāti Māori — in a process the High Court found lacked constitutional legitimacy — a particular set of men, operating from particular institutional positions, have moved to contain, discredit, and diminish her. When you stand back and look at the full picture, the pattern is not incidental. It is architectural.

Let me name it clearly.

Before the Facebook post, there were the threats. As documented in court proceedings and confirmed in media reporting, Tamihere told Mariameno that if she walked out the door he would not endorse her candidacy for the next election. At a separate hui he told her he was “coming for her boys” and was “going to have utu.” These were not policy disagreements. They were personal, retaliatory threats made by a party president against a sitting woman MP — and they are now a matter of court record.

The financial allegations that preceded the expulsion deserve equal scrutiny. In October 2025, the party’s leadership sent a late-night email to the entire membership base alleging a $133,000 budget overspend by Mariameno’s office. What that email did not include was the context: Mariameno had taken on the parliamentary work of gravely ill Tāmaki Makaurau MP Takutai Moana Natasha Kemp, who died in June 2025. The co-leaders had already approved a $33,000 transfer to cover this extra work. Mariameno requested further payments. Debbie Ngarewa-Packer verbally agreed to help — and later denied making that commitment. Three months after Kemp’s death, the leadership used the resulting shortfall to build a case for expulsion. That is not governance. It is a setup — and the High Court’s 55-page ruling found the entire process unlawful.

The Department of Internal Affairs had been investigating Te Whānau o Waipareira Trust — Tamihere’s organisation — since late 2019, a six-year probe into the use of charitable funds to finance his political campaigns. The investigation formally concluded in December 2025 when the Charities Registration Board ruled not to deregister Waipareira, after the Trust made significant governance changes. Tamihere remains its chief executive. But the full documentary record — more than 1,500 pages of investigation reports, briefing notes and financial analysis — was published a few days ago on 13 May 2026, by NZ Herald journalist Matt Nippert, following an Official Information Act request. It is because of that release that the complete picture is now visible for the first time. It is the reason this article is timely.

Tamihere has a public record on accountability. In 2018 he wrote a column for the NZ Herald titled “I’ve had enough of faceless well-paid bureaucrats” — listing public sector leaders and their salaries, and demanding transparency. During his 2019 Auckland mayoral campaign he pledged to crack down on council salaries above $200,000, saying those roles should only be offered on 24-month contracts. By 2023, the key management personnel at Waipareira — with Tamihere as the most senior — were being paid an average of $510,679 per annum. A 77 percent increase in a single year. The DIA found those payments constituted serious wrongdoing. The man who built a public platform demanding accountability for others was, in the same period, presiding over executive remuneration that regulators said “brought the entire charitable sector into disrepute.”

Bryce Edwards also weighed in across November 2025 — first on 11 November questioning whether the Kapa-Kingi whānau were themselves “entangled in nepotism,” and then more fully on 20 November in his Democracy Project analysis. That second piece correctly identified the structural problem: Tamihere as party president and Waipareira chief executive, his daughter as the party’s general manager, his son-in-law as co-leader, the party secretary employed through Tamihere’s own agency — a network of family and institutional relationships he described plainly as “a Māori-branded variant of elite capture.”

Robert Whaitiri’s sworn court statement confirms it from the inside: the brother of former MP Meka Whaitiri, co-chair of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, who resigned the day after the expulsion vote rather than be part of what he witnessed, stated that “all decisions in the party were being made by a small number of persons” and the national executive was “asked to simply rubber-stamp any decisions made.”

Edwards was right about the diagnosis. But even in November he framed both sides as driven by self-interest rather than principle — and on 13 May 2026, in a third piece titled “The Māori political class is failing its people,” published the same morning as the Nippert OIA release, the frame has not moved. He could not see, or would not say, that the structural evidence he himself assembled was the strongest possible argument for exactly what Mariameno was proposing: that electorates, not a small group at the centre, should hold the mana of the movement. His headline on that same day says it plainly: not the Tamihere network, not the specific men his own analysis documents, but the whole Māori political class. That diffusion of accountability tells you where the analysis stops. He confirmed the disease and dismissed the remedy.

That is a particular kind of intellectual failure.

Dr Rawiri Taonui followed in January 2026, with a piece published on Waatea News investigating the bullying allegations. It drew heavily on unnamed sources. One line, attributed to no one in particular: “When Mariameno arrives, the boys and the invoices soon follow.” Read that again. An academic piece, published on a Māori broadcasting platform, using anonymous sources to put that kind of language into the public record about a sitting MP — before any court had ruled on anything. That is not investigation. That is a hit piece with the footnotes of scholarship.

Dr Taonui holds a named opinion column on Waatea News — the platform co-owned by Waipareira, John Tamihere’s own organisation. His public defence of Tamihere and his organisations predates the Kapa-Kingi dispute entirely, stretching back to at least July 2024 when he disputed data breach allegations against Waipareira Trust and Manurewa Marae. The editorial alignment is not incidental. It is consistent.

He has not stopped there. On 8 May 2026 — three days before Mariameno announced the Te Tai Tokerau Party — Taonui published a third piece on his Substack, titled “Delay Reinstating Kapa Kingi linked to new Political Party.” It argued the High Court ruling was not a full exoneration, that there remained grounds for fresh expulsion proceedings, and that the delay in reinstatement was connected to her planning of a new party. This is the pattern: three substantial critical pieces across six months, all targeting the same wahine, published as each significant development breaks.

That is not commentary. That is a campaign.

And then there is the Bradbury Group. Martyn Bradbury — Pākehā political activist, editor of The Daily Blog, self-described as unapologetically left — hosts a weekly political podcast proudly sponsored by Waatea News, broadcast on its platforms. In a recent episode, Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP Debbie Ngarewa-Packer was given an extended, unchallenged platform. The DIA investigation — whose full record had just been released under the Official Information Act — was not mentioned. The constitutionality of Mariameno’s expulsion was not mentioned. Bradbury opened the interview by calling her “comrade” and closed it by declaring “your democracy is grateful.”

That is not journalism. It is protection.

The record of Bradbury’s commentary makes the editorial alignment plain. In February 2026, before the High Court had ruled, he wrote publicly on The Daily Blog that Dr Taonui’s timeline of the dispute was “technically damning” and that he would “be very surprised if Mariameno wins in any sense after that evidence.” He concluded that “the Māori Party Leadership will be the ones found to have acted honourably in all of this.” The High Court found the exact opposite. Mariameno’s expulsion was ruled unlawful. The party’s own tikanga had never been applied. The process was unconstitutional. He made it because he had already chosen a side — and he made it on a platform co-owned by the organisation whose chief executive is also the president of the party he was defending.

Ko Wai i Reira — Who Was There

Debbie introduced herself to the audience with these words: “at the end of this mic is someone who’s been with the party when it started.”

As I have written before, I was the inaugural Tāmaki Makaurau electorate secretary of Te Pāti Māori. I later served as National Secretary. Across my earlier articles — and in What a Good Man Would Do — I have written in detail and on the record about who was present at the founding and in what capacity. I have been very public about my whakapapa to this movement — because when you make the kinds of claims I have made, you owe your readers that transparency.

I have no recollection of Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s involvement at the founding of this party.

I was part of Tariana’s by-election organising committee in 2004. I know who was present, who was active, and who was not. Debbie was not part of that campaign. She was not at those early meetings. I did not see her as part of the founding organisational effort — and that is not a judgment, it is simply what I witnessed. The claim does not hold against the memory of those who were there.

I do not say this to diminish her subsequent contribution. She has done significant mahi for the movement and for her communities. But a claim to founding participation is a claim to founding authority — to the right to say what this movement was built to be, and to position yourself as one of its original kaitiaki. That claim requires an accurate foundation.

That foundation is absent here. And I know this not only because of what I witnessed in 2004 — but because of what Tamihere, who was at the time a Labour Party minister, did to me shortly after. The party had barely formed before he accused me publicly of using Department of Labour resources to support Te Pāti Māori. I took him to court for defamation — and I won. I know the texture of those early years. I know who was building this movement, and who was trying to damage it.

Te Taura Here — The Ownership Question

The Bradbury Group operates under the Waatea brand — and who owns Waatea matters enormously to any honest reading of the editorial choices being made.

UMA Broadcasting Ltd — the company that holds the frequency and management rights to Radio Waatea 603 AM — was established in 1999 by two urban Māori authorities: the Manukau Urban Māori Authority and Te Whānau o Waipareira Charitable Trust.

Waipareira Trust is John Tamihere’s organisation. The same Waipareira whose governance the DIA investigated for six years and whose regulators described as combative and obstructive throughout. Waipareira is a co-owner of the platform that published Rawiri Taonui’s hit piece on Mariameno. Waipareira is a co-owner of the platform that sponsors a Pākehā man’s political podcast functioning as a TPM promotional vehicle.

When Te Māngai Pāho’s funding cuts threatened the hourly te reo Māori news bulletins, it was MUMA and Waipareira who stepped in with a three-month funding reprieve. They had the capacity. They chose to use it. And yet those same organisations, in their public statements, have grieved loudly about the loss of Māori language broadcasting, the government’s neglect of Māori media, the slow strangulation of te reo on our airwaves.

I think about the team that Willie Jackson and Bernie O’Donnell built at Waatea — Scotty Morrison, Te Kauhoe Wano, Julian Wilcox, Ruia Aperahama, the names Willie listed with such obvious pride and grief in his 2 April post, the day after the Te Māngai Pāho-funded te reo Māori news bulletins ended on 31 March 2026 — 36 years of broadcasting, gone. That was real. That mahi was real. Those people built something that deserved better stewardship than it has received.

The founding purpose of UMA Broadcasting is being invoked as the reason the government’s cuts are wrong — while the same platform advances the political interests of the organisations that own it. You cannot mourn the death of kaupapa broadcasting while using the corpse for political cover.

Te Aro o Ngā Tāne — What the Men Are Saying

What had Mariameno done? She had challenged the concentration of power at the centre of the movement. She had raised questions about constitutional process. She had refused to be silent when told to be silent. And she had the mana of her electorate behind her — more than 10,000 people who voted for her, a rohe that passed resolutions in her support, a High Court that found her expulsion lacked proper process.

Yet what the public record shows, in the months since her expulsion, is a series of men telling the story of what Mariameno is and what she represents — anonymously, analytically, politically, institutionally. None of them turned that same scrutiny on themselves.

Māori political life is being narrated, in this moment, largely by men who have institutional interests in a particular outcome. That is not neutral commentary. It is not accountability journalism. It is the architecture of discrediting. And it requires us to ask: on what authority?

Bryce Edwards is a political scientist. His structural analysis of the Tamihere network is based on public records, financial documents and court filings — and where it documents the family business and the machinery of elite capture, it is sound. But his conclusions about what Mariameno’s challenge means — whether it is principled or merely self-interested — are made by someone with no founding role in this movement, no membership of this party, and no lived experience of the kaupapa it was built to carry. His authority is political science. That is a legitimate discipline. It is not the same as whakapapa to this kaupapa.

Dr Rawiri Taonui is Māori, and has his own whakapapa. But his pieces on this dispute rest on anonymous sources, not firsthand knowledge of the party’s founding or governance. He has no documented role in the founding or running of Te Pāti Māori. His academic credentials — real and significant — are being used to lend authority to anonymously-sourced character attacks published on a platform institutionally connected to the people he is defending. That is not independent analysis. That is credentialing in service of a campaign.

And then there is Martyn Bradbury. He has no whakapapa to te ao Māori. He is a Pākehā political activist who has been given the platform that generations of Māori broadcasters built — and he uses the mana of that platform to advance a political project that is ultimately his own. He draws sustenance from Māori activism without being accountable to Māori communities, without contributing to the kaupapa, and without any standing to adjudicate what is or is not authentic Māori political leadership. That is a particular kind of parasitism. Our movement, our struggle, our airwaves — his platform.

I say this not to dismiss the work these men have done in other contexts — but because authority matters when narrating a kaupapa you did not build. None of them built it. I along with the actual founders did. And there are things I know from that foundation that no amount of political science, academic credentialing, or left-wing activism can substitute for.

There is something else worth naming here. The tactics deployed against Mariameno — anonymous sourcing, pre-emptive character assassination before any court had ruled, platform capture, narrative management through sympathetic media — are not tikanga-based responses to a political dispute. They are the tools of institutional power. The same tools these same men have long and rightly identified as colonial and neoliberal when used against Māori. When the Crown deploys them, it is oppression. When these men deploy them against a wahine Māori who challenges authority, it is apparently just politics. That asymmetry is not incidental. It is the point. You do not get to claim rangatiratanga while using the machinery of control against your own people.

We saw where this logic leads only recently. Maiki Sherman — an outstanding wahine Māori who had broken through into a prominent media role that very few of our wahine have ever held — was removed from TVNZ through the one-sided release of information, without institutional protection, without due process, in a manner that many rightly described as a political hit job. In her Bradbury Group interview, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer called it exactly that — “absolutely a political hit job” — condemning the selective release of information and the failure to hear all sides.

She said this on a platform that had been doing something structurally identical to Mariameno Kapa-Kingi for months. Anonymous sources. One-sided framing. Discrediting before the courts had ruled. The platform that sponsored that interview is co-owned by the organisation whose president was at the centre of the campaign against Mariameno. The parallel was not lost on those paying attention. It should not be lost on anyone.

He wahine, he whenua, ka ngaro te tangata.

Some of the young wahine who read my earlier articles asked me a harder question than any I have raised here. They saw not only the men in this story, but also the women who stand alongside them — and they asked what it means when women lend their mana to protect a structure that has used its power against another wahine. I have sat with that question. The architecture of discrediting does not only run through men. It is sustained by anyone who calculates that proximity to power matters more than accountability to kaupapa — and some of those people are women. That is not the same as calling those women villains. The system rewards compliance and punishes challenge, and the cost of resistance is real. But the rangatahi watching this deserve to see that the adults in this movement are willing to name all of it — not just the part that is easy to name.

For women and land, men are lost — men will give their lives.

That is what our tīpuna left us. It is the measure of what Māori men are called to be: not controllers of wahine, not narrators of their failures, not architects of their discrediting — but their defenders. Their protectors. The ones who stand between them and the forces that would diminish them.

I have watched men with platforms and institutional power deploy the full weight of that power against a wahine who challenged them. I have watched academic authority lent to anonymous accusations. I have watched a Pākehā man given Māori airwaves and use that platform to protect those interests. I have watched the founding purpose of a Māori broadcasting platform bent toward the management of a political narrative.

He wahine, he whenua, ka ngaro te tangata. I keep coming back to it. Because what I have described is not only men failing their duty to a wahine. It is a whole system — and everyone within it — that has organised itself around protecting power rather than people. That is what got lost. And until it is found again, we will keep having this conversation.

Āku Kōrero Whakamutunga — In Closing

The movement I helped build was never designed to belong to any one person, or any one family, or any one network of organisations with interlocking interests and a media platform to protect them. Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini. Our strength was never meant to be one person’s strength. It was always meant to be ours together.

What I have watched unfold since Mariameno’s expulsion has been deeply painful. Not because I am naive about politics. But because I have lived long enough in this movement to know the difference between accountability and the architecture of control.

The communities this party was founded to serve are watching. The rangatahi who marched in their hundreds of thousands for Te Tiriti are watching. They know the difference between spectacle and integrity. They have earned the right to demand the latter.

So have we all.

Amokura Panoho (Te Atiawa, Taranaki, Ngā Ruahinerangi, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Kahungunu me Rangitāne ki Wairarapa, Ngāi Tahu me Kāti Mamoe) was the inaugural Tāmaki Makaurau electorate secretary for Te Pāti Māori and later served as its National Secretary. She is a strategist, writer, and director of Kura Consulting. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of any organisations, boards, or entities with which she is or has been associated.

References

Court Proceedings

Kapa-Kingi v Tamihere [2026] NZHC 517, High Court of New Zealand, 10 March 2026. Reported by RNZ, Te Ao Māori News, and NZ Herald.

Robert Whaitiri, sworn court statement (co-chair of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti; resigned the day after the expulsion vote).

Official Investigations & Government Records

Department of Internal Affairs / Charities Registration Board — six-year investigation into Te Whānau o Waipareira Trust, initiated late 2019, concluded December 2025. The full documentary record (1,500+ pages of investigation reports, briefing notes and financial analysis) was released under the Official Information Act and reported by Matt Nippert: NZ Herald, 13 May 2026 (paywalled).

Earlier Nippert reporting on the same investigation: NZ Herald, July 2024 and NZ Herald, December 2025 (paywalled).

Commentary & Analysis Cited in This Article

Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project, 11 November 2025 — questioning whether the Kapa-Kingi whānau were “entangled in nepotism.”

Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project, 20 November 2025 — structural analysis of the Tamihere network; “a Māori-branded variant of elite capture.”

Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project, 13 May 2026 — “The Māori political class is failing its people.”

Dr Rawiri Taonui, Waatea News, 16 January 2026 (updated 29 January) — investigation into bullying allegations. Waatea News.

Dr Rawiri Taonui, Substack, 8 May 2026 — “Delay Reinstating Kapa Kingi linked to new Political Party.”

John Tamihere, Facebook, 3 November 2025 — “The Anatomy of Madness.”

John Tamihere, NZ Herald, 2018 — “I’ve had enough of faceless well-paid bureaucrats.”

Author’s Prior Writing

Amokura Panoho, “The Māori Party Belongs to the People”, amokurapanoho.substack.com.

Amokura Panoho, “What a Good Man Would Do”, amokurapanoho.substack.com.

Image courtesy of Rawhitiroa Bosch

Those who have followed this series of articles will know that I have not written about these matters lightly, nor without cost. From the moment I published The Māori Party Belongs to the People — Not One Man, I understood that naming what I was seeing inside Te Pāti Māori would draw scrutiny. I wrote anyway, because silence in the face of structural harm is not neutrality — it is complicity.

Today, I am writing again. Not in grief. Not in anger. But in recognition.

When Mariameno Kapa-Kingi announced yesterday that she would contest the 2026 election under the banner of the Te Tai Tokerau Party, something in me settled. A long-held tension releasing. Because what she has done is not a departure from kaupapa Māori — it is, in the most precise sense, a return to it.

John Tamihere’s own words

There is something John Tamihere said publicly during the darkest period of last year’s internal conflict that deserves to sit at the front of this piece. In a post that became one of the most widely shared moments of that very public unravelling, he wrote:

“Hone Harawira did the honourable thing. He started his own party based on political principle and on integrity and on belief... I guarantee Kapa-Kingi and Ferris will not do the same thing because their conduct is not based on mana, is not based on integrity and honesty or on principle. Their conduct is based on greed, avarice and entitlement.”

Hone Harawira’s decision to leave Te Pāti Māori in 2011 and start Mana on principle is a matter of record — and his people backed him, returning him in the by-election that followed. That chapter of our political history stands on its own terms, independent of how anyone else chooses to invoke it.

What is clear is this: Tamihere guaranteed, publicly and in writing, that Mariameno would not do what she has done. She has left. She has launched a new vehicle grounded explicitly in tino rangatiratanga and local decision-making. She has put her name and her mandate on the line, with six months until a general election.

He was wrong.

What the party’s own response reveals

Yesterday afternoon, Te Pāti Māori issued a statement in response to Mariameno’s announcement. It reads, in part:

“Te ao Māori has always carried many voices, many rohe, many whakapapa, and many expressions of mana motuhake. We respect the right of whānau, hapū, iwi, rohe and candidates to determine their own political pathway.”

I read that sentence twice. Then I read it again.

The party that expelled Mariameno without notice, without a hearing, without applying the tikanga principles at the heart of its own kawa — as Justice Paul Radich confirmed in the High Court in March — is now invoking mana motuhake and rohe self-determination to explain her departure. That language is correct. It is also the language that should have governed how she was treated from the beginning.

There is something important in that gap — between what the party says about rohe autonomy in a press release, and what it actually practised toward an elected representative of a rohe. Words matter. But so does the distance between words and conduct.

The National Iwi Chairs Forum: a working model

The most useful frame for understanding what Mariameno is attempting to build is not an electoral one. It is a structural and constitutional one — and it already exists within our own te ao Māori architecture.

The National Iwi Chairs Forum does not operate as a central authority. It operates as a collective arrangement between sovereign entities. Each iwi that participates carries its own mana motuhake — its own mandate from its own people, its own tikanga, its own relationship with its rohe and with the Crown. When the Forum engages collectively, it does so because collective voice serves the iwi better than individual voice in that moment. But the foundation of the whole arrangement is this: the mandate to participate, and the mandate to withdraw, sits permanently with the people of each iwi. No iwi can be expelled from the Forum. No iwi’s rangatiratanga can be revoked by a national executive. When collective arrangements conflict with the interests of a particular iwi’s people, that iwi can step back — not as an act of disloyalty, but as an act of accountability to those they represent.

Now hold that alongside what Te Pāti Māori’s founding constitution was actually designed to do. Professor Whatarangi Winiata did not write a centralised executive vehicle. He wrote a living covenant between the party and its electorate communities — one in which power was meant to flow upward from the marae, where each rohe was understood as a sovereign participant in a collective kaupapa, not a constituency to be managed from the centre. The NICF model and the founding TPM model are not as different as the current party’s practices suggest. Both were premised on the understanding that collective strength and rohe autonomy are not in tension — they are the same kaupapa expressed at different scales.

What has gone wrong inside Te Pāti Māori is precisely the abandonment of that premise. The drift toward a presidential model, the concentration of financial and institutional authority in a single office, the treatment of electorate communities as subordinate rather than foundational — these are not Māori governance failures. They are the consequence of importing Crown-facing governance habits into a kaupapa Māori movement. As I wrote in What a Good Man Would Do: leadership shaped within Crown systems will inevitably carry Crown expectations into kaupapa Māori spaces. The risk is that dissent becomes destabilising rather than necessary, and the movement begins to mirror Crown governance more than it reflects tikanga.

The Te Tai Tokerau Party, as Mariameno has framed it, is a direct counter to that drift. A rohe-based vehicle. A party whose name, mandate, and accountability are explicitly grounded in place and people. Whether it succeeds will depend on many things — funding, structure, the shape of a four-way contest in November. But the structural proposition deserves to be taken seriously on its own terms, not only assessed through the lens of electoral arithmetic.

Pehea ētahi atu rorohiko?

Something needs to be said directly to other electorate communities across the Māori electorates, and to the people who support them.

Mariameno is not the first. Tākuta Ferris has chosen a parallel path in Te Tai Tonga, standing as an independent after his own expulsion — an expulsion the party has never properly accounted for. Last week, the entire Te Tai Tonga Electorate Committee resigned from Te Pāti Māori. This is not one person’s discontent. This is the electorates speaking.

Te Tai Tokerau Party is the most structured expression of something that has been trying to find its form for over a year: rohe-based political representation, grounded explicitly in tino rangatiratanga and local decision-making, accountable first and foremost to the people of that place. That is a model worth watching closely. And for other electorates who are asking themselves whether the mandate they hold is being respected — whether power genuinely flows from their communities to Wellington, or only ever in the other direction — Mariameno’s decision should invite serious reflection.

What would it look like if Māori electoral representation were structured more like the Iwi Chairs Forum? What if each rohe held its own mandate, engaged collectively where collective voice served the people, but was never compelled to surrender its rangatiratanga to a centralised party apparatus? That is not a novel idea. It is, in fact, closer to how Māori have always organised — across hapū, across iwi, in collective arrangements that preserved the mana of each party to the relationship.

He Tāhū Rangatiratanga

If the model Mariameno is building has a future beyond Te Tai Tokerau — and I believe it does — then it needs a name and a shape that our people can recognise and rally around.

Here is one: He Tāhū Rangatiratanga. A ridgepole of rangatira.

I came to this whakaaro in an unlikely place — not in a seminar room or a political meeting, but in my cousins’ carving workshop. I pop in sometimes to catch up, to kōrero, to watch the work take shape. It is the kind of space where thinking happens slowly and honestly, away from the noise. It was there, watching the tāhū of a whare take form under their hands, that I began to understand what this moment in our political life might actually need.

In the construction of a whare, the tāhū is the central beam that holds the structure together. But it does not stand alone, and it does not subsume the pou that support it. Each pou is planted in its own ground, carries its own weight, and draws its strength from its own foundation. The tāhū gives the structure coherence — not by absorbing the posts into itself, but by creating the conditions in which each can stand fully and contribute to something larger than any one of them could sustain alone.

That is the architecture I am describing. A coalition not of parties, but of rohe-based independents — each holding their own mandate from their own people, each accountable downward to their electorate communities rather than upward to a national executive. When collective action serves their people, they act collectively. When it does not, they retain the sovereign right to step back. No expulsions. No presidential authority over elected representatives. No waka-jumping legislation wielded as a tool of control. Just rangatira, standing in their own ground, connected by shared kaupapa rather than institutional dependency.

Tākuta Ferris is already standing as an independent in Te Tai Tonga. Mariameno has now planted her own pou in the North. The tāhū does not yet exist — but the pou are going into the ground. What is needed now is the vision to see what they could hold together, and the courage to build it.

He tohu nō te wā

What Mariameno has done is worth sitting with beyond the immediate electoral context — beyond the seat count, the party vote calculations, and the four-way contest that commentators will spend the next six months dissecting.

Te Tai Tokerau Party is already more than its name. Not just a new party, but a new way of thinking about what Māori political representation is fundamentally for. A model in which the rohe is not a branch office of a Wellington apparatus, but the sovereign source of the mandate itself. In which accountability flows downward to the people, not upward to a national executive. In which an elected representative answers first to the communities who sent her — to the marae committees, the hapū, the whānau from both coasts — and only then to whatever collective arrangements those communities choose to enter.

That is not radical. That is, in fact, what the founding vision always described. What is radical is the possibility that it might actually be practised.

If it works — if Te Tai Tokerau demonstrates that a rohe can sustain its own political vehicle, hold its own mandate, and engage collectively with other electorates and other parties from a position of genuine independence rather than institutional dependency — then the implications extend well beyond the North. It becomes a question every Māori electorate community can ask of itself. And it becomes a question the wider Māori political movement will have to answer: what does tino rangatiratanga actually look like as a governing principle, not just a rallying cry?

A word about the election

Some will say that this fractures the Māori vote at the worst possible time. That with this government having spent three years systematically dismantling Te Tiriti, unity is not a luxury but a necessity. That concern is real, and those who hold it are not wrong to worry.

But here is what needs to be sat with: a movement whose internal conduct the High Court found in breach of its own tikanga has already fractured its own legitimacy. You cannot call for tino rangatiratanga in the House while denying it to your own electorate communities. The fracture did not begin on Sunday. It was papered over, and yesterday the paper came away.

What would serve our people is if other electorates watched what Te Tai Tokerau is doing — and asked themselves the same question. Is the mandate sitting where it belongs? Is the electorate community being treated as rangatira, or as a resource to be managed from the centre? Are the tikanga principles that our movement was founded upon being applied — not just invoked in a press release when it is convenient to do so?

If the answer is no — they have the same right that Mariameno has exercised.

He whakamutunga

Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini.

My strength is not that of an individual, but of the collective.

Everything I have written in this series has been grounded in that whakataukī. It is why the founding vision matters. It is why the electorate communities matter. And it is why what Mariameno has done matters — not because she is one person acting alone, but because she is returning a mandate to the collective from which it came.

Before closing, there is a deeper whakapapa of thinking that deserves acknowledgement — one that underlies everything in these articles. My uncle the late Moana Jackson spent much of his life asking a question that was deceptively simple and profoundly radical: whose values, whose relationships, and whose understanding of authority should form the foundation of how we govern ourselves as a people? His constitutional transformation work through Matike Mai Aotearoa was never about replacing one set of Crown institutions with another. It was about returning to something older and truer — the understanding that tino rangatiratanga is not a policy position to be negotiated within existing structures, but a constitutional reality that predates those structures and should shape whatever comes next.

What I have tried to do in these articles — imperfectly, and at some personal cost — is apply that same question to the interior life of our own movement. Are our institutions organised according to our own values? Are our structures of authority grounded in tikanga? Does the mandate flow upward from the people, as it always should, or has it been redirected to serve those at the centre?

He Tāhū Rangatiratanga is not just an electoral proposition. It is a constitutional one. And in that sense, what Mariameno has planted in the ground in Te Tai Tokerau is a small but significant expression of the moemoea Uncle Moana gave his life to.

Ko Te Tai Tokerau tōna kāinga. Ko tōna iwi tōna mana.

That is not a fracture. That is a homecoming.

Tūturu whakamaua kia tīna. Tīna! Hui e! Tāiki e!

Amokura Panoho (Te Atiawa, Taranaki, Ngā Ruahinerangi, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Kahungunu me Rangītāne ki Wairarapa, Ngāi Tahu me Kāti Mamoe) was the inaugural Tāmaki Makaurau electorate secretary for Te Pāti Māori and later served as its National Secretary. She is a strategist, writer, and director of Kura Consulting. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of any organisations, boards, or entities with which she is or has been associated.

Aotearoa is becoming networked infrastructure — where data, capital and power increasingly intersect.

I’ve been quiet publicly for a while.

In that time I’ve been working across governance, system design, and alongside others to strengthen collective capability and organise around the challenges ahead.

What has become increasingly clear is that the pace of change is accelerating — and the systems shaping our future are being built now.

This article marks a return to writing — and to contributing more directly to that conversation.

There is a whakataukī attributed to Aperehama Taonui:

“He taniwha kei te haere mai. He taniwha taikuhu, taihuna.
E kore rawa koutou e kite. Kia kitea rā anō i ngā kanohi ā ō mokopuna.”

A taniwha is coming. A concealed, hidden force.
You will not see it. It will only be seen by the eyes of your grandchildren.

This whakataukī speaks to forces that are not immediately visible — systems that embed themselves quietly, shaping the future before their full impact is understood.

The taniwha our tūpuna warned of may not have been visible then.
But its contours are becoming clearer now.

At a time when Aotearoa is actively shaping its economic and political future, it is critical to understand how the next wave of technological change will influence who holds power — and who does not.

Every major technological shift reshapes power.

The arrival of railways transformed land ownership. Oil reshaped geopolitics and continues to do so today. The internet is now transforming economies, politics and social life at a pace few societies fully understand.

For Indigenous peoples, these moments have historically carried both opportunity, profound risk and substantial harm. New economic systems often arrive with promises of innovation and prosperity — yet they have also frequently resulted in dispossession, disempowerment and the erosion of Indigenous authority before communities have the opportunity to shape the rules governing those systems.

In Aotearoa, these questions cannot be separated from the constitutional relationship established through Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which recognised the continuing authority of Māori alongside the Crown and provides an enduring framework for how power and resources should be governed — despite ongoing efforts by successive governments to reinterpret or limit its application.

As Aotearoa celebrates innovation during the coming TechWeek 18-14 May 2026, it is worth asking a deeper question:

In 2024 I participated in a TechWeek event exploring the rise of online misogyny and the impact of digital harm on Wāhine Māori and our communities.

That discussion focused on how digital platforms amplify harassment, racism and gendered abuse. Māori women — particularly those in public life — often experience the intersection of misogyny and racism within online spaces.

Research increasingly shows that misogyny online is not simply a behavioural problem. It forms part of wider digital ecosystems where grievance politics, gender hostility and extremist narratives can be amplified through algorithms designed to maximise engagement.

What has become clearer since that conversation is that the systems producing online harm are evolving rapidly — and the discussion now needs to extend beyond social media platforms alone.

To understand where the digital economy is heading, it helps to look at how the internet itself developed.

From Attention to Misogyny: From Porn to Politics

The commercial architecture of the internet did not emerge accidentally.

Many of the economic models that underpin today’s digital platforms were developed during the early commercialisation of the web in the 1990s. Companies experimented with streaming video, subscription services and online payments — technologies that would later underpin social media, influencer culture and digital entertainment.

Some of the most profitable early online ventures were built around pornography and adult webcam streaming. These industries pioneered live video broadcasting, subscription access models and real-time engagement technologies.

Although controversial, these innovations demonstrated something powerful about the internet:

human attention could be captured, measured and monetised at enormous scale.

This dynamic helped give rise to what is now widely described as the global attention economy.

Algorithms learned that certain kinds of content generate stronger engagement than others. Outrage, humiliation, grievance and dominance narratives often spread faster than empathy or nuance. This raises an important distinction.

The issue is not simply the presence of harmful content, but the systemic incentives that enable it to thrive.

Digital platforms do not operate as neutral environments. Their economic models are built on capturing and retaining attention. Content that provokes strong emotional responses — including anger, fear and resentment — is often more effective at achieving this than content that promotes balance or understanding.

In this context, misogyny is not incidental. It is structurally aligned with the logic of the system.

This dynamic is not theoretical — it is already visible in Aotearoa.

The scale and intensity of online abuse directed toward high-profile women — including former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern — illustrates how these systems can amplify hostility in ways that extend beyond digital spaces.

In recent months, this has included highly visible expressions of antagonism in online commentary, and a South Island venue publicly promoting a book-burning event associated with her work. The scale of this abuse reflects how grievance and hostility can be normalised and amplified across digital environments.

While such actions may be framed as political expression, they also reflect how grievance-based narratives — particularly those targeting women in leadership — can be translated into real-world behaviour.

This is one reason misogyny has become such a persistent feature of online harm culture.

The rise of so-called manosphere networks illustrates how these systems operate. Influencers promoting male grievance narratives and hostility toward women can generate enormous online followings, often monetised through advertising, subscriptions and platform algorithms that reward engagement.

In this sense, misogyny online is not only a cultural problem.

It is part of a profitable digital ecosystem.

What recent public attention on so-called “manosphere” content highlights is that this ecosystem is not operating at the margins. It is functioning as a high-performing segment within the attention economy itself.

Rather than a contained subculture, the manosphere can be understood as part of a broader pipeline of engagement, where users — often young men — are gradually exposed to increasingly polarised content through algorithmic recommendation systems. What begins as lifestyle or entertainment content can evolve into grievance-based narratives that are actively reinforced by platform dynamics designed to maximise engagement.

This pattern highlights a broader issue: these are not isolated behaviours, but system-level dynamics that shape exposure, influence and social outcomes at scale.

There are echoes here of earlier public-health debates. For decades, tobacco companies not only denied links between smoking and cancer, but actively promoted smoking as desirable — embedding it within advertising, film and popular culture. Cigarettes were associated with glamour, independence and success, shaping social norms while obscuring the long-term harm.

Only after overwhelming evidence of harm became undeniable did governments begin to intervene — introducing advertising restrictions, public health campaigns and regulatory controls to reduce exposure and protect communities.

In a similar way, societies are only beginning to confront how digital platforms that made pornography and other high-engagement content universally accessible may also contribute to harmful social dynamics that were not fully anticipated when these technologies were first commercialised — and which have since been embedded within systems introduced at scale, with limited opportunity for communities to shape, govern or meaningfully consent to their impact.

When Attention Becomes Capital

As these digital systems generated immense wealth, a new generation of technology entrepreneurs have accumulated significant economic power.

Some of that wealth has already begun to intersect with politics, particularly in the United States, where technology capital has played an increasingly visible role in shaping political influence and public discourse.

Aotearoa has its own examples of this dynamic. Technology entrepreneur Brian Cartmell, who moved to New Zealand in 2010, previously worked in the early commercial internet industry, including with Internet Entertainment Group — one of the first companies to commercialise online pornography during the 1990s.

IEG pioneered technologies such as:

• live webcam shows
• streaming video
• subscription payment systems

In recent years Cartmell has attracted attention for donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to several New Zealand political parties. These donations are legal and publicly disclosed under New Zealand electoral law. However they illustrate how wealth generated in the early digital attention economy is already intersecting with contemporary political systems.

Another prominent example is Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, who was also granted New Zealand citizenship. That decision was made under discretionary provisions and has been widely reported as involving high-level engagement with ministers and senior decision-makers.

While there is no public record of direct political donations from Thiel in Aotearoa, this reflects a broader pattern: influence may not always operate through formal political channels, but through access, proximity and capital relationships.

Thiel co-founded PayPal and later became a venture capitalist backing companies such as Facebook. He also co-founded Palantir Technologies, a data-analytics company whose software has been used by intelligence and defence agencies.

Palantir’s early development involved support from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the U.S. intelligence community.

What is increasingly notable is that these dynamics are not only being analysed externally — they are being articulated by those building the systems themselves.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp has publicly suggested that artificial intelligence may shift economic and political power between different groups within society — not as a side effect, but as a structural outcome of how these technologies operate.

This signals an important shift.

This suggests that the question is no longer whether digital systems influence democratic processes, but how they actively reconfigure them.

In this context, platforms that integrate data across government, defence and social systems are not simply tools of efficiency. They become part of the infrastructure through which power is organised, exercised and, potentially, redistributed and protected.

There is also the mythology of Silicon Valley which often celebrates individual entrepreneurial success as genius. Yet many of the technologies underpinning today’s digital economy — including the internet, GPS and advanced computing systems — were originally developed through decades of publicly funded U.S. military and government research before being commercialised by private companies.

Together these examples illustrate how global technology capital is increasingly intersecting with national political and economic systems.

Digital Capital and Citizenship

The intersection between global technology capital and national political systems can also be seen in debates about citizenship and belonging.

While Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel was granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011, technology entrepreneur Brian Cartmell became a citizen in 2015.

More recently, the current coalition government has sought to attract international capital through investor migration settings designed to encourage high-net-worth individuals to invest in the country.

These dynamics also raise broader questions about who finds it easy to belong in Aotearoa — and who must work to have that belonging recognised.

One case that drew public attention involved Keisha Castle-Hughes, known internationally for her role in Whale Rider. Despite her Ngāti Porou whakapapa, she faced legal complexities confirming the citizenship status of her daughter born overseas.

Similar barriers have affected other Māori families. John Ruddock, who was born overseas but is a New Zealand citizen by descent through his Māori mother, had to challenge the law after discovering his U.S.-born children were not automatically recognised as citizens despite their whakapapa.

These cases highlight an uncomfortable contrast.

Capital moves quickly across borders.
Whakapapa is required to prove itself.

At the same time, proposals to redefine or reduce the influence of Te Tiriti o Waitangi within the regulatory environment signal a potential shift in how Indigenous authority is recognised in decision-making, within this country.

This raises a deeper question: whose interests are being prioritised as the next phase of economic development takes shape? And why the Treaty is increasingly framed as a constraint rather than a foundation.

Power, Exploitation and the Systems That Enable It

Recent international developments have also highlighted how systems of power can shape environments in which exploitation occurs.

In the United States, public debate surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files has emphasised that the story is not simply about the crimes of one individual predator. It has raised broader questions about how networks of wealth, influence and social status can enable sexual exploitation of underage girls to persist.

Our neighbours across the Tasman, with the Australian authorities, have recently undertaken major investigations targeting users of online child exploitation material. Police have repeatedly emphasised that many individuals accessing such material also have numerous direct victims.

Law-enforcement analysis has also suggested that Australia ranks among the highest countries globally for detected access to online child sexual abuse material on a per-capita basis, coming second behind USA.

Some social media commentary has attempted to attribute the growth of these offences to immigration. However criminology research consistently finds that those convicted of accessing child sexual abuse material are overwhelmingly male and typically middle-aged. Many are from Western jurisdictions where the majority of identified offenders are also white, challenging narratives that attempt to attribute responsibility for this deviant behaviour to migrant communities.

These developments illustrate an uncomfortable reality about digital systems:

The internet does not simply host harmful behaviour.
It can amplify, organise and conceal networks of exploitation.

Aotearoa is not immune from these dynamics.

A recent case reported by RNZ involved a former Auckland executive who paid a 14-year-old girl for sex after contacting her through social media. The offender received a sentence of home detention and name suppression.

In a country already grappling with high levels of family violence and child abuse — and where Māori women and rangatahi experience disproportionately high levels of online abuse and harm — these dynamics raise serious questions about how digital environments are shaping behaviour, accountability and the wellbeing of future generations.

Understanding the Online Harm Ecosystem

Work currently underway to map the online harm ecosystem in Aotearoa — including a kaupapa Māori analysis — is beginning to highlight how complex and fragmented the system has become.

Responsibility for addressing online harm spans multiple agencies including law enforcement, regulators, educators, support services and technology platforms.

Despite the efforts of many organisations, Aotearoa/New Zealand’s response to online harm remains fragmented and largely reactive. Much of the policy attention has focused on where services should sit institutionally — including proposals to move them into government agencies away from NGOs — rather than on strengthening the capability that already exists across the ecosystem.

The current response continues to focus on moderation, education, institutional responsibility and potential obligations for tech platforms. While important, these approaches do not fully address the underlying economic drivers of harm.

This prompts a deeper policy question:

The contrast is not incidental.

When harm threatens financial systems, coordinated responses tend to follow quickly. When harm affects people and communities, the response is often slower and less integrated.

Until the incentive structures of digital platforms are addressed, responses will continue to treat symptoms — not causes.

Another dimension of online harm is the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation through digital platforms. Public debates in recent years have shown how inaccurate claims can circulate widely online and become embedded in mainstream discourse, illustrating how digital systems designed to reward attention and engagement can amplify misleading narratives as easily as factual information.

When political actors adopt deliberately simplified or misleading narratives — as we are presently seeing — a behaviour often associated with populist politics, alongside media practices commonly described as “clickbait”, they can unintentionally reinforce these dynamics, undermine public trust, and make it more difficult for communities to navigate complex issues in the digital environment.

These dynamics also intersect with the rise of grievance-based digital communities.

Narratives that frame social change as loss, or position particular groups — including women and LGBTQ+ communities — as responsible for that loss, can gain traction within these environments.

When amplified through digital platforms, such narratives do not remain confined to online spaces. They can influence broader political discourse, shape public attitudes and, in some cases, contribute to real-world behaviours with potentially deadly consequences.

This reinforces the need to understand online harm not as isolated incidents, but as part of a wider information and influence ecosystem.

Policy/Investment Shaping the Emerging Digital Political Economy

None of these developments alone constitutes digital colonisation. But taken together they raise an important question:

Who will ultimately control the systems shaping the digital economy in Aotearoa?

These developments are not abstract. They are already beginning to reshape regional economic futures. Aotearoa is increasingly attractive for digital infrastructure investment due to its geographic isolation, stable political system, renewable energy potential and relatively open regulatory environment.

Recent investment proposals for large-scale data infrastructure in Canterbury, combined with discussions around subsea cable connectivity through regions such as Taranaki and the expansion of satellite internet networks, suggest that New Zealand may be emerging as part of a wider digital supply chain linking global cloud, AI and communications systems.

As international cloud, satellite and AI systems grow, coastal regions such as Taranaki may become strategic digital gateways linking Aotearoa into global data networks.

For iwi and regional communities this raises an important consideration: will these infrastructures simply pass through our rohe, or will Māori participate in shaping how they are governed and who benefits from them?

These are precisely the kinds of strategic decisions that digital guardianship must begin to address.

Understanding the Language of the Digital Economy

To engage meaningfully in these debates, it is important to understand the language shaping the digital economy.

Many of these concepts are often used interchangeably or without clear definition, yet they describe distinct aspects of how power, data and infrastructure operate in digital systems.

The following terms provide a simple framework for understanding how these dynamics intersect.

Digital Guardianship

Across Aotearoa, Māori organisations and leaders are already working to strengthen digital capability. Organisations such as Netsafe, Tōnui Collab, Te Hapori Matihiko and Te Mana Raraunga contribute to digital capability and Indigenous data governance.

Yet despite these efforts, the ecosystem remains fragmented.

In Te Ao Māori, guardianship — kaitiakitanga — has long been associated with land and natural resources.

In the digital age, guardianship will also need to extend to technological systems.

Digital guardianship means understanding how digital systems operate, who controls them and how they affect the wellbeing, safety and sovereignty of our communities.

Rangatahi and the Next Generation of Digital Guardians

Today for rangatahi, the digital world is not distant infrastructure. It is the environment in which identity, relationships and knowledge are increasingly formed in the here and now. At the same time, exposure to these systems is not occasional — it is continuous.

This next generation of digital guardians will not simply need to know how to use technology. They will need to understand how it works, who controls it and how it can be shaped to protect communities.

Ensuring rangatahi have the opportunity to build that capability may be one of the most important leadership challenges of the coming decade.

The question is not only how young people use digital technologies, but how those technologies are shaping their understanding of relationships, identity and power.

If the digital environment consistently rewards content that reinforces dominance, grievance or hostility, these patterns can become normalised. Building capability therefore requires more than technical skills. It requires critical understanding of how digital systems operate, how influence is constructed, and how to navigate — and challenge — those dynamics.

Looking Toward the Next TechWeek

TechWeek celebrates innovation. But innovation without governance carries risks.

The digital economy will continue to expand. The real question is whether Māori communities will have the capability to understand, influence and govern the systems shaping that expansion.

There is also an emerging question that receives far less attention:

What alternatives are being built?

If harmful systems dominate because they are profitable and highly optimised for engagement, then addressing harm is not only about restriction.

It is also about creation.

Across Aotearoa, early forms of alternative infrastructure are already emerging — though often in fragmented ways. This includes kaupapa Māori approaches to online safety and wellbeing, data sovereignty frameworks, community-led capability building, and emerging work in artificial intelligence that supports language revitalisation, cultural transmission and indigenous data governance.

Work currently underway to map the online harm ecosystem in Aotearoa is beginning to shift the lens from fragmented response to coordinated prevention — recognising that digital harm is not simply a content issue, but a systems infrastructure issue.

This is not simply service delivery.

It is system design.

Emerging initiatives — including prevention-led, capability-first approaches grounded in rangatahi leadership, digital governance literacy and regional economic transition — point toward a different model of the digital economy.

One that is not driven solely by extraction and engagement, but by:

• whakapapa (relationship)

• mana (authority and dignity)

• kaitiakitanga (guardianship)

However, the scale of these initiatives does not yet match the scale of global platform systems. This raises a significant strategic challenge.

If Māori are not resourced to build and govern alternative systems, participation risks becoming dependency. Therefore the next phase will require more than awareness.

It will require investment in Māori-led capability, coordination across systems, and a willingness to challenge and engage directly with the political economy shaping these technologies — including decisions about infrastructure, data governance, investment flows and regulatory settings.

It also means moving beyond a reactive model — not simply being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff to respond to the consequences of online harm, but shaping the systems that determine where the cliff is built and who is most exposed to risk.

This is not simply a question of inclusion. It is a question of authority.

The systems being built today will determine who holds power tomorrow.

The question is whether Māori will shape them — or be shaped by them.

And whether we are prepared to exercise our own rangatiratanga — politically, economically and socially — to ensure that this next wave of innovation becomes a pathway for collective wellbeing, not another cycle of extraction.

References

This article draws on a combination of public reporting, policy analysis and ongoing work mapping the online harm ecosystem in Aotearoa.

• Shoshana Zuboff (2019), The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
  https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/shoshana-zuboff/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/9781610395694/

• Tim Wu (2016), The Attention Merchants
  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/the-attention-merchants-by-tim-wu/

• Netsafe — Online safety research and support in Aotearoa
  https://www.netsafe.org.nz/

• Te Mana Raraunga — Māori Data Sovereignty Network
  https://www.temanararaunga.maori.nz/

• Peter Thiel — background on citizenship and technology investment
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel

• Palantir Technologies — data analytics and intelligence systems
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies

• Alex Karp — commentary on AI, power and political systems
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Karp

• In-Q-Tel — venture capital arm of the U.S. intelligence community
  https://www.iqt.org/

• Radio New Zealand (RNZ) — reporting on online harm and digital systems
  https://www.rnz.co.nz/

• Australian Federal Police — reporting on online child exploitation trends
  https://www.afp.gov.au/

• New Republic (2025), Palantir CEO Alex Karp on Disrupting Democratic Power
  https://newrepublic.com/post/207693/palantir-ceo-karp-disrupting-democratic-power

Image courtesy of Whatu Creative

This article reflects on the erosion of Māori political independence, the limits of party-based representation, and why iwi must invest in political infrastructure grounded in kaupapa Māori rather than electoral cycles.

Fifteen years ago, as Chair of the Parihaka Papakāinga Trust, I had the privilege of working alongside Dame Tariana Turia, Hon Mahara Okeroa, Dr Ruakere Hond, and former Prime Minister the Hon Jim Bolger as members of Kawe Tūtaki negotiating the Parihaka settlement. During that association, we often talked about the state of the nation — and given Dame Tariana’s presence, we inevitably talked about The Māori Party.

I recall one of those conversations when Jim Bolger made an observation that has stayed with me ever since. He said he could never understand why iwi Māori did not invest in their own independent political voice.

Farmers invest in political influence.
Businesses invest in political influence.
Unions invest in political influence.

“Māori,” he said, “have far more at stake — so why leave your political future to the Crown’s cycles instead of building your own?”

It was not criticism.
It was insight — and an uncomfortable one.

What Bolger named was the gap we have tip-toed around for decades: iwi invest in almost everything except the one thing that protects all the others — political independence.

That question has only grown sharper with time.

The Political Moment We Are In

The truth we don’t want to say out loud is this: Māori voters are politically homeless.

Polls tell part of the story — volatility, declining participation, shifts across the spectrum. But this is not apathy. It is the hollowing out of political confidence. Māori do not see political institutions capable of holding our voice with integrity, stability, and kaupapa.

We move between parties not out of loyalty, but out of resignation — searching for the place where our voice will be least compromised.

When Māori participation collapses, it is not because Māori don’t care.
It is because the political structures we are asked to engage with do not honour us.

Without iwi-built political infrastructure, this volatility will continue.

The Rotorua AGM and What It Revealed

The recent Te Pāti Māori AGM held earlier this month in Rotorua has largely been reported as a story of internal conflict, bruised egos, and personality clashes. That framing is convenient — but it misses the point. What unfolded was not simply disagreement. It was a public demonstration of how Māori political life behaves when it is compressed into a party structure without kaupapa-based accountability or iwi-mandated authority.

Before the AGM took place, I had already written publicly about the risks of holding it in Waiariki — not because of the rohe itself, but because of what happens when unresolved power dynamics, executive centralisation, and factional mobilisation collide without sufficient constitutional or kaupapa Māori safeguards. The decision to hold the hui on a marae mattered. Tikanga and the discipline required at a marae helped contain what might otherwise have escalated into open confrontation. The hui did not disintegrate into verbal lashings or physical conflict. But nor did it become a space for resolution or transformation. The marae held the people; it could not, on its own, resolve the structural tensions at play.

After the AGM, the President’s media stand-up crystallised the issue. Rather than engaging with substantive concerns about process, mandate, and governance, the instability was reduced to personality — that “a few people don’t like me.” That framing matters. It reveals a political culture where challenge is deflected rather than engaged, dissent is minimised instead of examined, and accountability is treated as a threat rather than a responsibility.

None of this is unique to one individual. It is the predictable outcome of asking a standard party architecture to carry the full weight of Māori political life. In that environment, conflict becomes spectacle, unity becomes performance, and tikanga is replaced by brand management.

However, Te Ngira Simmonds’ kōrero during the pōwhiri cut through that performance:

“In the lions’ den of Parliament, who is eating whom — and is the leader fit for the role?”

What was striking — and refreshing — was not simply that the question was asked, but how it was asked. To hear a Māori man challenge another Māori man on the marae ātea using pūrākau to make his point was tikanga-framed political discourse at work.

It located critique within whakapapa, metaphor, and collective understanding, rather than confrontation or performance. That kind of kōrero does not seek to humiliate or dominate; it seeks to clarify responsibility and restore balance. It reminded us that Māori political challenge, when grounded in tikanga, can be robust without being destructive — and principled without becoming personal.

However, the question remains unresolved: who holds Māori leaders to account when the system surrounding them is not kaupapa Māori?

The Political Intellectualism We Drifted From

Our tūpuna were unapologetically political. They built movements and institutions — Te Kotahitanga, Kīngitanga, the Rātana movement, and some have suggested the New Zealand Māori Council — rooted in tikanga, collective purpose, and collective Māori authority.

Leaders such as Ngata, Pomare, and Te Rangihiroa — and in my own lifetime Matiu Rata, Parekura Horomia, Dr Pita Sharples, and Kahurangi Tariana Turia — were not simply politicians. They were nation-builders who trained successors, mobilised iwi and communities and negotiated strategically, grounding their work in whakapapa.

My uncles Syd and Moana Jackson, alongside Tame Iti, Aunty Hana Te Hemara, Donna Awatere, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and others of that political generation, shaped their intellect in the furnace of anti-racist organising, iwi struggle, urban Māori realities, and global Indigenous movements. They understood power intimately. Uncle Syd often reminded us:

“Power can be packaged any way people want it to be — especially by those who court it.”

The “isms” — racism, sexism, classism, colonialism — were never accidents.
They were configurations of power.

Today’s instability is not accidental either. It is structural.

Inherited History and the Limits of Unity

We also need to be honest about what sits between Iwi. Not all fragmentation in Māori political life is Crown-made. Some of it is inherited — shaped by inter-tribal histories, unresolved mamae, and the legacy of allegiances formed under conditions of war, colonisation, and Crown expansion. Those histories did not end when the campaigns ended; they continue to influence how trust, authority, and legitimacy are negotiated in Māori political spaces today.

These dynamics rarely surface as open conflict. More often, they appear as caution, silence, coded language, or resistance to collective alignment. They make unity difficult even where there is shared analysis and agreement in principle, because history sits beneath our discourse — shaping whose narratives carry authority, who is believed, who is challenged, and whose leadership is accepted without question.

Those challenges were further tested by the large-scale drift of Māori into urban centres, where tribal affiliation was disrupted and new forms of Māori organisations emerged to respond to immediate social, cultural, and political need. Urban Māori entities built real capability and influence in that space, often navigating — and at times relying upon — unresolved tensions between iwi authority, urban Māori realities, and Crown recognition.

That history matters.

Ignoring this does not make unity easier. It makes it more brittle. Our tūpuna understood that collective political life required tikanga-based processes capable of holding memory, disagreement, and reconciliation alongside strategy — even when unity was fragile or contested.

It continues to shape relationships, loyalties, and mistrust in Māori political life today. Any iwi-mandated political infrastructure we build must be capable of carrying both inherited and reconfigured histories with care, rather than pretending those fractures no longer matter.

Collective Identity, Party Form, and the Limits of Electoral Politics

Professor Whatarangi Winiata understood this tension deeply.

The naming of The Māori Party — Tōrangapū Māori was never a transliteration exercise, nor an attempt to collapse iwi difference into a single identity. It was a deliberate act of political reclamation: asserting a collective Māori political identity in a modern context, while recognising that Māori remain a people constituted through many iwi, each holding their own mana motuhake and rangatiratanga.

However, that kaupapa under new leadership, has shifted over time.

The legal renaming of The Māori Party (Tōrangapū Māori) to Te Pāti Māori in 2023 marked more than a linguistic change. It reflected a move away from a Māori political structure grounded in collective authority and electorate-based mandate, toward a conventional party architecture designed to operate within the state’s electoral system. That shift prioritised executive authority and campaign discipline over dispersed iwi and electorate autonomy.

The political impact of that restructuring has been significant. Power became increasingly concentrated at the centre, with strategic direction, external relationships, and political positioning flowing through an executive body rather than being generated and contested across electorates. This mirrors a familiar neoliberal organisational model — one that privileges central control, brand consistency, and managed allegiances over deliberative, relational, and iwi-grounded decision-making.

A structure of this kind is not designed to carry the full weight of Māori political life. Yet the party increasingly came to be treated — by supporters, critics, and the media alike — as if it could hold unity across iwi histories, provide constitutional leadership, and sustain long-term political continuity on its own. In the absence of iwi-mandated institutions operating alongside it, those expectations were structurally misplaced.

This narrowing helps explain why Māori political life has increasingly been channelled into risk-averse, relationship-managed engagement with the Crown rather than independent political formation.

Why Labour No Longer Deserves the Māori Vote by Default

For generations, Māori political loyalty to Labour has been treated as natural, inevitable, even virtuous. It is not. It was earned — through alliance with workers, opposition to overt racism, and moments of genuine reform. But political loyalty is not whakapapa. It is conditional.

Yet as instability within Te Pāti Māori has unfolded, a familiar narrative has quickly re-emerged. Party strategists, political commentators, and pundits have begun to suggest that Māori voters will simply “return” to Labour — an assumption that treats Māori political support as inherited rather than strategic. Unlike other interest groups, whose bipartisan engagement is accepted as political pragmatism, Māori are expected to demonstrate loyalty rather than exercise leverage. That framing is revealing.

This is why the question I posed in an earlier article — who is burning down the Māori Party, and why? — matters. Destabilisation does not occur in a vacuum. When Māori political movements fracture, the beneficiaries are rarely Māori communities themselves. More often, fragmentation clears the way for a return to managed representation through established parties and Crown-aligned systems. The expectation that Māori votes will simply fall back into Labour’s control is not analysis; it is a claim of entitlement.

Labour has had multiple opportunities — including an outright majority following the 2020 election, when it won all seven Māori electorates — to advance Māori political independence, constitutional transformation, and the redistribution of power back to iwi and whānau. It did not take them. Whānau Ora was preserved but not structurally transformed. Te Matike Mai was acknowledged but never progressed. Crown contracting systems remained intact, centralised, and controlling. Māori aspiration continued to be managed through state frameworks rather than enabled through Māori authority.

That is not a matter of ideology.
It is a matter of political record.

Ongoing association with Labour under these conditions does not strengthen Māori political independence. It constrains it. It reinforces a model where Māori are consulted, commissioned, and contracted — but not entrusted with power. Where access is mistaken for influence, and proximity to Ministers is mistaken for progress.

Political independence requires the freedom to withdraw allegiance as much as the ability to mobilise support. No party — Labour included — should assume Māori votes as a birthright. When loyalty becomes automatic, it ceases to be political and becomes extractive.

The consequences of entering Crown power without independent Māori political infrastructure are not theoretical. They are already part of our recent political history.

The Māori Party’s confidence-and-supply agreement with the National Party from 2008 to 2017 delivered tangible policy gains and access to Ministers. But it also exposed a structural vulnerability: Māori political authority operating inside a major party framework, without sufficient iwi-mandated institutions outside it, becomes acutely exposed to electoral punishment — regardless of the substance of what is achieved.

The 2017 election result, which saw the Māori Party lose all parliamentary representation, was not simply a rejection of policy outcomes. It was the collapse of a political project that lacked durable, independent Māori political infrastructure capable of sustaining mandate, absorbing backlash, and maintaining continuity beyond a single parliamentary cycle.

That outcome has had a long shadow. It reinforced caution about engagement with National, intensified risk-aversion across Māori political leadership, and narrowed the space for strategic experimentation. At the same time, it confirmed something more troubling: when Māori political movements fracture or are electorally extinguished, the Crown system absorbs the shock with ease. The state remains stable. Māori political capacity does not.

This is not an argument against engagement with National — or any party. It is an argument against doing so without iwi-mandated political institutions strong enough to withstand loss, contest power, and continue operating regardless of who holds office.

As former Mayor Andrew Judd observed in an interview responding to Don Brash’s claim that Māori are now represented across more political parties than ever before, representation alone is not the same as power. Māori MPs may sit across the political spectrum, but they remain constrained by party discipline and structures that are not Māori-mandated. Presence does not equal authority — and it does not, on its own, advance Māori political independence.

Future relationships with Labour, like any party, must be negotiated on kaupapa Māori terms — or not at all. The same principle applies to all parties that seek Māori support, including those whose values Māori may feel closer to. Alignment on social justice or environmental policy does not substitute for Māori political authority. Without structures that enable Māori to exercise power independently, even well-intentioned relationships risk reproducing dependency rather than self-determination.

Matike Mai Showed Us the Path — and We Walked Away From It

This is precisely why constitutional transformation and iwi-led political infrastructure cannot be delivered through party politics alone — a truth Te Matike Mai made explicit, and which we have yet to act upon.

Te Matike Mai remains our most significant Māori-led constitutional vision. It offered something no political party ever could: a future grounded in Māori authority, tikanga, and relational governance.

It was praised.
It was referenced.
It was never implemented.

Because genuine constitutional transformation requires Māori political capability outside Crown control.

Instead, Māori political energy has been absorbed into advisory groups, working parties, consultation rounds, and programme delivery. Important work — but work that positions Māori as respondents, not architects.

Te Matike Mai gave us the blueprint. We lacked the political infrastructure to advance it.

This fragmentation matters beyond Māori political life itself. At a time when the current Government is actively dismantling Māori institutions and mainstreaming anti-Treaty positions, the fracturing of the Māori vote weakens the opposition’s ability to contest power effectively. Without coherent, iwi-mandated political infrastructure operating beyond parties, Māori political volatility does not disrupt the state — it stabilises it.

What Iwi Must Build Now

If iwi do not invest in Māori political capability, other actors will:

• private donors

• corporate interests

• individual power brokers

That is not mana motuhake.
That is capture.

The solution is not to strengthen political parties.
It is to build iwi-mandated political infrastructure capable of withstanding Crown volatility, media cycles, leadership disputes, and donor capture.

We need:

• A Māori Political Futures Council

Iwi-mandated, kaupapa Māori-led, grounded in tikanga and independent of party politics.

• A Māori Leadership and Strategy Academy

Training wāhine, rangatahi, organisers, analysts, negotiators — the next generation of political intellectuals.

• Independent Māori polling and political intelligence

Data shaped by Māori priorities, not party agendas.

• Kaupapa Māori accountability frameworks

Not corporate models — tikanga-anchored systems that hold leaders to kaupapa, not charisma.

• A national mobilisation network

Rebuilding Māori democratic participation through iwi, hapū, marae, and urban communities.

• A constitutional strategy hub

Advancing Te Matike Mai across generations, not election cycles.

Political movements endure through institutions, not personalities.

Returning to Bolger’s Question

When Bolger asked why iwi never invested in their own political voice, I remember thinking: because we have been conditioned not to.

Conditioned to prioritise service delivery over political vision.
Conditioned to manage relationships with Ministers instead of building our own.
Conditioned to believe neutrality equals safety.
Conditioned to fear backlash more than we fear political stagnation.

But the environment has changed.
The Crown is dismantling Māori institutions.
Anti-Treaty sentiment is mainstreamed.
Online harm against Māori — especially Wāhine Māori — is escalating.
Political volatility is the new normal.

We are no longer in an era where bipartisanship protects us.

Because everything we value — our reo, our whenua, our whānau, our institutions, our futures — rests on one thing: our ability to speak and act politically as Māori, on our own terms.

And that requires investment.
Not in mainstream parties.
Not in personalities.
But in Māori political infrastructure designed by us, accountable to us, and grounded in the tikanga of each iwi and hapū.

The political future of our people depends on it.

Without effective, iwi-mandated political infrastructure, Māori will remain vulnerable to the entrenchment of anti-Māori, anti-Treaty policy. The current coalition’s agenda, combined with the unfinished work of earlier Labour governments, risks shaping the political landscape for years to come. Reversing that damage could take generations.

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References & Context

Te Matike Mai – Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation (2016).
He Whakaaro Here Whakaumu mō Aotearoa.
https://matike.maori.nz

Jackson, M. (2019). Where to Next? Decolonisation and the Stories in the Land.
Public lecture and writings.

Winiata, W. . (2004). Reflections on Māori political identity and collective authority. Speech and interviews, various sources.

Panoho, A. (2025). Who Is Burning Down the Māori Party — and Why?
Substack essay.

Judd, A. (2024). Interview responding to claims regarding Māori representation across political parties.

https://share.google/L4GnFOOR0zFa4RWOr

Simmonds, T. N. (2025). Kōrero during pōwhiri, Te Pāti Māori AGM, Rotorua.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/top/581120/ngira-simmonds-challenges-te-pati-maori-leadership-at-agm

Editor’s Note

This piece is published ahead of the Te Pāti Māori AGM. It is not a commentary on the AGM itself, but a reflection on deeper structural, cultural, and leadership patterns affecting kaupapa Māori political movements at this moment in time.

Introduction

When I first began writing this piece, it was meant as a continuation of my earlier work, “Who Is Protecting the Mana of the Māori Party Constitution?” I intended to reflect on integrity, kaupapa Māori principles, and what happens when power drifts from the foundations that were meant to anchor it.

But instead, I found myself writing “Who Is Burning Down the Māori Party and Why,” an article that coincided with the fires that burned across Tongariro — and a symbolic echo of the turmoil inside the movement after the expulsion of Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Takuta Ferris from Te Pāti Māori.

Now, as debate intensifies across iwi, hapū, electorates, commentators, and social media, a clearer picture is emerging. Māori political life is being interpreted through frameworks that do not belong to us. Outsiders diminish our challenges into entertainment, and those closest to the kaupapa are watching it being pulled by personality rather than principle — or distorted by commentary built on speculation, sensationalism or incomplete information.

Only we, whānau, hapū, Iwi Māori — not the Crown, not the media — can define what this moment means, and we alone are accountable for how we carry that responsibility.

So I return to the question central to this entire kōrero:

What does integrity look like when the mirror turns inward?
And what would a good man, or a good movement, do?

A Crisis That Feels Familiar

Many of us have lived through earlier moments of Māori political tension, where personality overshadowed kaupapa, where constitutional obligations were minimised, and where challenge was reframed as disloyalty.

We see similar tactics today: diminishing dissent, consolidating personal authority, deflecting from constitutional breaches, and punishing those who insist on accountability.

A member of the Raukura generation wrote recently:

“Everyone’s treating this like drama, but for us it’s about kaupapa — integrity and accountability. We expect better.”

The younger generation is not confused by political theatrics.
They know the difference between spectacle and integrity.
They expect leadership grounded in kaupapa Māori, not ego.

This is the real test.

My Political Grounding — And What Syd Jackson Taught Me

I came into political life through protest lines, union halls and community activism. I learned early what real leadership looks like: not grandstanding, but service; not ego, but accountability.

My uncle Syd Jackson shaped much of that understanding. He was principled, courageous, and unrelenting in his commitment to Māori liberation. He confronted Crown power openly — but he also confronted Māori power when it strayed from kaupapa Māori values.

I saw that conviction up close when Uncle Syd and I were representing kaimahi at Te Whānau o Waipareira in the early 1990’s. John Tamihere refused to discuss a collective agreement, and when the kōrero became heated, he called security to remove us from the building. It was one of those moments that left a mark — not just because of what happened, but because of what it revealed: the difference between leadership grounded in respect and leadership grounded in control.

That day, I learned what a good man would do — he would stand firm, stay principled, and refuse to trade integrity for convenience. Uncle Syd showed me that leadership is measured not by how much power you hold, but by how you choose to use it.

What Would Uncle Syd Say Today?

In recent weeks, as I’ve been writing this article, I’ve spoken often with my cousin Ramari Jackson-Paniora about what her father would say if he were here now.

Ramari articulated it with the same clarity Uncle Syd was known for:

Her words cut through the noise. They remind us that Māori political independence has never been secured through personality — only through collective responsibility.

Patriarchy, Power, and Silence

Ramari shared another truth — one that speaks directly to the core of the present crisis:

Patriarchy is not kaupapa Māori.
Harm is not leadership.
And silence is not protection.

Because what is happening inside Te Pāti Māori is not merely political friction.
It is a confrontation with power — how it is wielded, who it serves, and who it harms.

Leadership grounded in kaupapa Māori demands accountability.
Leadership grounded in ego suppresses it.

Only one of these can sustain a movement.

Gendered Harm and Wāhine Māori

These structural forces — Crown-enabled power, patriarchal norms, political whakapapa — create the conditions in which harm toward wāhine becomes normalised or strategically ignored.

The recent public stand taken by Ria Hall, a renowned Māori performing artist and cultural leader, made visible what many had understood privately: gendered harm is political harm, and patriarchal systems protect themselves.

Since publishing my first article, other wāhine have contacted me with experiences involving John Tamihere — stories known quietly across Māoridom but rarely spoken aloud due to risk, cost, or career impact. Their courage is a reminder that for Māori women, this is not theory — it is lived reality.

We cannot speak of mana motuhake while protecting systems that harm wāhine.
We cannot speak of liberation while excusing behaviours that diminish our own.

That is not Kotahitanga.

The Erosion of Accountability

The greatest threat to Māori political independence is not always external.
Sometimes it comes from within.

Testimonies from former staff, public commentary, and the stories wāhine have shared with me reveal patterns of harm and control that cannot be dismissed as internal politics.

The question is not only what happened — but what allowed it to continue.

Silence protects individuals.
Truth protects communities.

The Structural Capture of Kaupapa Māori Politics

As I said recently in a public forum, the instability inside Te Pāti Māori is not just interpersonal; it is structural.

Crown contracting models, commissioning agencies, and large-scale service providers have created an environment where certain Māori institutions now hold disproportionate influence over kaupapa Māori political spaces.

Te Whānau o Waipareira and its commissioning structures exemplify this. Funded almost entirely through Crown contracts, they possess national communications machinery, financial leverage, and institutional architecture far beyond the capacity of a movement rooted in electorates and kaupapa.

The question is unavoidable:

How did a Crown-funded social service provider come to hold extensive political influence over an independent Māori political movement?

This is structural clarity — not personal critique.
When the State funds the infrastructure, the State influences the ecosystem.

Political Whakapapa & Migration of Institutional Power

The current President of Te Pāti Māori is the Chief Executive of Te Whānau o Waipareira, a former Chair of the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency, and a former Labour Party Minister. That political whakapapa matters. It shows how Crown-facing leadership models migrate across institutions.

Leadership shaped within Crown systems will inevitably carry Crown expectations into kaupapa Māori movements. The risk is that:

• Crown-centred decision-making overshadows kaupapa Māori-centred decision-making,

• dissent is treated as destabilising rather than necessary,

• and the movement begins to mirror Crown governance more than kaupapa Māori governance.

This is how institutional capture begins — and how kaupapa loses its anchor.

Co-Leaders and Electorates: Silence Is Not Strategy

Accountability does not end with the President.

Those who lead alongside him must ask:

Are we protecting the kaupapa — or protecting those who hold power?

Silence may feel safe.
But it reads as complicity.

A movement rooted in whakapapa cannot thrive when its leaders are waiting to see which way the wind blows.

The Moral Test of Leadership

A good leader — and a good movement — would:

• step aside when their presence endangers the kaupapa,

• invite scrutiny rather than avoid it,

• restore trust rather than demand loyalty,

• uphold kaupapa Māori values even when it is inconvenient.

The current leadership has not met that test.

The interview on 10 March 2025 between John Tamihere and Moana Maniapoto revealed defensiveness rather than humility, minimisation rather than reflection. When leaders treat questions of integrity as personal attack, the kaupapa is already in danger.

Syd Jackson’s 9 Pou

As Ramari and I reflected on the pou her father lived by — not aspirations but uncompromising truths — we felt a responsibility to state, here and now, what they are:

Whānau: Begin and end with the wellbeing of whānau.
Te Tiriti: Honour Te Tiriti as a constitutional agreement.
Gender Justice: No liberation alongside patriarchy.
Ethical Leadership: Mana is service, not entitlement.
Māori-Led Systems: We must govern our own institutions.
Workers’ Rights: Economic justice is Māori justice.
Anti-Racism: Structural harm must be confronted, not managed.
Rangatahi: Young people are leaders now, not later.
Hope: Our collective courage can shape a better future.

These pou form a political blueprint for what must come next.
They remind us that our integrity is our inheritance — and our obligation.

As Ramari said:

“These were not requests, but the uncompromising truths he lived by.”

These pou weren’t just Uncle Syd’s. My late husband David lived by them too — quiet, steady, uncompromising in his ethics.

The kind of man who never needed to announce his integrity because it was evident in how he lived and how he supported me as his partner and as the father of our children.

As he would often say,
“Are we eating principle pie tonight honey? Well, I better make some fried bread to go with it!”

What a Good Man Would Do

A good man would step aside.
A good movement would step up.

We have done this before.
We will do it again.

We will recover.
We will rebuild.
And we will reclaim an independent Māori political voice grounded in integrity, courage, and kaupapa Māori.

References & Context

• Te Ao with Moana — Interview between Moana Maniapoto and John Tamihere, 10 March 2025.
• Hall, R. (2025). Interview on gendered harm and Māori leadership. The Hui.
• Panoho, A. (2025). Who Is Protecting the Mana of the Māori Party Constitution?
• Panoho, A. (2025). Remarks delivered during a panel discussion hosted by the NZ Fabian Society: Organising on the Left. Recording:

.

🎧 Listen here:
Questions over transparency of Te Pāti Māori expulsion process

Photo: Kristina Montgomerie / @kristinamonts

As fires rage across Tongariro, another blaze threatens a movement born of mana motuhake. This piece examines and questions the internal crisis consuming Te Pāti Māori — how unchecked power and manipulation have eroded accountability — and calls on members to reclaim the kaupapa before it is lost to the flames.

The Fires Within

While the devastating fires burning across Tongariro National Park unfold on our television screens, many of us feel a deep sense of grief — for the biodiversity of that sacred landscape, for the taonga that live upon it, and for the fragile ecosystems now under threat.

The same grief can be felt within Te Pāti Māori.

What began as a movement built on mana motuhake — the right of Māori to determine our own political destiny — now finds itself engulfed in flames of its own making.

The crisis that has unfolded in recent days and weeks is not the work of its enemies but of its own leadership, whose actions have betrayed the kaupapa that once made Te Pāti Māori a symbol of unity and hope.

Guardianship Betrayed

Te Pāti Māori was founded on the promise that Māori would never again have to rely on others to speak on our behalf in parliament, or in government. It was meant to be accountable to the people — through its constitution, its branches, and its adherence to its principles its tikanga.

When those structures are ignored or altered — when decision-making becomes concentrated in a few hands and process is replaced by allegiance — that promise begins to collapse.

Leadership is not only about presence when things are going well; it is about remaining grounded when accountability is demanded.

In this case, the Party President chose a different path — issuing careful statements, refusing questions, and on Sunday, boarding a plane overseas while the fire spread at home.

Weaponising the Constitution — Who Really Decided?

In yesterday’s media statements, the co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer announced that the expulsions of Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris were justified by “serious breaches of the Party’s constitution.”

Without evidence to support those alleged constitutional breaches, the accounts emerging from members tell a very different story.

What the co-leaders have shared is that the Te Tai Tokerau electorate was reportedly excluded entirely from the vote. Hauraki-Waikato and Te Tai Tonga abstained, citing concerns about process and mandate, while Waiariki, Te Tai Hauāuru, Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, and Tāmaki Makaurau voted in support of the recommendation to suspend the two MPs.

My previous article, ‘Who Is Upholding the Māori Party Constitution?’ highlighted who is effectively running the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate — sidelining newly elected MP Oriini Kaipara. With their vote, they have now positioned her as a target for disgruntled constituents within her electorate — many of whom are whanaunga of Te Tai Tokerau and make up a significant part of the Tāmaki Makaurau population.

In Waiariki, members were told their meeting was cancelled, while some branch representatives were excluded despite being eligible to attend. Two days later, they received an email claiming a “unanimous decision” had been reached — even though, as multiple members have confirmed, no such hui ever took place.

As one Waiariki member wrote, the statement was “made without actual consultation or discussion with the registered membership,” effectively fabricating a mandate and bypassing the democratic process required under the Party’s constitution.

I was also advised by members who attended the Te Tai Hauāuru hui last Sunday that at least three branches were not given the opportunity to speak and derogatory comments were made by their electorate MP to the founding Secretary of the Party — a further breach of the principles of the Party where our ‘tanga’ were not simply words, but the moral compass for how we were expected to behave.

According to commentary shared publicly on social media by members including @shubzlive, some members were reportedly told that if they did not support the co-leaders, the co-leaders would “walk” — a warning that their membership and loyalty were on the line. If true, this was not the language of unity but of coercion — a tactic designed to enforce allegiance through fear rather than kaupapa.

The groundswell of support for Mariameno Kapa-Kingi — from Te Tai Tokerau leaders and long-time movement figures — makes it clear that the people have not withdrawn their mandate. Across hui and social media, the refrain is consistent: “Our MP stands — the Council does not speak for us.”

This is no longer about individual loyalty; it is a test of constitutional legitimacy. When the collective voice of the electorate is ignored, the Party ceases to be an independent Māori voice — instead it becomes the instrument of those who claim authority without mandate.

This style of leadership — concentrated, performative, intolerant of scrutiny — mirrors what we’ve seen elsewhere in global politics: a “Trumpism” approach, where loyalty is rewarded, dissent punished, and process dismissed as obstruction.

Who Stands to Gain?

What’s important for our people to understand is that this moment did not arrive out of nowhere.

It is the product of a deeper pattern — a political strategy unfolding quietly within Te Pāti Māori for the last few years.

We must remember that the Party President, John Tamihere did not emerge from any independent Māori political movement. He came from Labour — the same party that, in 2004, stripped Māori of customary rights through the Foreshore and Seabed Act, while he sat among them and mocked his own people.

We must also remember that betrayal gave rise to Te Pāti Māori — a movement created to resist Crown control and political subjugation.

So it is a bitter irony that the very person who now claims to have “saved” the Party at the last election — who once stood within that same system — now leads in a way that mirrors the very control and suppression the party was created to resist. Is this a coincidence or a strategy?

The tactics now being deployed — silencing dissent, centralising power, and enforcing loyalty through fear — are not expressions of mana motuhake. They are the hallmarks of a Crown political style: manipulative, authoritarian, and punitive.

So we must ask plainly and loudly: who benefits if Te Pāti Māori collapses from within?

If the Party is weakened or discredited, Māori voters could well be pushed back to Labour — the very party whose policies once birthed this movement. And if the President and co-leaders, with their supporters on the National Council, continue to push this agenda, they risk fracturing the Party beyond repair.

A fractured Māori movement strengthens those who depend on our division, including the present coalition government.

So whose political agenda is being served with the suspension of two Māori Party MPs?

The Waka-Jumping Dilemma

Under the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Act 2018 — commonly known as the waka-jumping law — party leaders have the power to trigger the removal of any MP who is expelled or deemed to have left their party. If they formally notify the Speaker of the House, the MP’s seat becomes vacant and a by-election must be held.

For electorate MPs like Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris, this would immediately force contests in Te Tai Tokerau and Te Tai Tonga. That decision now rests with the co-leaders, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

If they invoke the law, they would be using a Crown-designed mechanism to remove two Māori MPs from Parliament — a move that could be seen as punitive, politically reckless, and deeply contradictory to the founding kaupapa of mana motuhake. Yet if they refrain, the expulsions remain symbolic — political gestures without constitutional force — and both MPs continue as legitimate representatives until the next election.

The Question of Timing

Under the Electoral Act 1993, once a seat is declared vacant, the Governor-General must issue a writ within 21 days, and the by-election must be held within 60 days of that writ being issued. However, no by-election can be held within six months of a scheduled general election, unless 75 percent of MPs agree to waive that rule.

That makes timing crucial. If the government were to call an early election — or even if the next general election proceeds on the traditional timetable — the window for any by-election is fast closing. It raises a critical question:

Was the decision to suspend the MPs timed deliberately — to enable the waka-jumping process before that six-month deadline expires?

If so, this would suggest not a procedural necessity but a calculated political manoeuvre — one that could weaponise Crown legislation to achieve internal control.

Strategic Fallout

Either path carries consequences. Invoking the Act risks open conflict and costly by-elections that could fracture the Party’s support base. Holding back exposes a crisis of credibility — leadership that acts without constitutional clarity.

Strategically, it would have been wiser to wait for the scheduled meeting with the Iwi Leaders Group tomorrow on Wednesday or the National Executive and Te Tai Tokerau hui on 23 November. Why the haste? Was this driven by the Party President’s overseas schedule, or by the political opportunity that timing presented?

Whatever the motive, the irony is inescapable:

A law once used to discipline Māori independence now hangs over a movement born from it.

Whatever the technicalities of law or the justifications offered by those in power, the deeper question remains — what does this say about who we have become as a movement, and whether our actions still honour the kaupapa that gave Te Pāti Māori its fire in the first place.

He Kupu Whakakapi

If the present fires at Tongariro teach us anything, it is that even the most treasured taonga can be placed in peril — and that healing begins when the iwi step forward once more to protect what is theirs.

The co-leaders must now front up to the Party’s members. If they cannot do that with honesty and humility, then, as they themselves once threatened others, they should walk — and take with them the President and those who have enabled these flames of discontent to flare up.

For Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, this moment defines her legacy. From one wāhine leader to another, it is devastating to witness a Māori woman attempt to remove another Māori woman from the political landscape. That decision will leave a stain that cannot be explained away as process. As a member of Te Tai Hauauru electorate and someone who helped build the party, I state publicly I do not support her or the electorate’s stand.

And for Rawiri Waititi, the responsibility is no lighter — excuse the pun. Leadership begins in one’s own whare. The ongoing damage caused by loose commentary from those closest to him — on social media and beyond — has undermined the mana of the Party and the legacy of leadership associated with the Waititi name.

The flames consuming the kaupapa were not lit by our enemies but by the accelerants we allowed to build up within — unchecked power, ego, and manipulation. To save what endures, we must be willing to put out our own fire, and that means removing the fuel that feeds it.

It is now time for the Party’s members to get out their blankets and buckets of water — to put out the fire themselves. Demand transparency. Insist on accountability. Get involved. Do not allow the Council to diminish your authority or your voice. Let that same fire burn inside you instead — to rebuild, to restore, and to ensure this kaupapa is never again manipulated as a pawn in coalition politics.

To restore integrity will take courage — courage from members to demand the truth, and to remove those who have poisoned trust. It will take determination to rebuild on the foundations of mana motuhake and collective accountability.

The task now belongs to the people: to reclaim Te Pāti Māori as the independent voice it was meant to be — grounded in tikanga, strengthened by truth, and lit once more by the fire of integrity. Dame Tariana would expect it, Papa Pita would encourage it.

“Ka mura, ka piata, ka ora anō te ahi.”
The fire can live again as light — but only if we remember who we are and why we lit it in the first place.

Ngā Mahi e Toe Ana / What Must Be Done

• Call for a public inquiry into the process and evidence relied upon to justify the suspensions.

• Demand that the co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi do not invoke the waka-jumping law and they do so at their political peril.

• Continue to recognise Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris as Te Pāti Māori MPs — not independents.

• Stand alongside our wāhine MPs, Hana Maipi-Clarke and Oriini Kaipara, as they uphold the kaupapa in their own way for their electorates.

🔥 Call to Action

If this kaupapa matters to you, don’t stay silent. Share your thoughts below, join the kōrero, and help reclaim the movement for the people it was built to serve. Integrity starts with accountability — and accountability begins when we all speak up.

Author’s Note

Amokura Panoho (Te Atiawa, Ngā Ruahinerangi, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Kahungungu me Rangitāne ki Wairarapa, Ngāi Tahu) is a writer, strategist, and advocate for Māori governance and integrity in public life. Her work explores the intersections of tikanga, accountability, and Indigenous leadership. She was the inaugural electorate secretary for Tāmaki Makaurau and National Secretary for the Party.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this article are those of the author in her personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations or boards with which she is affiliated.

Like the harakeke, the Māori Party’s strength depends on protecting its inner rito — the kaupapa that gives it life.

📷 Whakaahua nā Te Rawhitiroa Bosch | Rawhitiroa Photography

1 · Beyond the Noise

When I wrote my last article, The Māori Party Belongs to the People — Not One Man, it was to remind our movement that the power in Te Pāti Māori was never meant to rest in individuals but in the people.

While headlines focus on internal conflict, the deeper issue is constitutional integrity — and whether the values that founded our movement are still being upheld.

The Māori Party’s constitution is more than a rulebook. It is a living covenant between the Party, its members, and the kaupapa that gives it life.

And right now, that covenant is being tested in ways that demand courage, clarity, and truth.

2 · The Constitutional Framework

Under the founding constitution, Clause 9.1 (ii) defined misconduct as:

“Bringing the Party into disrepute, by any abuse, slagging, or misuse of any media or verbal statements that can or would be injurious to the general welfare and well-being of the Party or its members as a whole.”

Clause 9.5 required that such matters, if unresolved, be referred to the Disciplinary and Disputes Committee of the National Council — to be dealt with swiftly, with discretion, and according to kaupapa.

These clauses were designed to ensure fairness, accountability, and respect for process. They reflected a framework where the National Council, accountable to electorates and members, acted as an independent check on leadership behaviour.

Under that model, decision-making was distributed: the President led, but the Council kept leadership accountable.

Notably, since the current President’s tenure, the 2023 constitutional changes fundamentally altered that balance. Disciplinary authority was shifted from the National Council to the National Executive, which the President chairs. This structural change concentrated power at the top, eroding the independence that once safeguarded the Party’s integrity.

The effect is that accountability — once shared across a representative body — can now be directed or suppressed by those in control. And as recent months have shown, when those processes are ignored or manipulated, the kaupapa itself is put at risk.

3 · The Role of the Party Secretary

As I noted in my earlier article, I write from experience as a former Secretary of Te Pāti Māori. I understand firsthand the responsibilities that come with that position — responsibilities that exist not to serve individuals, but to protect the kaupapa and integrity of the movement itself.

Under the Electoral Act 1993, the Party Secretary is the registered officer and the only individual legally accountable to the Electoral Commission for compliance with electoral law. They are responsible for maintaining the Party’s legal standing, managing its records, certifying candidate lists, and filing accurate annual donation and expense returns.

If those duties are breached — through false reporting, late filings, or misuse of electoral funds — it is the Secretary, not the President or Co-Leaders, who can face personal penalties, including fines of up to $40,000 and potential criminal charges.

The law is explicit: accountability cannot be delegated or deflected.

Even with the 2023 constitutional changes that expanded the President’s authority, the Electoral Act has not changed the fact that the Party Secretary remains the sole officer legally accountable to the Electoral Commission. No internal rule can override that statutory duty. This makes the Secretary’s independence even more crucial — because when power is centralised in one leader but legal responsibility rests with another, the risk of coercion and liability falls on the wrong person.

This was made painfully clear during the 2021 elections, when the Party failed to properly declare donations received by John Tamihere, then the Tāmaki Makaurau candidate. He was not the person held to account, but the Party Secretary at the time — the individual legally responsible under the Act — who was forced to respond to the Electoral Commission.

That episode revealed not only how accountability operates under law, but also how vulnerable the role becomes when political power overshadows constitutional duty.

This is why the independence of the Secretary is fundamental. When that independence is compromised, the entire Party stands exposed. The Secretary must remain the guardian of due process, accountable to the membership and the constitution, not to any individual leader.

However, as The Māori Green Lantern investigation revealed, the current Party Secretary, Lance Norman, is also an employee of the President through one of his publicly funded entities. This dual relationship represents a serious conflict of interest.

The current Chair of the Tāmaki Makaurau Electorate, Ray Hall, is also the Chair of the Waipareira Trust, an organisation closely associated with the President. Likewise, the Electorate Secretary, Rima Dean, holds an administrative position within the Waipareira Trust group and its linked Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency. Together with the Electorate Treasurer, Lance Norman — who also holds the dual position of Party Secretary / Treasurer — this forms a triangle of relationships in which key office-holders of the Tāmaki Makaurau Electorate are financially or professionally connected to the same publicly funded entity led by the Party President.

This overlap further complicates questions of independence and reinforces the perception that electoral and governance decisions are being managed within a narrow circle of influence. When the person charged with upholding the rules of the Party is financially dependent on the person accused of breaching them — and those chairing and recording meetings also report within the same organisational network — the entire accountability framework collapses.

4 · The March 2025 Remit

In March 2025, I formally submitted a remit to the Tāmaki Makaurau Electorate AGM calling for the resignation of the Party President on constitutional and integrity grounds. The remit was grounded in Clause 9.1 (ii), which defines as misconduct any act that brings the Party into disrepute.

My decision to lodge the remit arose from deep concern about the pressure being placed on Takutai Tarsh Kemp, the incumbent MP for Tāmaki Makaurau, who was unwell at the time and facing intense demands from the President to resign. His behaviour — including ongoing pressure and public commentary — was inconsistent with tikanga and the duty of care expected of a Party leader.

These actions reflected a broader pattern of bullying, unilateral decision-making, and disregard for constitutional processes.

Importantly, this remit was submitted months before the current public fallout — a proactive attempt to uphold the constitution and safeguard the kaupapa. I submitted it in good faith and requested to present it via Zoom while unwell with COVID-19, but my request went unanswered.

It was later recorded as “unanimously rejected” in my absence — by a meeting managed by the Party Secretary, Lance Norman. I was never provided minutes of the meeting and was denied the opportunity to present my remit to the National Council.

These events reveal a deeper pattern: when members act to protect the constitution, those in control move to silence them. A remit that should have triggered a process under Clause 9.5 was instead buried.

Under the 2013 constitution, the National Council had authority to act independently of the President. Under the 2023 constitution, those powers now sit within the Executive he leads — a structure that protects leadership, not members.

5 · Who Does the Party Belong To?

At its founding, Te Pāti Māori was never designed to belong to one leader, one electorate, or one dynasty. It was born from the collective will of whānau, hapū, and iwi who demanded representation that reflected Māori values — manaakitanga, whanaungatanga, kotahitanga, and mana motuhake.

The founding constitution reflected that vision. It gave authority to the membership, not to any single office-holder, and required that the National Council and electorates act as kaitiaki of that mandate. This was the moemoea of the original author of the constitution, Professor Whatarangi Winiata.

Over time, however, the balance has shifted. Decisions once grounded in consultation are now centralised in the President’s office. And the myth that one man “saved the Party” after the 2017 election result, has been used to justify power without accountability.

Yes, resources played a role in rebuilding Te Pāti Māori — but as The Māori Green Lantern revealed, much of that funding came from public sources, not private sacrifice. When financial scrutiny came, it was not those at the top who bore the burden, but those working behind the scenes.

That should give us pause about where accountability truly lies.

The 2023 constitution also tightened membership control — reducing terms from three years to annual renewals and raising the voting age from 13 to 16. In practice, this gives leadership greater power over who remains “financial” and eligible to participate, shrinking the base that once held the Party to account.

The Māori Party belongs — as it always has — to the people: to the marae committees who hosted its early hui, to the rangatahi who carried the flags, and to the wāhine who held it together when others walked away.

It does not belong to the loudest voice or biggest chequebook.

6 · A Record of Words and Actions

The President’s record of public statements over two decades shows a consistent pattern of hostility toward the very movement he now claims to protect.

In 2004 and 2005, while still a Labour MP, John Tamihere dismissed the then-new Māori Party as “elitist,” “tribal fundamentalist,” and “a party of grievance,” claiming it was “led by a wealthy educated elite who do not represent ordinary Māori.” (NZ Herald, 13 May 2004; Dominion Post, 2 July 2005.)

He once said, “There is no case and no space in this country for separatists.” (Sunday Star-Times, 5 June 2005.)

Those comments reveal a deeper irony: that a leader who once condemned the Party’s existence now claims to be its saviour.

And when a person has a proven history of falsehoods — as shown by my successful defamation case against him — we must ask: why do we still accept his word as truth?

7 · Complicity and the Question of Accountability

These patterns of rhetoric have not remained in the past — they continue to shape the Party’s culture today, reinforced by those who stand by in silence.

However, this moment is not only about one man’s behaviour, but about those who enable it. The two co-leaders have been complicit in defending the President’s conduct, framing calls for accountability as “disunity” rather than integrity.

Co-leader Rawiri Waititi told 1News on Tuesday 4 November:

“When I say rogue MPs, that’s absolutely what they are, and they have operated against and breached the Constitution.”

His co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer added,

“I didn’t like the President when I started — I say that to his face. But what I do like is the mastermind and the brilliance that he has to be able to strategically position and drive this Party.”

Together, their remarks illustrate the contradiction at the heart of the Party’s leadership — openly acknowledging constitutional breaches while continuing to affirm the President’s centralised control.

But who determines that those questioning leadership are “rogue”? In any democratic movement, dissent and accountability are not rebellion — they are safeguards of integrity. Calling critics “rogue” reframes principled challenge as betrayal and turns the constitutional right to question leadership into an act of disloyalty.

This is how power consolidates: by defining resistance as insubordination and governance scrutiny as a “coup.” In truth, those who stand for due process are not attacking the kaupapa — they are protecting it.

It is also understood that the Te Tai Tonga Electorate has submitted a remit to the National Council to be addressed at the Party’s AGM, seeking clarification on whether the draft constitutional changes — particularly those concerning general-seat candidacy and the mana of the Executive Electorates — will be ratified at that hui.

If that is the case, are they now to be labelled “rogue” for simply asking that constitutional changes be properly explained and ratified? When does principled inquiry become a coup — and who gets to decide?

Those who weaponise the constitution to shield themselves from scrutiny are doing the opposite. By protecting their own positions instead of upholding the constitution they loosely reference, they have become part of the problem.

Tikanga teaches us that silence in the face of wrongdoing is not neutrality — it is complicity. In the end, it will be their electorates who decide their fate.

These structural changes have far-reaching implications for how accountability is exercised — and avoided. Unless transparency and due process are restored, the Party risks losing the trust of its own membership.

8 · A Missed Opportunity for Unity

The 2023 constitution still charges the Party with advancing the collective interests of Māori, not protecting individual reputations. By turning inward when unity is most needed, the leadership has again placed personality above kaupapa.

The recent visit by the Iwi Leaders Group should have been an opportunity to refocus on the real battle — the escalating attacks on Māori rights by this Government. Instead, the co-leaders used the moment to defend their own positions and alliances.

At a time when the Government is dismantling the very protections our tīpuna fought for, silence and self-preservation are not acts of leadership — they are acts of abandonment.

9 · Truth, Tikanga, and the Test of Leadership

Te Pāti Māori was founded on the principle that the people — not personalities — hold the mana. That principle is being tested now.

Constitutional integrity and tikanga are not obstacles to progress; they are the foundation on which trust is built.

The question before us is no longer who wins the argument, but who upholds the kaupapa.

• Restoring the kaupapa will require courage:

  • Re-establishing independent oversight through a reinstated National Council;

  • Protecting the autonomy of the Party Secretary; and

  • Returning membership authority to whānau, hapū, and iwi — where it has always belonged.

10 · The Way Forward

Restoring the kaupapa requires more than words — it demands action guided by tikanga and collective responsibility. Each of us has a role in rebuilding integrity within Te Pāti Māori.

• Become financial members, attend branch and electorate hui, and participate in decision-making.

• Sign and support Te Tai Tonga’s petition calling for accountability at the highest level. https://www.petitions.com/te-tai-tonga-tpm-vnc?utm_source=web_share

• Back the remit process — 200 financial members can require the National Council to address constitutional breaches.

• Support the new Tāmaki Makaurau MP to establish a non-partisan electorate committee grounded in transparency and tikanga.

• Ask your Te Pāti Māori MPs directly how they are upholding the constitution and safeguarding the kaupapa entrusted to them?

Change will not come from one person — it will come from many acting with integrity, courage, and aroha for the kaupapa that binds us.

Related Reading

(https://amokurapanoho.substack.com/p/the-maori-party-belongs-to-the-people)

(https://themaorigreenlantern.substack.com/p/the-suspension-of-mariameno-kapa)

Sources

New Zealand Herald, 13 May 2004, “Tamihere attacks Māori Party elites.”
Dominion Post, 2 July 2005, “Tamihere dismisses separatism.”
Sunday Star-Times, 5 June 2005.

Author’s Note:
This piece was originally offered for publication through another outlet. It is shared here directly to preserve its integrity and timing.

Written in the spirit of truth-telling and restoration — not division. It is grounded in my experience as one of the party’s early organisers and supporters. I publish it with aroha for all those who continue to carry the kaupapa forward.

Two decades after helping found Te Pāti Māori, I’ve watched with pride — and now with deep concern — as the movement I once helped build risks losing its way. This is not a personal attack. It’s a plea for the kaupapa to come home — to the people, to tikanga, and to the place where it all began.

I still remember that afternoon at Dame June Jackson’s home in Māngere as if it were yesterday. Gathered in her lounge were some of the most influential Māori figures of that time — among them, Hon. Tariana Turia, Professor Whatarangi Winiata, Dr Pita Sharples, and June herself.

It was 2004, not long before Labour’s Foreshore and Seabed Bill was due to be introduced to Parliament, despite almost universal opposition from Māori. A hīkoi was planned to arrive in Wellington just before the bill’s first reading on May 7.

Tariana, then a Labour MP and a junior minister in Helen Clark’s government, wanted to cross the floor of Parliament to vote against the bill — and she was on the phone to Archie Taiaroa, a significant leader in Whanganui, asking for his support.

By the time the call ended, Archie had agreed to give his backing — but on one condition: that Dr Pita Sharples stand alongside her. It was then that Whatarangi and Papa Pita turned to look at me: “Are you in?”

That night, I said yes. I agreed to help Papa Pita, a newcomer to national politics, run for the Tāmaki Makaurau seat.

It was a pivotal moment. I had no idea then how much that decision would shape my life, or how deeply it would bind me to a movement that sought to change the political landscape for Māori.

Not long after that meeting, Tariana resigned from Labour. It was an act of immense courage — a stand made on principle even when the political cost was high. Two months later, in July 2004, she won the by-election for Te Tai Hauāuru by an overwhelming margin, giving birth to the Māori Party. It was a powerful mandate from our people — a declaration that Māori political power could look different, grounded in tikanga and collective vision rather than party politics.

When Papa Pita went on to win the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate in the 2005 election — unseating John Tamihere, who was a Labour MP at the time — I became his electorate secretary, and the late Dr Sir Toby Curtis became his electorate chairperson. Toby’s leadership, wisdom, and calm authority gave the movement credibility and moral depth. Together, he and Papa Pita embodied the kind of manaakitanga and integrity that defined kaupapa Māori leadership at its best.

Kaupapa Before Politics

Those early days were all about kaupapa. We were driven by the conviction that Māori needed our own political vehicle to protect our whenua, our moana and our mokopuna, to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and to chart a future defined by our values.

These commitments were not just ideals — they were enshrined in the Party’s founding Principles, written into the Constitution itself: to uphold mana motuhake, protect our taonga tuku iho, advance equity for whānau, and ensure the integrity of Te Tiriti as the foundation for all relationships with the Crown.

Those principles were grounded in the tanga that define who we are as Māori — whanaungatanga, manaakitanga, rangatiratanga, wairuatanga, kaitiakitanga, kotahitanga, and pono. They were not simply words, but the moral compass for how we were expected to lead and to serve.

Many of us came from different spaces — academia, unions, activism, and the arts — but we shared a single purpose. We organised, strategised, walked the streets, and built relationships across the motu.

For me, it was a natural extension of what I’d always believed: that the strength of our people lies in unity, and in standing unapologetically as Māori. That’s why I said yes that afternoon in Māngere — and why I still care so deeply about this kaupapa today.

But there was a personal cost.

When Power Is Used to Silence

The party had barely formed when I became the target of a public attack by John Tamihere, who accused me of using Department of Labour resources to support Te Pāti Māori. The claim was false, but the damage was real. It cost me my career as a senior public servant and placed enormous strain on my whānau.

Although he later withdrew the allegation and apologised, I took him to court for defamation — and I won. For me, it was about restoring my mana and defending my integrity.

It is not lost on me, all these years later, that the man who once accused me of wrongdoing for supporting the Māori Party is now its president. The irony is noted, but the lesson was enduring: power can be used not only to uplift, but to silence and intimidate.

Returning to the Movement

Years later, under the presidencies of Dame Naida Glavish and Tuku Morgan, I returned as the Party Secretary. Those were turbulent times — the split with Hone Harawira and the birth of the Mana Party tested our resolve and our unity. But through it all, the founders held fast to the belief that the movement was always bigger than any single personality or political calculation.

That belief was again tested when John sought the Tāmaki Makaurau candidacy for the 2020 general election. I opposed it. I knew that electorate well. When Papa Pita won it in 2005, it was wāhine Māori and rangatahi who carried him to victory. They recognised integrity, and a leadership style grounded in kaupapa.

John’s combative, anti-iwi, macho brand of politics appealed to a narrow audience — but not to the wāhine who move mountains in Māori politics. I warned that he would not win. He didn’t.

My deeper concern, however, was integrity. When I lodged a formal complaint about his candidacy, it was dismissed on a technicality: that his previous actions denigrating the party could not be considered because he wasn’t a financial member at the time. It was a constitutional loophole that protected power, not principle — and in time, it became a mechanism that allowed that imbalance to grow.

By that stage, John already had a well-known pattern of lawyering up when challenged — using legal threats to protect his position and deter criticism. So when I questioned his candidacy, that same approach surfaced again.

It reflected a leadership style quick to respond through legal avenues rather than engagement — a pattern also evident in his wider roles at the Waipareira Trust and the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency, where defamation actions and judicial reviews became familiar tools of defence. It’s a litigious style that discourages dissent and creates fear where there should be dialogue.

For a kaupapa movement built on collective responsibility and kōrero that seeks to uplift rather than silence, this approach corrodes trust and weakens accountability.

(Examples of this approach are a matter of public record: Tamihere v MediaWorks (2014); Tamihere v NZME (2019–20); Whānau Ora judicial review (2025); and Waipareira Trust v Charities Board (2025).)

A Leadership Culture Gone Wrong

From my vantage point since, the same patterns have re-emerged: the silencing of dissent, the personal attacks, the selective storytelling. The email circulated to members, containing deeply personal and damaging claims about the Kapa-Kingi whānau, was not leadership — it was defamation masquerading as accountability.

There were no charges, no findings, no proof — only a one-sided account presented as fact. It was an attempt to destroy credibility rather than address substance.

This is not the tikanga-based leadership promised in our constitution. It reflects the politics of control, not of care.

After significant backlash from members, supporters, and Māori leaders across the motu— the party quietly issued a notice for an Annual General Meeting to be held in Rotorua in early December. On the surface, this might appear as an opportunity for renewal. But if the hui takes place under the same structures and personalities that have enabled this culture of fear and control, then little will change.

The events that have followed only reinforce that concern. Recently, statements issued in the name of the National Council claimed that formal resolutions — including the suspension of elected Te Tai Tokerau MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi — had been passed. Yet under the party’s constitution, the Council cannot lawfully convene without representation from at least four Māori electorates and the required officers. My sources advise that this quorum was not met which is contrary to the public statement issued.

Given the nature of the decisions, each electorate would have been required under the party’s constitution to convene a properly notified hui of financial members — through its Electorate Council and branches — to confirm or mandate representatives prior to attending the National Council. My sources advised that no such hui were held, meaning those representatives lacked constitutional authority. As a financial member I definitely was not invited to any such meeting. This raises serious questions about the validity of the process and any resolutions made.

Acting without proper authority breaches both the constitution and the tikanga of whakawhitiwhiti kōrero. It replaces collective decision-making with control, and in doing so, erodes the trust of the people the movement exists to serve.

Restoring the Kaupapa

Renewal begins with remembering where we came from.

If Te Pāti Māori is to genuinely reset, it must go back to where it all began — to Whangaehu Marae, near Whanganui. It was there, twenty years ago, that we gathered around Tariana Turia to organise, to mobilise, and to celebrate her overwhelming victory in Te Tai Hauāuru. That hui marked the moment when the Māori Party’s kaupapa was first affirmed in the collective spirit of our people.

Returning there would not just be symbolic; it would be restorative. It would ground the movement once again in the wairua, courage, and kotahitanga that birthed it. It would remind us that this kaupapa was never about individuals, but about collective conviction and unity of purpose.

Otherwise, the reset will be little more than theatre — another exercise in control disguised as consultation.

The Kaupapa Demands Better

Māori are facing one of the most hostile governments in decades. Rights and protections fought for over generations are being dismantled at speed — from the MACA Amendment Bill, the Regulatory Standards Bill seeking to sideline Treaty obligations, to the erosion of equity in health and education.

The diminishing of te reo Māori in public institutions and media, the attempted removal of Māori language names from government agencies, and the retraction of pay-equity commitments for wāhine in essential sectors like health and social services are not isolated policy shifts — they are deliberate steps backwards.

Each one chips away at decades of progress our people fought for, and together they represent a wider assault on Māori advancement and mana motuhake.

Yet even amid the noise, we have seen what kaupapa leadership can look like. In the humility and grace of Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, who carries herself with aroha and courage far beyond her years. In the dignity and clarity of Oriini Kaipara’s maiden speech, grounded in whakapapa and hope. And in the quiet stoicism of Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, who has endured personal and political attacks with strength, restraint, and unwavering commitment to kaupapa. Together they remind us that true Māori leadership is not about power or profile, but about service — to our people, to te reo, and to the generations still coming.

These are the battles that demand our unity and focus. Yet the actions of the present leadership — contradictory to the kaupapa that once bound us — have instead created the internal conflict that has taken hold, just as Eru Kapa-Kingi has publicly observed.

In recent correspondence from party officials, the response to genuine questions of accountability has been to point to the number of seats won in the last election — described as the party’s best result in twenty years. But electoral success does not excuse a culture that contradicts the kaupapa. Winning six seats means little if the movement itself is losing its integrity. The measure of leadership is not how much power it holds, but how it uses that power — whether to strengthen the collective or to silence it.

Te Pāti Māori was never meant to be the property of any one person. It was built on collective leadership — kotahitanga, manaakitanga, and tino rangatiratanga.

Across the motu, electorates like Te Tai Tonga have already passed votes of no confidence in the current leadership. That is not rebellion; it is accountability. It shows the kaupapa is moving — with or without the permission of those who hold office.

The constitution is clear: three electorates can call a Special General Meeting. Two hundred members can sign a remit. The power sits with the people.

Time to Let the Kaupapa Breathe

I don’t take lightly the responsibility of writing this article — or the implications it may have for me and my whānau. For most of my life, I’ve preferred to work behind the scenes, contributing to kaupapa rather than seeking the spotlight. But there comes a time when silence feels like complicity, and integrity demands that we speak.

This is one of those times.

And this is not about revenge or personality. It is about restoring trust, integrity, and accountability to the party’s leadership.

John Tamihere, it is time to stand down.

It is time to release your grip on the party and allow it to breathe again. It is time to make space for new leadership grounded in humility and collective vision. Holding on in the face of such clear calls for accountability does not strengthen the movement — it weakens it.

Te Pāti Māori was never yours to own. It existed before you, and it will exist after you.

Your greatest act of leadership now would be to step aside with dignity and allow the party to find its way back to the principles it was founded upon.

As Māori, we know that healing requires honesty. Sometimes the wound must be opened so that the infection can drain and the flesh can heal.

He mamae te ngau, he rongoā te pono — the bite may hurt, but truth is the medicine.

This kōrero is not meant to divide, but to cleanse — to bring the truth to the surface so that the kaupapa might recover its mauri.

The kaupapa demands no less — and our people deserve no less.

Mauri ora.

Author Bio

Amokura Panoho (Te Atiawa, Taranaki, Ngā Ruahinerangi, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Kahungunu me Rangitāne ki Wairarapa, Ngāi Tahu me Kāti Mamoe) was the inaugural Tāmaki Makaurau electorate secretary for Te Pāti Māori and later served as its National Secretary. She is a strategist, writer, and director of Kura Consulting.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of any organisations, boards, or entities with which she is or has been associated.