Martin van Beynen is a Press journalist and regular opinion contributor.
OPINION: When a political party becomes amusing fodder for columnists it really is in serious trouble.
Te Pāti Māori has this year lurched from one disaster to another, which, to be fair, does not make it that dissimilar to other New Zealand parties. However, it was supposed to be different, especially with its tikanga approach to resolving tensions and disagreements.
Well, the approach revealed in the last few days is brutal.
A showdown must have been brewing for some time, but let’s start with Te Pāti Māori demoting whip Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, regarded as the party MP most respectful of Parliament’s processes. Her son Eru, formerly the party’s vice-president and a spokesman for the Toitū te Tiriti movement, then broke ties with the party, saying the leadership had become dictatorial and toxic.
This week party management sent an email to members and either leaked it to the media, or knew, as sure as eggs, that it would find its way there. The email showed Kapa-Kingi’s office was heading towards a budget blow-out and that Eru had allegedly said some nasty, entitled and ethnically disparaging things to a parliamentary security guard.
This could be regarded as Te Pāti Māori being transparent and honest with its members and electorates, except for two things. The first is that the party is not that open. It dictates who it speaks to and what questions it will answer. It is very good at shutting up shop when it suits.
Secondly, the party has been aware, as Stuff’s political correspondent Glenn McConnell has pointed out, of the issues with the Kapa-Kingis for months and yet has waited until now to have a crack under the guise of openness.
All this is entertaining and great material for Māori bashers, but is very sad for people who want to see Māori do well.
New Te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara did not help things last week by breaching the time limit for her maiden speech, which was followed by a haka in the public gallery.
However, she warrants a bit of slack. Parliament can spare a few extra minutes and Kaipara spoke impressively. The singing from the public gallery was beautiful. Perhaps we didn’t need the history lesson and we could have done without the haka, but she looks very much like a leader of the future.
I’m not sure what ails Te Pāti Māori, but it needs to sort out a few things if it is going to look like a credible partner in any government.
The first is ensuring relatives are not in key positions in the party or on the payroll. President John Tamihere is the father of TPM’s general manager Dr Kiri Tamihere-Waititi, described as a “relentless force in her husband’s success and probably more liberated”. Tamihere-Waititi is married to the party’s co-leader, Rawiri Waititi.
Then we have Mariameno Kapa-Kingi engaging her son as a contractor. She’s not the first MP to hire family, but it’s never a good idea because it leads to conflicts of interest and looks terrible.
The second is doing the mahi. MPs are paid to do a job and that job entails being, well, a member of Parliament. It’s long been said by political reporters that Te Pāti Māori leaders have a sniffy attitude to Parliament and have made little effort to be good parliamentarians.
The attendance of Te Pāti Māori MPs is patchy at best and protocols and rules are continually breached. One observer noted that Te Pāti Māori MPs are “quite content to use Parliament as a soundstage for its social media content. It’s far from the first political party to do this – but it’s the first party that only uses the House for this purpose.”
MPs are paid $168,000 a year. Taxpayers, who include grassroots Māori, deserve better. With all the problems that beset Māori, it was instructive to visit the party’s website this week to see what it is currently campaigning about. The first featured campaign was a petition to “Say No to the FBI in Aotearoa”.
Finally, the party needs consistency. Take the approach to the Instagram post from Te Tai Tonga MP Tākuta Ferris, that accused Labour of using “Indians, Asians, Black and Pākehā” supporters to “take a Māori seat from Māori”.
The party’s co-leaders were disapproving, but Tamihere told Radio Waatea “what Tākuta Ferris said, in substance, was right”.
Looking at the party’s implosion from the outside, it seems it needs more of a clean-out than a reset.