Te Pāti Māori' co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi. Photo: RNZ/Liliian Hanly
Te Pāti Māori co-leaders say they were "blindsided" at the way things "spiralled out of control" this year.
Both Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi know next year be "tough", but insist "there is no left bloc without Te Pāti Māori".
Te Pāti Māori was riding high at the end of 2024, following a historical hīkoi to Parliament grounds.
As the party leaders sat down for an interview with RNZ at the end of 2025, they were in a markedly different position, following months of turmoil.
Ousted MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi - who is temporarily reinstated to the party following months of turmoil that led to her expulsion - told RNZ she was feeling "upbeat" heading into 2026, despite all the "yucky stuff" this year.
Takutai Tash Kemp
The party was rocked when the former Tāmaki Makaurau MP died suddenly in June after battling kidney disease.
Ngarewa-Packer said watching Kemp fight so hard to be an MP, to advocate for her people and be an "influence for her electorate", while becoming sicker, then to "lose her so suddenly" was the "most devastating thing".
They tried incredibly hard from the sidelines to support her, she said.
Waititi said she became "gravely ill" and he regretted not having "stronger" conversations with her about "just letting this mahi go".
"She fought to be in this house, she fought to stay here, even with that, and she wasn't going to let that sickness define her.
"I think, if any time we can see people really struggling, we should have those conversations and make sure that this isn't the last stop for many of our people."
He acknowledged the "fight for our people" was on one level at Parliament, but fighting to be with your "babies and your mokopuna" was just as important, if not more so.
Ngarewa-Packer said she probably wouldn't grieve properly, until she returned home and could let her breath out.
Waititi reflected on comments he'd made at his aunty Dame June Mariu's tangi, where he acknowledged that her children had to share their mother with the rest of the country and when the country gave her back, "she was broken".
He said everybody benefitted from the work people did, but often it was the families who had to "pick up the pieces".
"Society expects Māori to work harder."
Ngarewa-Packer said the cost of leadership in te ao Māori was "extremely high".
"You are expected to grind your way through pain, hold on to your emotions, work when the seasons are unworkable, all these sorts of things, whether it be through grief or fall out."
There was also the expectation of turning up "on the ground" - just being at Parliament wasn't enough, she said.
"You don't get to go away to your holiday house for a treat for a month."
Tāmaki Makaurau by-election
The party was then thrust into a by-election campaign it went on to win by miles.
In terms of the success, Ngarewa-Packer said the leadership "basically stopped what we were doing" and made it a priority for the electorate to know it wasn't just getting a candidate, but the "attention, the aroha, the manaaki of the leadership too".
She pointed out Tāmaki Makaurau was "one of our most established electorates".
"It's no disrespect to the candidate, but no matter who the party chose, there was actually quite a large infrastructure around that particular electorate."
Waititi said "the movement" also played a part, and the victory made it clear Labour no longer had a "hold on those Māori seats".
The people's respect for Kemp also helped secure the win, Waititi said, off the back of the "biggest hīkoi this country has ever seen" and "the haka".
In November 2024, tens of thousands of people marched through the country to Parliament under the banners of Toitū te Tiriti. Te Pāti Māori's youngest MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke also went viral for starting a haka in parliament during the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill.
Asked what Te Pāti Māori offered that led to such support, Ngarewa-Packer said one of the biggest things was Māori leadership.
She said the party didn't have to "settle" for "politically palatable" policies or actions.
"That has its own dynamics to manage, but the reality is what they could see and hear was a movement that wasn't stifled by non-Māori views.
"What people want to see now and hear and feel is Māori leadership and Māori politicians," she said.
That was the "brand" the party put forward, "including Māori whanaungatanga".
Waititi said "our people can see themselves in this movement".
"For the first time, politically, in this democracy, they could see Te Pāti Māori rising to become a very viable positioning in any future government coming through."
Leadership
Party leadership has been severely challenged of late, starting with allegations by Toitū te Tiriti spokesperson and son of Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi - Eru Kapa-Kingi.
Months of turmoil followed, including counter-allegations, and an increasingly public fallout between the party and two of its MPs.
It led to the expulsion of Mariameno Kapa-Kingi (now temporarily re-instated) and Tākuta Ferris. A court hearing is scheduled for February 2026 to consider the issue of John Tamihere's party presidency and the expulsion of Kapa-Kingi.
Asked what happened and how the party could return from the damage, Waititi said he still had not seen evidence to back up those allegations.
"I would love to have seen it, because then we could deal with it."
He also said the disputes moved "outside these doors into a space that we had no control over".
He acknowledged that te ao Māori was hurting over the split in the party, but that he couldn't control the behaviour of others - "All I can do is control my own."
He said it just "kept going and going and going" in the media and on social media, but re-iterated Te Pāti Māori didn't take the issue to the media, social media or the courts.
"That should have been in house and we should have continued to have those discussions."
RNZ suggested the co-leaders must have known an email sent to membership risked being leaked.
Waititi said: "We must have known a whole lot of things.
"That leaking of that email was not of our doing."
Waititi said, if its electorates asked for information, it would have provided the information, "because the mana sits with them".
"The mana doesn't sit with Debbie and I," he said. "We don't get to choose what they want to see and what they don't want to see."
In terms of the public dispute, Ngarewa-Packer said she "felt very blindsided" by some of the comments and accusations made at the beginning.
"It just spiralled out of control, because you could see we were grinding."
She hoped there was still enough goodwill to dispute and debate the issues internally, but the "minute it went external" - certainly for her own Te Tai Hauāuru electorate - "that was enough".
The leaders clarified that was the point at which four of the six electorates decided to expel Kapa-Kingi and Ferris. Tai Tokerau was excluded from the process, while Te Tai Tonga and Hauraki-Waikato abstained.
"They had every right to say 'enough is enough, we will not tolerate this for our kaupapa'," Ngarewa-Packer said.
She said she completely understood the way people reacted in "disappointment", "shock" and "horror".
"We kept a lot inside for a very long time. We have to accept that our people are still feeling the emotional let down."
She said you still have to "love" and "fight for" your people, even "when you disappoint them".
Ngarewa-Packer said - "sadly" - individuals decided to "make it about personality politics", but she didn't think it was about Tamihere or any personality - it was about a "fundamental disagreement on how things should run".
"From our perspective, it should not be the MPs that run the party. It should be the electorates."
Ngarewa-Packer pointed out not everyone would like their leadership at different times and not everyone would agree across electorates at different times, but "you have to be disciplined".
Asked whether expelling the two MPs went as expected or whether it had backfired, Waititi said things were "getting worse" before the expulsions.
"It just kept bleeding and bleeding."
He believed there should be a good reason for people to resign.
"Give us a reason why JT should resign as a president. Give us the reason why."
Ngarewa-Packer confirmed "absolutely" no consideration was given for Tamihere to step down as president, even if it would help unite the party.
Election year
The leaders knew next year would be tough, but they were adamant "there is no left bloc without Te Pāti Māori".
Ngarewa-Packer said that was why the leadership should stay, because it showed certainty, and would help the party navigate through the "rough times" and remind everybody "what we're here to do".
"We are here, not to win big popularity competitions. We're here to bring the movement and advance it through."
Part of that was mobilising - again - the confidence "of our people on the ground", Ngarewa-Packer said. At times, this would also look like showing political leadership that "may not be popular".
"If the end goal is to get this government out and to get the left block in, then that has always been our focus."
She did not deny it would be hard, but she pointed to 2020, when she and Waititi brought Te Pāti Māori back to Parliament.
"Not to play it down, but 2020 was bloody harder."
Waititi said they had to "pull this waka" from underneath the water.
"We know what it's like to have to build a rebuild a movement."
Asked about Labour leader Chris Hipkins increasingly criticising Te Pāti Māori, throwing into question the ability of the two parties to be in coalition together, Ngarewa-Packer called it "poor politics".
She said using a period of turmoil for Te Pāti Māori to "try and elevate themselves" was naive.
Waititi said Hipkins could critique them all he liked.
"Chris Hipkins, you will not be the prime minister without Te Pāti Māori.
"The Labour Party and the Green Party will need Te Pāti Māori to get over the line."
Te Pāti Māori 'unrecognisable' - Kapa-Kingi
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi - who was awaiting a substantive court hearing in February to confirm whether her reinstatement to the party will be permanent - told RNZ she was feeling upbeat as she wound down the parliamentary year.
The high court's temporary ruling had given her a sense of "satisfaction" she said.
"That was a good feeling for me to have that decision laid down for me, for my family and everybody."
The toughest part of this year had been having a "campaign against me and my kids and my family", she said. Having information "thrown across the media" felt "hurtful" and "wrong".
She described "pieces of the puzzle" coming out in various ways more recently, with "truth-bombs" happening on the way. She spoke specifically of an interview by MATA with Tākuta Ferris, which levelled new allegations against Te Pāti Māori's executive.
"That really brought some truth to the surface that people weren't aware of."
She indicated the court case next year would "bring it all together" in that particular setting, although she acknowledged court was a "last resort".
Kapa-Kingi said she had no concerns in terms of information that may come to light in the court case that would paint her in a negative way.
Stuff reported earlier in December on a text message that had been included in the court documents.
One of the key issues that led to the fallout within the party was whether there had been an agreement between Kapa-Kingi and Takutai Tash Kemp to share resources between their electorates - leading to the projected budget blowout Kapa-Kingi was accused of.
Lawyers acting for TPM president John Tamihere said they had evidence showing Kemp was not pleased about how much had been spent by Kapa-Kingi. This was in the form of a screenshot of a text message from Kemp to Debbie Ngarewa-Packer which read:
"I can't afford another transfer of $45k that's just ridiculous and would mean they take $79k for five months for doing what," she wrote, and then included a screaming cat emoji.
In response, Kapa-Kingi told RNZ she questioned the weight of someone's case if it was based on an emoji, and said she had giggled when she heard of it.
She did not know how people would respond to it, but she was not worried.
"The bigger story, I guess, or the bigger actual decisions and outcomes of that certainly will out outrun any emoji."
She confirmed she stood by all her spending decisions.
Looking ahead to 2026, Kapa-Kingi said the kaupapa behind Te Pāti Māori was "untouchable", but the party was not in a good place.
The way it operated was lacking tikanga and fundamental ways of being Māori.
She said she kept hearing the breakdown within the party was about "personality" but she rejected that, saying it was about "systemic failing".
She said what was need was a reset, "a serious reset, not a pretend, reset, but a real one", referencing the party's attempt at a reset as its newest MP Oriini Kaipara was sworn in in October.
"But I'm back in there now, see. So I'm gonna do everything I can to set it back on track."
One of the missing pieces she said was "honest, straight, upfront kōrerō", which she said she was going to help organise going forward.
"If it takes longer than 20 minutes in a caucus, then it takes longer than 20 minutes in a caucus."
The party has not yet had a caucus meeting since Kapa-Kingi's temporary reinstatement, and she remained distant from the co-leaders at the AGM in Rotorua throughout the day. Tamihere said at the time the party did not want to welcome her back into the fold.
She said that first caucus meeting will be "rough", "testing" and "challenging," but some "serious consideration" needed to happen next year if the goal was a change in government.
Currently, the party was "unrecognisable", she said, but there was an opportunity to "pull it together".
"And I'm up for that."
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