After Labour won all seven Māori electorates in the 2017 election, pushing the Māori Party out, the party's co-leader John Tamihere says his party is ready to return to give Māori an independent voice in Parliament.
Labour’s Peeni Henare, who has held the Tāmaki Makaurau seat since 2014, joined fellow candidate Tamihere on TVNZ1’s Breakfast this morning to make his case for the seat.
Tamihere said he could offer Māori an independent voice in Parliament that was unrestrained by a larger party.
“He’s [Henare is] in the wrong party … I used to be there, I made the same mistake,” former Labour MP Tamihere said.
“He’s in a caucus where a majority of people can vote you down behind closed doors. I’m not saying it’s happened yet, but it does.”
Henare rejected that Labour’s Māori caucus had been silenced.
“We’ve pushed hard for kaupapa. We haven't got all our kaupapa across the line, and I’ll be honest about that.”
But, he said he was proud of the work his Government had made in areas like Whānau Ora and would continue to work for Māori if re-elected.
Tamihere said work to improve the inequity Māori faced couldn’t be incremental, and big change was something an independent Māori voice could bring.
“We’ve got to move the dial pretty quickly.”
Host John Campbell pointed to Māori Party policy, which included promises increasing the minimum wage to $25 , and asked Tamihere how the country could afford it.
“You can afford locking us up,” Tamihere replied, saying two years the Department of Corrections' budget is greater than the total amount paid out in Treaty settlements to date. Māori are overrepresented in the country’s prison population.
“We can transition that [money]. If you live in poverty 24/7 … you’ll tip, and that’s what our people do. They tip.”
Henare said inequities Māori faced were “horrific”.
Work was already being done in areas like Whānau Ora, Oranga Tamariki and in housing, he said.
“We know there’s a housing crisis. Have we delivered as many homes as we’d hoped? No.
“But we’ve also done a number of things in there to change the way that our homes are managed.”
He said if Labour got the mandate through its re-election in the Māori seats, it would continue to push for better outcomes.
Tamihere said his party was only seeking electorate votes, offering voters a potential three-for-one deal in Tāmaki Makaurau if they were to give them their electorate vote.
Current party vote polling could see Henare and Greens co-leader Marama Davidson return through their party’s lists.
“They’re pretty smart,” he said of voters.
He also promised a “rebuilt” Māori Party after its ousting from Parliament and its support of the previous National Government.
“The party went off the rails ... in 2011,” Tamihere said, making reference to Hone Harawira’s Mana Movement.
“As soon as the party fragmented, our people didn’t like that.”
Tamihere said the party had ushered in the next generation, which had benefited from a Māori education of kohanga reo, kura kaupapa and whare kura.
“They’re young, they’re vibrant, they’re creative, they’re educated, they’re skilled.”
But Henare said he still wanted his electorate’s votes.
“I humbly ask for the mandate … I don’t take it for granted. I think there’s something to be said about having a mandate to represent the people,” he said.
With the Māori Party sitting at 0.2 per cent according to the latest 1 NEWS Colmar Brunton poll , winning Tāmaki Makaurau is the most likely way that Tamihere - strategically placed at seventh on his party’s list - could return to Parliament.
A Māori Television/Curia Market Research poll this week showed the race in the electorate is close.
The poll has Henare at 35 per cent of the candidate vote in Tāmaki Makaurau, closely followed by Tamihere at 29 per cent.
Davidson is at 14 per cent according to the poll, and 12 per cent of people said they were undecided and 7 per cent refused to say.
Henare and Tamihere joked they’d find undecided Māori voters at fish and chip shops ahead of election day this Saturday.
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