Waiariki debate: Four Māori candidates offer different paths to political power
About halfway through the Waiariki candidates’ debate on Saturday night, I realised something. It’s not enough to be Māori any more. And I reckon that’s progress.
I was watching the livestream from Waikite Rugby Club at home with my whānau. Mum and Dad were there, my partner Tim, and our kids wandered in and out, largely oblivious to the fact that Dad used to be one of the people sitting on that stage.
Three years after leaving Parliament, I was on the couch. And Waiariki looked different from there.
Rawiri Waititi was surrounded by three other strong Māori candidates: Labour’s Toni Boynton, the Greens’ Tania Waikato and Opportunity’s Pāpā Wharewera.
Nobody needed to prove their Māoriness or convince the room that Te Tiriti mattered. They all started there.
So I found myself asking a different question: what version of Māori political power do we want to support this year?
Rawiri eventually answered with a kūmara.
Everybody likes eating the kūmara at the end, he said in effect, but few see the work beforehand: preparing the soil, planting and tending.
His point was that Te Pāti Māori has spent six years preparing the māra. In 2017 the Māori Party disappeared from Parliament. Waiariki brought it back in 2020. By 2023, Te Pāti Māori held six of the seven Māori electorates.
His pitch is, basically, don’t give away what we’ve spent six years building just as we’re becoming powerful enough to use it.
Having watched Waiariki bring the Māori Party back from the dead in 2020, I’m not going to dismiss that argument.
Toni’s argument was one I know well from my Labour days. Representation is one thing, but government is where the Budget gets written and resources allocated. If you want to change the Government, Labour needs to be strong enough to lead the next one.
Then Pāpā made another point that stuck with me. Māori don’t all think the same. Nor should we.
Why should Māori political power have to travel in one waka?
And then there was Tania Waikato.
After more than 20 years in law and a path she said was leading towards becoming a judge, she boiled her candidacy down to one mission: entrenching Te Tiriti.
Not tomorrow. Not with a magic wand. She talked about a deliberate pathway towards constitutional change.
Tania has just one issue. Which happens to be the biggest one of all.
But as a former MP, I kept coming back to: how are you going to do it?
No Waiariki MP can deliver constitutional change alone. No Māori political party can either. Something that profound needs support well beyond one electorate or party.
So it’s not only how fiercely you believe in the kaupapa. It’s who you can bring with you.
At one point Rawiri joked that he wished the National, Act and New Zealand First candidates were on stage so he could have a scrap.
But they weren’t.
The enemy wasn’t on the stage.
He was surrounded by other Māori candidates who support Te Tiriti and want greater Māori political power too.
Are we spending too much time rowing our own waka and not enough time thinking about where we’re all trying to get to?
Tania doesn’t need to climb into Rawiri’s waka to work alongside him on constitutional change. Toni doesn’t need to leave Labour. Pāpā doesn’t need to abandon Opportunity.
They don’t need to agree on everything. They probably shouldn’t. But if constitutional change really is the destination, at some point they’re going to need each other.
For years we’ve argued about where Māori political power should live: independently, inside a major party, or somewhere else entirely.
Maybe it can live in all of those places.
Four Māori candidates. Different parties. Different ideas about how Māori should use political power.
That’s progress.
And on the things bigger than any election, we should remember:
The kaupapa is bigger than the waka.
Then there’s the race itself.
I know what political momentum feels like. Waiariki gave it to me in 2017 when I beat Māori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell by 1719 votes.
Waiariki moved again in 2020, electing Rawiri by just 836 votes while overwhelmingly giving Labour its party vote.
These voters know what they’re doing with their two ticks.
Sitting beside Mum on Saturday night, I heard something familiar. By the end of the debate, she was voting Tania.
I’m hearing it elsewhere too, including from people with very red political histories. More than one has mentioned the “fire in her puku”.
I’m not predicting Tania will win. Rawiri’s 2023 majority was formidable.
But sometimes a candidate starts escaping their party label and turning up in conversations around kitchen tables.
I know what that sounds like.
I’m not calling the result.
But I’m saying there’s a high-stakes, high-reward collaboration opportunity here; I wonder if their parties are ready for that after November 8.
Tāmati Coffey is a former broadcaster and Labour MP who represented Waiariki from 2017 to 2020 and served in Parliament until 2023. He is no longer a member of any political party.