Episode description
After its most successful election - taking all but one of the Māori seats - Te Pāti Māori is amping up for the next three years as "the only true opposition". It's a dramatic turnaround for a party dumped out of Parliament entirely in 2017, but co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer says that was a critical part of the party's growth. They are also looking ahead to their next generation of leaders, she says, and plans are afoot to shake Parliament up and normalise it for Māori. In this week's Focus on Politics, Political Reporter Giles Dexter asks Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer to reflect on what the party did to win all but one of the Māori electorates and what it has planned for the 54th Parliament.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer says the party this term will be pushing to make Parliament more welcoming to Māori from day one.
"It's an evolving movement, we should never stay the same" - Debbie Ngarewa-Packer
After its most successful election - taking all but one of the Māori seats - Te Pāti Māori is amping up for the next three years as "the only true opposition".
It's a dramatic turnaround for a party dumped out of Parliament entirely in 2017, but co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer says that was a critical part of the party's growth.
They are also looking ahead to their next generation of leaders, she says, and plans are afoot to shake Parliament up and normalise it for Māori.
Listen to the full podcast
After the final vote count on 3 November - and the subsequent judicial recounts - Te Pāti Māori is confirmed to have won all but one of the Māori electorates.
It's not just the wins that are impressive but from whom those seats were won, with senior Labour figures like Kelvin Davis, Nanaia Mahuta and Peeni Henare ousted.
Tākuta Ferris took Te Tai Tonga from Labour's Rino Tirikatene; along with its previous iteration the Southern Māori seat, the electorate has been held by a Tirikatene for all but 15 of 91 years.
At 21, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke wasn't even born when Hauraki-Waikato incumbent Nanaia Mahuta first entered Parliament in 1996. She told RNZ on election night the biggest achievement was getting a foot in the door - not just for herself, but for the kohanga reo generation.
Nanaia Mahuta, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, and Meka Whaitiri
Ngarewa-Packer says they could see a growing frustration with the status quo, and people were able to identify with the party better than some of the more traditional positions. …