In brief
• The usually loud and opinionated Te Pāti Māori MPs have largely fallen silent after the recent release of official reports into Manurewa Marae.
• The police investigation into allegations of the misuse of data at the marae is only one of the party’s looming problems.
• The retender process for Whānau Ora funding started last year will soon decide which organisations get tens of millions in taxpayer cash.
• It is possible John Tamihere’s Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (WOCA) will not continue to receive the same level of funding — or any at all.
Te Pāti Māori goes silent after scandal
John Tamihere and Te Pāti Māori are in a world of pain
The government cutting Whānau Ora funding would be a crippling blow.
For the longest time, it has been impossible to make Te Pāti Māori MPs behave with dignity and respect as they have revelled in their status as the nation’s foremost “Say Bum to Mummy” party.
Cries of “racism!”, “colonisation!” and “white supremacism!” have long been their smug answers to contentious questions put to them. They delight in sneering in Parliament at the conventions MPs are expected to respect — including being polite to submitters in select committee hearings.
The party’s Te Tai Tonga MP, Takuta Ferris, was told to apologise to the House last month for denying he had called other MPs liars (an apology he made, but in te reo), and he was also heard calling submitters from the New Zealand Centre for Political Research “fucking racists!” when he was sitting on the Justice select committee on the Marine and Coastal Area Amendment Bill last October.
He also picked his nose and ostentatiously ate his lunch with his mouth open while half-listening to former TVNZ broadcaster Peter Williams — who spoke in support of David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill last month — in what appeared to be a
display of undisguised contempt. His response at the end was to deride Williams’ knowledge and effectively tell him that his opinion wasn’t needed because all the relevant discussions had already been had over many years.
Most famously, in November, three of the party’s MPs left their seats in Parliament —at the instigation of 22-year-old Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke — to perform a haka to express their hostility to Seymour’s bill. Their highly choreographed performance included co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer pointing her fingers at Act’s leader in a manner that was widely interpreted as mimicking a gun.
Apparently, such breaches of Parliament’s rules can be excused by appealing to the extremely flexible notion of “tikanga”, which appears to cover any sort of behaviour— no matter how disagreeable or offensive — the party’s MPs engage in.
Now, suddenly, they have gone from political divas perpetually courting media attention to camera-shy dormice. In fact, the mainstream media have found it very difficult to get the party’s MPs to answer questions about the reports released last week by the Public Service Commissioner and NZ Stats into the handling of Census and COVID vaccination data collected at Manurewa Marae and allegedly misused to benefit Te Pāti Maori.
Even when pursued down Parliament’s corridor last week by 1News reporter Maiki Sherman, Takutai Tarsh Kemp — the Te Pāti Maori MP for Tamaki Makaurau and formerly the CEO of Manurewa Marae — referred questions to “the party”.
“You’re a member of Parliament,” Sherman reminded her. “People want to hear from you. What happened at Manurewa Marae? Was it appropriate to use it as a polling booth?” Her questions fell on determinedly deaf ears.
When the reports were released — and despite Parliament sitting at the time — Ngarewa-Packer found herself in Rarotonga, busy protesting at the Cook Islands’ security arrangement with China. She said she had not read them.
Co-leader Rawiri Waititi held a brief press conference mid-week but refused to take questions. Te Pāti Māori general-secretary Lance Norman did not respond to requests for comment.
When asked for her opinion, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait — chair of John Tamihere’s Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (WOCA) and a candidate for Te Pāti Māori in the 2023 election — said she was reading the report and couldn’t comment (even though she had previously claimed she’d had an embargoed copy of the Public Service Commissioner’s report since 31 January).
In fact, the outspokenness and defiance the party’s MPs and its officials have long cultivated as their schtick seems to have wilted. That should, perhaps, be hardly surprising. Te Pāti Māori’s President, John Tamihere, is being assailed on several fronts, with the organisations and party he controls — and helps fund via the Waipareira Trust — under heavy scrutiny.
Millions in taxpayer cash at stake
As well as the findings of the Stats NZ and Public Service Commissioner’s reports being referred to the police and the Privacy Commissioner, Charities Services announced before Christmas its intention to deregister the trust over political
donations. That could mean an immediate tax bill of around $30 million, which would make a serious dent in the net assets it has built up from generous taxpayer grants.
But even more potentially crippling to Tamihere’s empire is the millions in Whānau Ora funding that may be cut off — or, at the least, substantially reduced.
That threat has been hanging over Tamihere since June when, out of the blue, news broke that all Whānau Ora funding was being put up for retender — shortly after $182.3 million had been allocated in the May 30 Budget to the three commissioning agencies, one of which is WOCA.
Significantly, the retender was announced after the allegations about the misuse of Census and Covid vaccination data collected at Manurewa Marae broke in early June, which is widely assumed to have been the catalyst for the funding upheaval. Tamihere complained to Waatea News on July 2 that the rug was being ripped out from underneath his organisation with no consultation about a policy shift.
“You have to give your people out on the street [the] knowledge they can contract with their employees for consecutive years. You’ve got to give confidence to the people you are contracting with that they can take leaseholds, buy cars, buy devices, buy laptops to make their work work in communities, and you’ve got to give them certainty.”
The formal retender process has been under way for several months, and appears to include a significant variation to the current set-up: instead of a single commissioning agency covering the North Island — now held by Tamihere’s WOCA — there will be two.
The question remains whether WOCA will win either of the North Island tenders or be excluded entirely. In either case, WOCA’s income is going to take a substantial hit — as will that of the Waipareira Trust, given how closely the two organisations are linked financially and operationally. Tamihere is CEO of both.
John Tamihere fights for survival
Without that background knowledge, it is impossible to understand Tamihere’s obvious angst at Sir Brian Roche’s comment last week that he had asked Stats NZ, the Ministry of Health, and Te Puni Kōkiri to temporarily suspend entering into new contracts or renewals with the three service providers named in the report — Te Pou Matakana (aka Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency), Waipareira Trust, and Manurewa Marae.
On the face of it, Tamihere has no reason to be upset about these requirements. After all, Roche has made it clear the suspensions will be in place only until adequate measures to protect data and fulfil conflict of interest obligations are established. As the Public Service Commissioner told RNZ, he is perfectly happy for the providers to be given new contracts. “They just have to comply with the new standards. But the existing contracts remain in place. We are honouring those contracts.”
If Tamihere really believed the commissioner’s insistence on new safeguards being put in place was only a hoop to jump through before, once again, being awarded lucrative state-funded contracts, he presumably would have been unconcerned.
However, some view it as a pre-emptive move — especially if WOCA isn’t among the successful applicants in the Whānau Ora retender.
It is also a clear message to Tamihere that the Public Service Commissioner is calling the shots and that access to taxpayer money is not an automatic right.
Tamihere told RNZ that Roche had “no legal right to [act] in that way. He has no evidence upon which to make that judgment… You can’t on suspicion, cut someone’s throat… We have been found guilty of nothing.”
Corrin Dann pointed out the bleeding obvious: “But he has suspended [new contracts]. Are you saying he can’t?”
Tamihere blustered, recommending Dann put the question of legality to Roche himself, and then launched into a bizarre spiel about being Maori: “Just solely practising being Maori. I wake up a Maori, practising being a Maori 24/7. I go to sleep, eight hours, I’m an unconscious Maori. I then go to work in a Māori organisation… I live in this world and I’m allowed to participate in the democratic process.”
Dann tactfully didn’t remind him that the question of just how lawfully Tamihere’s organisations participated in the “democratic process” is at the heart of his problems. (It should be noted the party strenuously denies allegations of the misuse of data.)
What’s next for Whānau Ora funding?
By now, the contenders deemed suitable for Whānau Ora funding in the retender will have been advised whether they can move to the next stage of contracting. However, the public won’t be told until late April which organisations have won contracts, and whether WOCA is among them.
Te Puni Kōkiri told me last week: “[Public] announcements will be made once the procurement is completed and contracts have been agreed with the selected Whānau Ora commissioning agencies. This is currently on track to be completed by the end of April 2025.
“Respondents will be advised by the end of February if they are proceeding through to contract negotiation.”
Meanwhile, Te Pāti Maori’s annual accounts for the year to December 2023 were filed with the Electoral Commission almost six months late. The accounts are incomplete and appear not to have been signed by the party’s executive team.
The audit report for the accounts is also missing. Pages 12 and 13 are headed “Audit Report Te Pāti Māori for the year ended 31 December 2023”.
The pages have been left blank.
Graham Adams is a freelance editor, journalist and columnist. He lives on Auckland’s North Shore.
