In brief 

• Labour’s Peeni Henare says the quiet parts of party policy out loud.
  
• He promises $1b in funding for Māori initiatives.
  
• He reminds voters Labour will revive the Māori Health Authority.
  
• Ardern’s black-armband compulsory “histories” to reappear in schools.
  

A sense of unreality hangs over the contest between New Zealand’s biggest political parties to win the public’s favour. While National — despite frequent grumbling and criticism from its own base — is forging ahead with significant reforms in a range of areas, Labour has decided its best bet for the election in 2026 is to announce as little policy as possible until next year.

This strategy is described as the party presenting a “small target”. While Hipkins is currently flying a kite about the electoral acceptability of a capital gains tax and has promised to reinstate pay equity legislation and the ban on oil and gas exploration, the public has virtually no idea of what Labour intends in a raft of policy areas, including co-governance.

So far, the “small target” approach has worked. Recent polling has consistently put the two major parties neck and neck. And Labour’s share of the vote has been reliably higher than its disastrous election-night tally of 26.9 per cent in 2023, even though the party is still led by the same man who led it to defeat.

However, as the battle for the Tāmaki Makaurau seat in the by-election on September 6 heats up, serious fissures are appearing in the party’s hide-and-seek approach to announcing what it intends to do if it regains power at the head of a coalition that would undoubtedly include the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.

Last week, at candidates meetings for the by-election, Peeni Henare — an influential member of Labour’s Māori caucus — made several arresting comments.

He assured the audience, for instance, that the gang-patch ban would be repealed. When asked by journalists, Carmel Sepuloni, Hipkins’ deputy, was quick to deny that claim — although she admitted that Labour’s fierce opposition to the bill in Parliament might have given Henare that impression.

And it would certainly be no wonder if Henare was confused about Labour Party policy. In the parliamentary debate over the bill, senior Labour MPs emphasised that gangs are “whānau” and are victims themselves, much like the victims who have endured their violence. In short, Duncan Webb, Willie Jackson, Ginny Andersen and others were basically repeating Jacinda Ardern’s view that “gangs are us”.

Now that Labour has seen how popular the gang-patch ban is — and anxious to avoid accusations of being soft on crime — the gangs appear to no longer be us.

After Sepuloni had gently slapped him down, Henare stood by his initial claim. He did, however, acknowledge he was expressing a personal opinion which was not party policy. But it was clear at the candidates meeting that he was making a campaign pledge his audience will expect to be honoured if he wins the seat.

He also committed Labour to spending $1 billion a year in new money for Māori initiatives if Labour is successful at 2026’s election. When asked if he thought he would be able to secure a billion dollars, Henare replied “most definitely”.

Although that sum might seem outlandish, especially at a time of pressure on the state’s finances, Labour’s Māori caucus achieved a similar result in 2021’s Budget, citing the government’s obligations as a Treaty “partner”.

In May that year, former MP Tau Henare made it clear on TVNZ’s Q&A panel exactly who was calling the shots. Asked by host Jack Tame what he thought about Willie Jackson securing more than a billion dollars for Māori causes, Tau Henare replied: “At the end of the day, what this says is about [Māori] being around the table — in numbers — so that you can say to your mates: ‘Hey, take it or leave it. We can always leave.’”

Interviewed by Mihi Forbes alongside Te Pāti Māori’s candidate Oriini Kaipara, Henare has also confirmed that Labour would relaunch the Māori Health Authority. He said: “I thought we did a reasonably good job at starting to grow what a construct could be to deliver for Māori and for under-served communities. This government obviously wiped those away. My leader is quite clear that we made a commitment to go back to looking towards a Māori Health Authority.”

What exactly that might mean in practice is unclear. However, it is worth remembering that in Andrew Little’s original concept, the Māori Health Authority would have had the power of veto over Health NZ’s plans for the rest of New Zealand — again as an expression of a Treaty “partnership”.

Hipkins needs to make it clear to New Zealanders how much power the Māori Health Authority would have. He also needs to explain what other co-governance policies would be resuscitated.

Peeni Henare announced Labour would reintroduce Jacinda Ardern’s compulsory “Aotearoa New Zealand Histories” programme in schools — which offered a black-armband view of the nation’s history in which Pakeha were demonised as oppressive colonisers and Māori valorised as valiant resisters.

Henare noted Ardern made sure that NZ history would be “taught locally”.

“So the history of Ngāpuhi will be taught to Ngāpuhi tamariki; the history of Tāmaki Makaurau will be taught to our whanau who live here in Tāmaki Makaurau. It is a policy we introduced; this government took it away and we’re committed to doing that again.”

In practice, it meant sometimes unqualified iwi representatives, often relying on oral history, would determine the curriculum for students in their area. Or, in other words, co-governance in education policy.

What does seem quite clear from Henare’s pledges is that Labour’s Māori caucus fully intends to regain the dominant influence it had during the Ardern-Hipkins government of 2017-23.

Unless Hipkins pushes back strongly against that scenario, his chances of becoming Prime Minister will be diminished. But whether such pushback is even possible for him remains moot given it has been observed that Hipkins can only hang onto the leadership as long as he has the support of his Māori MPs.

When Hipkins became Prime Minister after Ardern stepped down in January 2023, Labour was rewarded with a bump in the polls — not least because Hipkins promised a “bonfire” of unpopular policies. Hopes were high that he would jettison co-governance in policy and law, but when it became obvious he had no intention of doing that, the party’s polling plummeted.

It’s difficult to believe that Hipkins’ and Labour’s poll numbers won’t take a similar hit when it becomes clear that co-governance is firmly back on the political agenda. There is every reason to believe that when voters realise Labour is still dedicated to creating an ethno-state that gives inordinate power and preference to one ethnic group its polling will crater.

Hipkins may believe, of course, that many of 2023’s voters who rejected co-governance — including Three Waters and the Māori Health Authority — have had a complete change of heart in the past two years. But such a belief requires a heroic level of optimism. If anything, it has become an even more polarising topic after the fierce debate around the Treaty Principles Bill earlier this year.

Journalists don’t ask Hipkins very often about Labour’s dedication to co-governance and the Treaty as a “partnership” but it is certain to become an area of contention in the 14 months until the election no matter how much Hipkins wants to avoid it. Particularly, of course, if Peeni Henare and his fellow Māori MPs publicly advocate for it.

And given Labour wants to wrest back the Māori seats held by Te Pāti Māori, it will be hard for Hipkins to gloss over co-governance if Labour’s candidates for the seats are trying to match or exceed Te Pāti Māori’s promises. During the debate on The Hui between Henare and Kaipara, she recommended “co-governance right across the board at a local, and regional and national level”. 

Henare’s pledges to electors in the Tāmaki Makaurau seat have been described by some commentators as “radical”. While that is true, it is equally true they simply represent the same radical policies Ardern and her Māori caucus foisted on an unsuspecting public after Labour gained an outright majority in 2020.

And the same policies, of course, that were a significant factor in Labour’s crushing defeat in 2023.