In 2020 Labour won 67 percent of the party vote while Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori took just 12 percent and the seat has not been flipped in 27 years, Forbes said.<\/p>\n
Fox said Whaitiri’s move\u00a0would not be an easy decision for some to stomach, however, she believed it was “a master move” by party president John Tamihere. \u00a0The timing was perfect with the prime minister overseas and it avoided a by-election by being within six months of the general election.<\/p>\n
“It needed to come now if it was going to come at all but I do think there might be more following in her stead.”<\/p>\n
Godfery said it was moving to watch Whaitiri advance the reasons for her decision which had now started to make some political sense.<\/p>\n
Invoking the struggle over M\u0101ori land for the last 100 or so years and then linking it to the lack of progress over the last five or six years (while Labour has been in government) made a lot of sense for her as a politician but also for the wider M\u0101ori political movement.<\/p>\n
“So I think there’ll be a lot of sympathy for Meka.”<\/p>\n
However, Fox was more sceptical and believed that Tamihere was the “master crafter of these political movements”. She had sat across the benches from Whaitiri while she smashed Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori and instead held up Labour as representing the M\u0101ori voice.<\/p>\n
There were other M\u0101ori who had become dissatisfied with Labour, such as Louisa Wall, while others such as Willie Jackson and Peeni Henare had considered moving over to Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori before sticking with Labour, Fox said.<\/p>\n
She accused Labour and National of not having M\u0101ori at the forefront of their political aspirations.<\/p>\n
“The true voice of M\u0101ori sits in the hands of M\u0101ori and our people need to come to that understanding that they are not being taken care of under the current political climate whether it’s blue or red.”<\/p>\n
Fox believed with Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori’s social media presence growing and a stronger engagement at grass-roots level it was a great time to be part of what it stood for.<\/p>\n
“We are growing in this space of rangatiratanga [self-determination] and the M\u0101ori Party is the home for this voice.”<\/p>\n
She believed Whaitiri would retain the seat although it would be “a hard road” for her.<\/p>\n
“I think Labour are going to come out all guns blazing as soon as this settles in the next few days … She will come through this in the end but it’s going to take a lot though.”<\/p>\n
People in Tai R\u0101whiti (which is part of the electorate) had been devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle and when times were bad M\u0101ori got out to vote to get rid of the government, she said.<\/p>\n
Homelessness and poverty were rife and any real change was coming from the iwi, not the government.<\/p>\n
Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori would be the election kingmaker, and would not align with any party but instead hold the balance of power for every vote, Fox said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
SOURCE RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2020 Labour won 67 percent of the party vote while Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori took just 12 percent and the seat has not been flipped in 27 years, Forbes said. Fox said Whaitiri’s move\u00a0would not be an easy decision for some to stomach, however, she believed it was “a master move” by party president John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4220,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions\/4220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}