{"id":4284,"date":"2023-05-09T09:13:38","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T21:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=4284"},"modified":"2023-05-09T09:13:38","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T21:13:38","slug":"prime-minister-on-meka-whaitiris-surprise-departure-its-over-to-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=4284","title":{"rendered":"Prime Minister on Meka Whaitiri’s surprise departure: ‘It’s over to her’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says he still has not heard from former Labour minister Meka Whaitiri who defected to Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori last week.<\/p>\n

Whaitiri will sit in the House on Tuesday for the first time since her shock announcement.<\/p>\n

In her first major interview since defecting to Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori last week, Whaitiri told 1News it was her calling and she felt it deep within her puku.<\/p>\n

M\u0101ori people would understand that, she said.<\/p>\n

Whaitiri said she made the decision to defect to<\/p>\n

Hipkins<\/a>\u00a0said Whaitiri has said more to the media than to her former colleagues.<\/p>\n

She had not returned his calls, he said, but it would be redundant to do so now because she had already defected.<\/p>\n

“She’s sharing more information publicly than she has with me.”<\/p>\n

It was up to Whaitiri to explain the reasons for her decision, he said.<\/p>\n

“Ultimately it’s Meka’s decision it’s really a personal decision by her, it’s really for her to explain that. She’s made her decision, she’s announced it, so it’s over to her.”<\/p>\n

Rather than focusing on Whaitiri’s defection, the\u00a0government needed to focus<\/a>\u00a0on supporting the people of Tair\u0101whiti and Hawke’s Bay regions through the cyclone recovery, as well as the upcoming Budget, he said.<\/p>\n

“Really I’m focused on moving on, there’s many many other more pressing issues that we have to deal with.”<\/p>\n

It would be up to the M\u0101ori caucus if they wanted to meet with Whaitiri, Hipkins said.<\/p>\n

“I’ve had several conversations with members of the M\u0101ori caucus and I’ve made it clear to them that it’s up to them how they want to approach it going forward.<\/p>\n

“They worked with Meka for a long period of time, if they want to clear the air with her now that she has left that’s entirely up to them.”<\/p>\n

Newsroom is reporting that Whaitiri will make a personal statement in the House today but that could be blocked by any member.<\/p>\n

But Hipkins said usually when members wanted to make a statement in the House they would approach other parties and ask them about that but Whaitiri had not approached him to indicate that was her intention.<\/p>\n

“I’m not going to comment on a hypothetical, there’s a process that people follow when they want to do that, as far as I know she hasn’t done that yet.”<\/p>\n

Hipkins reiterated that he had had a good working relationship with both the Green Party which also lost an MP recently and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n

“We’ll go into the election campaign, we’ll be competing for votes of course and we’ll make it clear which parties we think we can work with after the election, you know ultimately it’s up to the voters to make those decisions.”<\/p>\n

Labour had not yet made the decision about which parties they would be prepared to work with in a coalition government but would set that out in due course, Hipkins said.<\/p>\n

P\u0101ti M\u0101ori with her trusted sources, her family.
\nSOURCE RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says he still has not heard from former Labour minister Meka Whaitiri who defected to Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori last week. Whaitiri will sit in the House on Tuesday for the first time since her shock announcement. In her first major interview since defecting to Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori last week, Whaitiri told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4284","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\/4284","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=4284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4286,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4284\/revisions\/4286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}