With Mariameno Kapa-Kingi gone and questions swirling over the future of two more MPs, the party is set for a difficult six months ahead., writes Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

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A fatal split?

Te Pāti Māori enters the 2026 election year with its caucus fractured, two electorate committees resigned, and the party still scrambling to confirm candidates with six months until polling day. It’s now also down another MP with Mariameno Kapa-Kingi’s announcement that she is launching the Te Tai Tokerau Party, a new party named after her own electorate.

The announcement has been months in the making. Kapa-Kingi was expelled from Te Pāti Māori last November over accusations of financial misconduct; she won her High Court case challenging the decision in March and was formally reinstated – but never fully reintegrated. She had set conditions for her return to the party, including the removal of party president John Tamihere, the reinstatement of Te Tai Tonga MP Tākuta Ferris, and an apology for her treatment. None were met.

Confusion over Kaipara’s intentions

Kapa-Kingi’s departure may not be the last – at least according to Stuff’s Glenn McConnell, who reported yesterday that Tāmaki Makaurau MP Oriini Kaipara said she was “still considering options”, including leaving the party. Yet in a pair of statements issued late last night, both she and the party denied she had made the comments. Kaipara was adamant: “I did not and have not spoken to any reporter on this matter.” She added: “To be clear, I remain a committed member of Te Pāti Māori, committed to Tāmaki Makaurau and committed to making this a one term government.”

RNZ reports this morning that the confusion appears to stem from Kaipara’s recently appointed communications advisor, who “said he made a mistake by telling Stuff that Kaipara said she was ‘considering options”’. According to Te Pāti Māori, “We will be making a formal complaint, as the [Stuff] reporter misled our co-leader during the interview. We also request an apology from Stuff and ThreeNews.”

McConnell reported last week that Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who holds the Hauraki-Waikato seat, may also be reconsidering her future in the party. “No, that’s not true at all”, Waititi told 1News’ Justin Hu when asked about the reports. Maipi-Clarke has not responded to requests for comment. Ferris, who did not contest his expulsion, has already announced he will stand as an independent in Te Tai Tonga.

How did it come to this?

The conflict traces back at least as far as November, when Kapa-Kingi and Ferris were expelled at a party meeting held without them. At the centre of it, McConnell reports, are major personality clashes with party president John Tamihere, to whom co-leaders Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer have stayed loyal throughout. Kapa-Kingi’s return in March, following the High Court decision, turned out to be a reinstatement in name only. Speaking to RNZ’s Mihingarangi Forbes a week after her return, Kapa-Kingi said the silence from party leadership had been “deafening”: Waititi had sent her a brief text while Tamihere had not spoken to her since November.

The party’s infrastructure has since crumbled further: both the Te Tai Tonga and Te Tai Tokerau electorate committees have now resigned, leaving Te Pāti Māori needing to rebuild its candidate-selection machinery from scratch. The party has confirmed just one candidate – Haley Maxwell for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, currently held by Labour – but has pledged to announce all seven by the end of May.

Labour’s gamble

While TPM deals with internal ructions, it’s also being attacked from outside. Writing before this week’s upheaval, Newsroom’s Marc Daalder analysed the political logic behind Labour’s decision to contest all seven Māori seats with the stated aim of putting Te Pāti Māori MPs out of work. The calculation, Daalder writes, is at least partly aimed at centrist swing voters: TPM’s more extreme policy commitments have given the government effective attack lines against Labour. “If Labour can convince centrist voters that it will extinguish Te Pāti Māori, then Hipkins may be able to win more of them over,” Daalder writes.

Still, going for broke on beating TPM is a real gamble – polling has consistently shown Labour would likely need them to form a government, and it’s far from a given that Labour will win every Māori seat. But this week’s events have shifted the calculus. Daalder’s conclusion – that Te Pāti Māori “could well survive as a core of two to four MPs, large enough to be either a thorn in Hipkins’ side or a political ally” – now looks far less certain than it did last week.