Just days ago TPM was calling for unity and heralding a party-wide ‘reset’. Now that optimism has collapsed, replaced by bitter public infighting, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.

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Allegations laid bare in explosive late-night email

Te Pāti Māori was thrown into chaos on Monday night after party leaders sent members a lengthy email accusing Northland MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and her son Eru of serious misconduct. As laid out in The Spinoff’s comprehensive timeline of the allegations, the message, sent just before 10pm, included Parliamentary Service documents alleging that Eru, a former party vice-president, verbally abused and threatened security staff at Parliament on Budget Day 2024. It also claimed that his mother, then the party’s whip, was warned of a looming $133,000 budget overspend linked to her decision to contract her son for $120,000 a year.

Both deny wrongdoing: Mariameno has said the issue “went through the usual processes” and was resolved, while Eru wrote online that “those who know us know there is no question of integrity”. The email followed weeks of tension since Mariameno’s demotion as whip and Eru’s public break-up with the party after alleging a “dictatorship” leadership culture.

Party faces claims of ‘retaliation’

Some commentators within Māori media have framed the email as an act of retribution. In an excellent piece for The Spinoff this morning, Liam Rātana calls it part of “a crusade from the party’s senior leaders to defend their reputations, whatever cost”, arguing that rather than disproving Eru Kapa-Kingi’s claims, the party had “publicly exposed its internal flaws and sabotaged the character of a sitting MP”. He notes that if Te Pāti Māori’s concerns were simply poor financial management, the matter could have been handled internally instead of through a mass communication that was certain to leak.

The decision to include an alleged assault “to smear [Eru’s] name”, Rātana writes, was a sign of desperation, and likely part of a wider effort to “try to force [Kapa-Kingi and Ferris] to run as independents in the next election”. The resulting backlash has fuelled calls from Ferris’s Te Tai Tonga electorate for a vote of no confidence in president John Tamihere and the national executive.

‘Reset’ in tatters as trust collapses

In Te Ao News, journalist Māni Dunlop says the scandal has left the party – and Māori politics more broadly – reeling. “The so-called ‘reset’ unveiled just days ago, aimed at restoring unity and focus, now feels redundant,” she writes. “Any attempt to rebuild trust will have to start again from scratch.” Dunlop says the circulation of confidential documents has created a self-inflicted wound that compounds the leadership’s credibility crisis. In her piece, she writes that others within the party had come forward to report similar alleged treatment to Eru Kapa-Kingi, but were too fearful to speak publicly.

She also confirms that since Eru made his “dictatorship” claim, insiders had warned a “planned retaliation from the party executive was incoming”. For a movement built on kaupapa Māori values, Dunlop argues, the choice to air internal disputes through leaks and denunciations represented “an existential crisis” – one that risks alienating the very voters Te Pāti Māori seeks to serve.

Speaker clamps down amid wider turmoil

Amid the unfolding controversy, the Speaker of the House, Gerry Brownlee, announced a crackdown on parliamentary standards following Te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara’s over-time maiden speech and the unsanctioned haka that followed it. As RNZ’s Russell Palmer reports, Brownlee said supplementary questions would now be at his discretion, attendance and dress rules would be tightened, and penalties more rigorously enforced.

“It’s now regrettably clear that some elected to this House see disruption and dissent as more important than legislative achievement,” he said. “I respect that all members of this House are equally elected, but I think they equally have a responsibility to uphold the dignity of the House.” Under normal circumstances, the reprimand might have stung – but for Te Pāti Māori, still in shock from its internal implosion, a slap on the wrist from the Speaker is the least of its problems.