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The chair of Labour’s Kaunihera Maori says Nanaia Mahuta has already proven her leadership of the party’s Maori wing.
The council has endorsed the Hauraki-Waikato MP in the party’s four-way leadership contest.
Daniel Phillips says the council met all the candidates last weekend.
He says the endorsement came after robust korero about Ms Mahuta’s immersion in te ao Maori, her strong leadership whakapapa within Waikato Tainui, and the shift of Maori voters back to Labour.
"That result goes back to February when we had a wananga in Whakatane and got a strategy to get all seven Maori seats back to Labour and Nanaia was integral to that strategy and it was her open leadership style that allowed that leadership strategy to form and for us to get six of the seven seats," Mr Philips says.
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL PHILIPS CLICK ON THE LINK
https://secure.zeald.com/uma/play_podcast?podlink=MjMzNDU=
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