An opinion piece by Dr Rawiri Taonui

This article fact checks the bullying allegations from Te Tai Tokerau MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi (Mariameno), her son Eru Kapa-Kingi (Eru) and Te Tai Tonga MP Tākuta Ferris against Te Pāti Māori (TPM) President John Tamihere and the parliamentary co-Leaders Debbie Ngārewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi. I have read documents and correspondence, followed coverage on mainstream and social media, endeavoured to speak with both sides and where they differed consulted third parties.

Whānau 

Mariameno is a warm, well-spoken, and respected kuia. She is the atypical favourite aunty. Her iwi are Te Aupōuri, Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu ki Whaingaroa. She has a long background in Māori health and social services.

Mariameno has three intelligent and talented triplet sons, Eru, Heemi and Tīpene. Eru is a professional teaching fellow at the University of Auckland Law School. Heemi is a doctoral candidate at the University of Auckland. Tipene is an iwi CEO.

Whānau Network

Critics regularly accuse TPM President John Tamihere of nepotism because he is the father-in-law of Waititi whose wife Kiri is Tamihere’s daughter and the General Manager of the party. In an 11 November column, Bryce Edwards from the Democracy Project questioned whether the Kapa-Kingi’s were themselves also “entangled in nepotism”.

The Kapa-Kingi whānau is kaupapa Māori strong. They are also entrepreneurially ambitious and maintain a complex web of whānau relationships across kaupapa and income streams.

Mariameno was the CEO of Te Rūnanga Nui o Te Aupōuri (2020 to May/June 2024). During that time, Tipene held directorships in Te Aupōuri Fisheries and Te Aupōuri Commercial Development (both 2022-2023), and he replaced Mariameno as the CEO of Te Aupōuri in July 2024.

Mariameno was a director of Te Rūnanga ā Iwi ō Ngāpuhi (TRAION) subsidiary Ngāpuhi Iwi Social Services (NISS) (2019-2024), the largest iwi social services provider in Aotearoa. Tipene replaced her a month after she resigned in January 2024. In October 2025, Heemi and brother Eru did podcasts about mental wellbeing and suicide for NISS.

Mariameno is a Te Tahaawai marae trustee representative on Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa for which she does occasional contract work. At the end of 2023, Tipene became a director of the rūnanga’s subsidiary Whaingaroa Fisheries.

Mariameno was a director for Te Kōhao Health (2003-2024). Her son Heemi joined her as a director in May 2022 and in August 2024 became deputy chair.

Mariameno runs a personal consultancy Puna Ki Te Puna doing tikanga, te reo, kaupapa Māori and te Tiriti o Waitangi workshops. The brothers own a similar company Tautoru.

The brothers also have clothing companies. Never Ceded is a subsidiary of Tautoru. There is another whānau-linked label, Ara Moana. There have been other entities and initiatives.

A network of service and entrepreneurial whānau relationships is not of itself deceitful or dishonest. Many whānau, aiga and families in Māori and non-Māori communities hold similar networks. Sitting on boards does however facilitate monitoring of contract opportunities, which can raise concerns when a whānau dominates multiple income streams within an iwi or across multiple entities or iwi. This can pose risks around transparency, particularly where this crosses over into the political sphere.

Party List

The first incident between the Kapa-Kingi camp and the party leadership concerned the party list for Election 2023. The list was normal enough, co-leaders Waititi and Ngārewa-Packer and sitting MP Meka Whaitiri the top three followed by non-MPs ranked by chance of winning seats as measured by the Labour majority in their seat. Kapa-Kingi was seventh.

Facing the largest majority (9,900 by Nanaia Mahuta), Hana Maipi-Clarke was an exception at fourth, because she best represented the massive taiohi (youth) support base the party was building. Maipi-Clarke’s massive win in Hauraki-Waikato, her three international accolades and one billion hits on TikTok justified her ranking.

The Kapa-Kingi whānau queried why Maipi-Clarke “someone still in nappies” was higher and why Mariameno could not be number one. The leadership explained the list. The list remained unchanged.

Although inquiring about a place above the leaders was a potential red flag, Mariameno had a right to question the list.

Election 2023

Mariameno won Te Tai Tokerau with a 517-vote majority. She lost the advance and election day voting booths in the Far North heartland of her iwi Ngāpuhi, Ngati Kahu and Te Aupōuri and in her hometown of Whangārei (106 to 48).

This was offset by her winning the Kaipara-West Auckland area and the eastern coast between Auckland’s North Shore and south of Whangārei (107 to 81), due in no small part to Tamihere and the Auckland party machinery sending vanloads of volunteers’ northwards to support her campaign.

This allowed Mariameno to come through the middle of a Labour-Greens split; their combined votes over three thousand higher than Kapa-Kingi’s (14,098 to10,428). A win is a win and the leadership offered Mariameno an olive branch in form of becoming party whip.

 Electorate Council

A further red flag came immediately after the election. Tipene and another Mariameno supporter replaced the co-chairs of the party’s Te Tai Tokerau Electorate Council in what some describe as “cleanout” and others a “coup”. While positions on electorates do change, those ejected felt this was an exercise in future proofing Mariameno against nominations in elections to come.

 Multi-Jobbing

A first tension over financial matters occurred when Mariameno remained in her position as CEO of Te Aupōuri well after the election. New MPs usually resign from previous work soon after an election to avoid the risk of public excoriation for double dipping.

For instance, after the last general election, New Zealand First list MP Jamie Arbuckle chose to remain on the Marlborough District Council until the last year’s local elections. Accused of double jobbing on the public purse ($163,000 as an MP, $40,000 as a councillor), he backed down and donated the salary to charity.

Mariameno told me she left the CEO position between four to six weeks after the election (end of November). The leadership say she stayed beyond an agreed three-month post-election handover period to mid-January. Their concern was that the longer she remained in the position the greater the risk that others would see it as “gain”.

If the media had upbraided Arbuckle for topping up his salary to $200,000, the backlash over a Māori MP potentially doubling theirs neigh on $400,000 would be much worse ($163,000 MP, $30,000 Whip, $200,000 average lowest iwi CEO salary).

Matters reached a head and Tamihere advised Mariameno that TPM would raise the matter with Te Aupōuri.

Register Time-Framing

Comparing the Parliament Register of Pecuniary and Other Interests (Register) and records from the Companies Office suggests Mariameno always intended to vacate the CEO position.

She achieved this by gradually leaving positions over the eight-month period between the election (October 2023), when MPs complete the Register (31 January 2024) and the date Parliamentary Services (PSV) publishes it (late May 2024) vacating the lucrative CEO position last.

Mariameno’s Register entry is interesting. She declared the minor trusteeships, so too her well-known Te Kōhao directorship and income. The Aupōuri entry as “governance” is vague and does not indicate it was a salaried CEO position, and she did not declare the directorships for NISS and Te Paeroa.

Mariameno resigned as a director from NISS on 27 January (four days before the Register entries closed), left Te Kōhao Health on 5 April, Te Paeroa 10 June, and the CEO position last, sometime in late May or June. The exact date is uncertain. The position was advertised 27 May about the time PSV published the Register, her farewell was 24 June, and her son’s appointment announced 18 July.

When I spoke with the leadership, seven months after PSV had published the 2024 Register, they were not certain of when Mariameno had left the CEO position and were completely unaware of the directorships. Why? Likely because it falls to the party whip, Mariameno, to advise the leadership of matters arising in the Register.

The overall impression is selective entries of some entities and not others to avoid scrutiny and manipulation of the Register to maximise gain and prioritizing that over the risk to the party.  

Supporting Takutai Tarsh Kemp

Mariameno’s PSV budget from November 2024 to October 2025 was about $500,000. Alongside this, was an arrangement that Mariameno would support MP for Tāmaki Makaurau Takutai Tarsh Kemp’s electorate while she was away battling kidney disease.

The co-leaders approved Kemp transferring $33,000 from her budget to Mariameno. She also paid a $6,500 invoice to Eru. Somewhere in the mix was a proposed $120,000 salary for Eru. Eru denies this. Sources confirm the proposal existed and that Kemp and others questioned its affordability.

Kemp returned to work on Waitangi Day 2025. In March, she declined further invoices from Mariameno ($45,000) and Eru ($6,000) questioning what work if any they were doing in Tāmaki Makaurau. Twelve days later, Eru resigned as a co-Vice President of the party saying he wanted to concentrate on his whānau. Months later, he stated he left because of a bullying culture. More likely, he left because Kemp’s withholding of money short-circuited his financial expectations.

The combined claims on Kemp’s budget look mercenary. Totalling $90,500 covering five months, extrapolated over a full year they would amount to $217,200; some $50,000 more than the salary of a single MP. There seems little justification other than pecuniary gain.

Kemp’s Budget

Sadly, Kemp passed away on 26 June. At the beginning of July, PSV advised Mariameno that her budget was heading for an over-spend of $137,000.

Somewhere between 7 July and 10 July, Mariameno asked PSV to transfer the equivalent of the previously declined $45,000 from Kemp’s budget to her budget. PSV declined without requisite approval from the co-leaders. Based on Kemp declining Mariameno’s last request, the co-leaders also declined. This second request lacked transparency. Mariameno had gone around the co-leaders. For all appearances, it was a raid on the budget of a recently passed colleague.

Tamihere’s Involvement 

On 16 July, PSV advised the co-leaders that Mariameno had disengaged and that the budget would run out in August whereupon further payments would become “the responsibility of the member”.

Because Mariameno had already gone around the co-leaders regarding the $45,000, they sought advice from Tamihere. On 3 August, he wrote to Mariameno seeking her urgent attention lest she become responsible for any overspend. The Kapa-Kingi camp has criticised Tamihere’s response as bullying, but it only reiterated what PSV had already warned.

Mariameno would later say that she felt “unsafe” dealing with the leadership, which is questionable because she had also stopped engaging with PSV.

Budget Reconciliation

PSV resolved Mariameno’s budget before the deadline of 31 October. Ferris would subsequently claim this meant that, “all the allegations about an overspend were false”.

This overlooks the clear correspondence from PVS, Mariameno’s disengagement, circumventing the co-leaders and the attempt to access the budget of a recently passed colleague. It also minimises the very real impact of the solution on Mariameno’s office. Two staff lost their jobs, including Eru. PSV cancelled all staff travel and p-card spending. And an 18% or $90,000 drawdown from her 2026 budget to cover the shortfall, double that usually allowed, will diminish the ability of Mariameno and her staff to serve their constituents.

 Electorate Visibility

 In July last year, iwi leaders from Te Tai Tokerau separately and independently contacted the leadership expressing unease that Mariameno was less engaged in the electorate as Willow-Jean Prime (Labour) and Huhana Lyndon (Greens).

Moana Tuwhare, the general manager of Te Rūnanga ā Iwi ō Ngāpuhi, has dismissed this matter as a “complete lie”. Others say engagement is an issue, one stating “If I attend 100 hui, I see Huhana 98 times and Mariameno twice and that was at tangi”.

Mariameno says she admires Prime and Lyndon’s more frequent presence and says her personal style is more about assisting individuals at ground level. Mariameno might be doing decent work reflective of her social services background, but in a marginal 517-majority seat visibility wins elections.

Leadership Bid

The northern leaders also said that during an online meeting, Mariameno had asked them to back her in a bid to take over leadership of the party leadership.

It is now apparent that Mariameno went outside the party after she was unable to find caucus support to dethrone Ngārewa-Packer and Waititi. Following the revelations from the northern leaders, the leadership believe a plan evolved for her and Ferris to become the parliamentary co-leaders and that they also wanted to replace Tamihere as President.

Mariameno and Tākuta have denied this. In an interview with Mata Reports (RNZ) on 14 November, Tākuta said Mariameno [and him]  were not trying to take over as co-leaders, instead, “About four or five months ago a leader in the North told JT [John Tamihere], he should step down … and said we should be leading the party. I was informed of that by Mariameno.”

That is unlikely. Several respected northern sources confirm that Mariameno did seek outside support for a leadership takeover, one saying, “It was the worse kept secret plan in the history of Te Tai Tokerau”. Other sources also say that Mariameno and Ferris approached leaders at an Iwi Chairs Forum (ICF) hui in the Hawkes Bay at the end of October to back them in a leadership bid. They declined.

Leadership challenges are part of politics. Challenges that go outside caucus are political sacrilege because it undermines the leadership and integrity of the party. At least one leader asked the leadership to reconsider Mariameno’s candidacy for the next election. Tamihere declined on the basis that the process had ended.

Implosion 

Events culminated in TPM standing Mariameno down as party whip in September ostensibly to concentrate on her electorate. To be honest, it was also way of addressing the lack of transparency, questionable invoices, a chaotic budget, and the leadership coup. This was in a caucus meeting. The Kapa-Kingi’s say Tamihere was visibly angry. The Tamihere side alleges Mariameno called him a “f**kin c**t”.

On 2 October, Eru proclaimed the Toitū te Tiriti movement was divorcing itself from TPM because the leadership was “dictatorial”. More likely, this was because his mother was stood down as whip. Tipene and others from Mariameno’s electorate team began sending a stream of belligerent emails to the leadership. One requested they undergo tikanga training, another in te reo read, “You lie, watch out”. One demanded a hui, another informed they were boycotting hui.

Three months of acrimony has followed. Most stems from the Kapa-Kingi Ferris camp. There is little direct rancour from Mariameno, although this belies a pattern of disrepute by proxy. The leadership stood Mariameno down as party whip on 11 September. Eru and Tipene began their public attack on 2 October. During the Te Rūnanga Nui ā Iwi o Ngāpuhi hui in November, Mariameno described TPM has having dynamics of “sexism”, “narcissism” and “misogyny”. Ferries gave this full voice the following week stating the leadership tried to bully Kemp out of the party.

Acrimony by proxy allows someone to keep a clean skin. This may also explain why Ferris was not included in the December High Court proceeding. He was expendable.

For its part, the leadership has sought to avoid open hostility. There was the 13 October document dump to the party membership and Tamihere’s November Facebook post ‘An Anatomy of Madness’ listing difficulties with the Kapa-Kingi kin. Whether intended or not, the document dump was always going to make into the public arena, which is not great. Although in many ways, the vitriol from the other camp forced their hand.

Kemp

The accusation that Tamihere tried to bully Kemp out of the party is false. I spoke with Kemp several times when writing columns for Waatea News investigating the electoral accusations against the party in 2024. We discussed her relationship with Tamihere. She said they had been close for more over a decade. Several people confirm this.

The facts are that when Kemp returned to work last year, she was experiencing bouts of fatigue, was on a transplant waiting list, and self-administering home dialysis which has risks especially for those in stressful occupations.

In early April, she met with Tamihere to discuss her welfare and what she would need if she either stayed on or if she left parliament to prioritise her health. The packages were comprehensive, well thought out and caring. Parliament was her life and she chose to stay on. Nine weeks later she passed away. Framing this as bullying is about as low as one can go.

Tailgate

When Eru launched the accusations of a bullying dictatorial culture at the beginning of October, the leadership acted immediately to ask its parliamentary staff to report any instances of bullying or inappropriate behaviour, and if necessary, in confidence. They also asked PSV to advise of any matters of bullying or inappropriate behaviour reported to them.

The single matter raised was that of Eru tailgating through a security gate at parliament on Budget Day 30 May 2024. A PSV forwarded emailed from security said that when asked to verify his credentials, Eru launched a tirade of abuse and obscenities in front of several witnesses including parliamentary staff and visitors.

Echoing formal National MP Aaron Gilmore, it was alleged Eru said “Do you know who I am?”, “You are going to be so embarrassed and f**ked” when you find out”.

Security said he refused to comply yelling “I don’t have to do anything you say … you are not a cop; you are just a security guard who can’t do s**t”.

They further claim that Eru threatened staff saying, “I will f**king knock you out” and among other things used an antiwhite racial epithet “F**ken white bald c**t”.

Eru has refuted this saying security “racially profiled” him. Young Māori men are regularly racially profile. However, in this instance the claim is hugely unself-aware given he had just gate crashed one of the most secure sites in the country on one of the most important nights on the parliamentary calendar.

The TPM leadership believes PSV suspended and trespassed Eru who returned to work for Mariameno via his Tautoru consultancy. Eru describes this as “defamatory lies” seeking to undermine him for challenging the leadership’s bullying culture. That ignores the events of that evening. His version is that in September he resigned of his own accord. That is probably true, although the timing suggests he may have done so to avoid termination. Whatever the case, he returned to work for Mariameno via the loophole of the Tautoru consultancy.

What is most interesting, and this goes to the heart of how the Kapa-Kingi’s operated within the party, is that while the leadership knew there had been an incident, they did not know the full details until PSV responded to their request for any evidence of bullying.  This is partly because PSV exercise a discretionary decorum between MPs and their staff. More concerningly, it is because Eru, at that time a co-Vice President of the part, and Mariameno the party whip withheld this from the leadership for 17 months after it occurred. 

Reconciliation

There have been efforts at reconciliation. Hone Harawira penned an eloquent column reflecting on his parting ways from TPM to found the Mana Movement 15 years ago. The Iwi Chairs Forum called for a conciliatory meeting. This did not happen because of a physical incident in a hallway at parliament between one of the Kapa-Kingi men and a party staff member. This precipitated the party to expel Mariameno and Ferries on 9 November. In December, the High Court issued an interim injunction reinstating Mariameno for a full judicial hearing in February.

Te Pāti Māori Mana Movement Split

Commentators have drawn comparisons with Harawira departing the party and forming the Mana Movement in 2011.

The difference? Harawira stood on principles. He believed National Party policies were differentially impacting Māori and that the Takutai Moana Act marginalised Māori rights. The Kapa-Kingi camp are targeting Tamihere, and by association Ngārewa-Packer and Waititi, because he has been the only person able to curb Mariameno’s machinations with respect to the list, CEO position, invoicing, budget, and the leadership coup.

In 2011, Tariana Turia said that kotahitanga was paramount and that those who focus on what divides the party rather than what unites it undermine the leadership and the ability of the party to serve its people. The Kapa-Kingi Ferries camp has eroded the fabric of the party through hyperbolic, invariably personalised, and thinly disguised facile misrepresentations of facts and events.

Turia also said those who publicly malign the party fuel racism. We have seen all of that. Mainstream media has regurgitated everything they can find about Tamihere and the unproven allegations from 2024. On social media, the far-right lusts for each new revelation as confirmation of every prejudice they hold about Māori.

Endnotes

The current leadership is not perfect, but it has performed a miracle in mobilising the Māori vote from no seats in 2017 to six in 2023. In the last election, more 18 to 24yr old rangatahi voted in the seven Māori seats than voted in all the sixty-four general seats. Their turnout has jumped from 50% in 2014 to 70% in the last election. TPM has 167,000 followers on Instagram, more than Labour and National combined.

There is a time when the baton of leadership will pass to others. The caucus is brilliant, wonderfully inexperienced, and magnificently defiant. When Oriini Kaipara won the Tāmaki Makaurau by-election, the party was set to clean sweep the seven Māori electorates in 2026. That achievement would have been the time to strategize the future. The party has instead been beguiled into an extraordinary unravelling.

One of the best things I was told during this investigation was that, “Three MPs stood to do the haka, three MPs attended every day of Tarsh Kemp’s tangi and three MPs supported Oriini every day during the by-election, Debs Ngārewa-Packer, Rawiri Waititi and Hana Maipi-Clarke”, the present and future parliamentary leaders.

That is a lot more positive than the other thing I heard, “When Mariameno arrives, the boys and the invoices soon follow”. We await the judicial review.

About the Author

Rawiri Taonui (Te Hikutū and Ngāti Korokoro, Te Kapotai and Ngāti Paeahi, Ngāti Rora, Ngāti Whēru, Ngāti Te Taonui) is an independent writer, researcher and advisor. He was New Zealand’s first Professor of Indigenous Studies. Rawiri is a well-known political writer who has written over 400 newspaper and magazine articles and book chapters. He has won seven writing awards. Dr Taonui has presented at the UN Experts Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. He is a member of the Tribunal to Investigate Claims of Genocide in El Salvador.

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