Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono is heading into the final stretch of Election 2026 balancing a broad political brief — campaigning for change while challenging the three-party Government across foreign affairs, defence, workers’ rights, Pacific issues and the environment.
Tuiono, a Green List MP since 2020 and the party’s first Pasifika MP, currently holds portfolios including Defence and Disarmament, Foreign Affairs, National Security and Intelligence, Oceans and Fisheries, Pacific Peoples, Space, Veterans, and Workplace Relations and Safety. He also serves on Parliament’s Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee.
His political background stretches beyond Parliament. Of Cook Islands Māori, Ngāpuhi and Ngāi Takoto descent, Tuiono has spent more than two decades working across environmental, Indigenous and social justice movements, including advocacy involving Indigenous communities at the United Nations.
That experience is now feeding into an election campaign where the Greens are campaigning around three headline themes — affordable living, healthy nature and what the party describes as honest politics. Their 2026 manifesto includes policies covering Te Tiriti, Māori development, housing, health, environmental protection and political transparency.
Tuiono has also been pushing political transparency during the campaign, backing Green proposals to cap individual political donations at $30,000, prohibit company donations and introduce a stand-down period before former ministers can become lobbyists.
For Tuiono, the election campaign is therefore being fought across several fronts — from the cost of living and workers’ rights at home to climate change, Pacific security and Aotearoa’s place in an increasingly uncertain world.
With voters heading to the polls on 7 November, the coming weeks will test how effectively the Greens can turn those policy differences with the governing parties into support at the ballot box.
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