Andrea Vance from The Post got the ball rolling, and yesterday dropped another bombshell:
Te Pati Maori is facing fresh allegations that personal information collected for the Covid-19 Immunisation Programme was used for political campaigning.
A complaint was laid with the Electoral Commission in November by the Labour Party, which referred a breach of electoral laws to police.
But the agency did not notify either the Ministry of Health, the Ministry for Social Development nor the Office of the Privacy Commissioner about an alleged breach of privacy or misuse of personal information.
It comes after the Sunday-Star Times revealed Stats NZ, the Government’s official data agency, is investigating claims private information collected by Manurewa Marae during the census was used by the party.
The urban marae — which was controversially used as a polling booth in last year’s general election — was run by Takutai Moana Natasha Kemp who pipped incumbent Labour MP Peeni Henare to the Tamaki Makaurau seat by just 42 votes.
The marae was at the forefront of Auckland’s vaccine rollout, being one of the first sites to offer immunisations. It was then part of a Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency drive to promote last year’s census, between March and June last year.
And then it became a polling booth at last year’s general election, a controversial decision because of Kemp’s candidacy for the Maori seat.
Former MP John Tamihere is chief executive of Whanau Ora, chief executive of the Waipareira Trust, a Maori urban authority that holds Whanau Ora contracts, and TPM president. He declined to answer questions yesterday.
The Post
They are just allegations, at present but they need to be investigated. John Tamihere is outright denying that anything dodgy has been going on, but a review of votes at the last election shows a glaring anomaly.
Click to view
But because the mounting allegations from multiple whistle-blowers are spread across four or more different agencies (Electoral Commission, Stats NZ, Health NZ, MSD) I don’t think they can investigate properly because of the silos of information each agency holds.
The Privacy Commissioner has the power to investigate across all agencies. Section 79(b) of the Privacy Act allows them to initiate an investigation.
That would seem the best bet, but failing that a government inquiry led by a KC.
Even Chris Hipkins can smell a whiffy kebab in all this:
Labour leader Chris Hipkins has called the allegations surrounding Te Pati Maori “very serious” and says any improper conduct needs to be investigated.
The party has “unequivocally refuted” claims it misused data from Census records to help its election campaign, or deceptively obtained personal information from the Covid-19 Immunisation Programme for campaigning purposes.
Hipkins told Newstalk ZB’s Nick Mills these were “very serious allegations”.
NZ Herald
The problem Chris Hipkins has is that Willie Jackson is busily leaking what Labour’s caucus talks about to his mate JT. So any moves made by Labour are well-telegraphed. Hipkins knows this but prefers to do nothing.
Christopher Luxon has weighed in too:
Christopher Luxon has called the allegations surrounding Te Pati Maori “pretty serious” and says they need to be investigated promptly.
Speaking to media from Niue where the Prime Minister is making his first official Pacific visit, Luxon said the allegations were an issue for the party and the authorities.
NZ Herald.
As usual, though, Christopher Luxon misses an opportunity to put the boot in. The allegations ARE for the authorities for sure, and I’m not sure we can trust a lying word coming out of Te Pati Maori. Luxon should have announced a government inquiry and appointed a thoroughly obstinate and nasty KC or senior barrister to dig in to this officially.
To add even more murk, Philip Crump has been digging into the murky finances of associated parties:
Click to view
All in all, there is a stench pervading this carry on which suggests that the late-night kebab actually fell down the back of the seat in the Holden and has been festering there for several days.
Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. Cam blogs regularly on the BFD - where this article was sourced.
11 comments:
Cam, I take my hat off to you and the team that highlight this stuff.
The left despise you, what a badge of honour! I have a feeling that because of guys like you a lot of people are going to lose a lot of credibility. Not only that, best case scenario a destroy a certain political party.
Keep going mate.
That is quite a jump in both votes at all 3 maraes and revenue in 2021.
Btw, how is it they are allowed to be 2 financial years behind in filing? IRD certainly wouldn’t tolerate that with the rest of us. For all their so-called oppression, the TPM seem to be happily milking the woke brigade & troughing it up a storm.
It is infuriating how much of a wet blanket Luxon is though. He talks the big talk about being a grown up & wanting to cut the waste & deadwood & deliver better outcomes, yet says effectively nothing on this. If he actually showed he had some gonads National’s polling would go through the roof.
Tamihere & all the pies he has fingers in needs to be very thoroughly investigated. TPM should be removed from parliament immediately & suspended with half pay only & no perks until the investigation is complete.
And if the allegations are proven to be true, they should made to pay back all salaries & perks paid out from October last year, including that little $2000 per night Paris jaunt.
And then prosecuted for fraud, corruption & election tampering.
In the meantime, where’s Winston’s voice on this? The man is many things, but he is never one to be quiet on issues pertaining to moral justice & corruption.
Another good article Cam and what I find helpful is the way you pull the various strands of this farce together. Also thanks to Andrea Vance for her articles but with the caveat of where the hell was she during 2017 - 2023?
My other comment is how ironic that Hipkins is now relying on an incompetent bureaucracy that his equally useless Government created to investigate the alleged albeit obvious corruption Labour presided over.
Is it just coincidence that when ever there is some smoke in the Maori Campus, there is John Tamihere very close by.
How did a misogynistic radio jock, who mocked a rape survivor on live radio, manage to even be in a position of so much control?
The man is clearly not honourable; good men never have to apologise for atrocious comments or behaviour, because it wouldn’t cross their minds to do it in the first place.
What he & Jackson did to that young woman should have become a stench they could never shake off.
Yet, they both managed to shake it off - and therein lies the problem with our society.
Te Pati Mokomai have to be far and away the most self-entitled part-Māori grifters and troughers across the motu.
Spot on Cam
Thanks for joining the dots
If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck...
Presumably, as with mst other propoganda and insurgency centres (marae), Manurewa received a handout under the renovation grant programme.
Agreed, the results show pretty much neck and neck....except for a certain marae. What pressure can the good people exert so we actually get some traction against these toxic racists.
So if you were wondering where all the money for those $100 PaknSave vouchers came from, you can stop wondering now. It would be interesting to follow the money - where it came from and why, and where it went to. Publicly funded corruption maybe? Surely not here.
The stench is overwhelming!!! Also, how is it the Manurewa Marae derived $6.5mill revenue in 2021 from DHB grants?!?!
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