Te Pāti Māori has emailed its members a series of documents making serious allegations against one of their own MPs and her son.
The email, sent to members shortly before 10pm, said documentation had been prepared “in direct response” to recent claims made by Eru Kapa-Kingi, son of MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi.
I can’t recall a political party operating like this before. To send documents to every single party member, detailing alleged wrong-doing by one of their MPs.
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told the Herald she had learned of the parliamentary report on Friday and the party’s national council, which featured members of each electorate, had met on Sunday and agreed the documents would be shared with the wider membership.
This is not credible. There is no way a parliamentary co-leader would not have been aware of a parliamentary report about a former staffer.
I remind people that all 75 polls since the last election have shown that the only way Labour could form a government is with the support of Te Pati Maori. Looks like it would be very stable, eh.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
6 comments:
David you are correct as usual. Imagine it...having to have time lovers as your partner in government. Yet we have willy Jackson telling everyone that tom and labor are very much 'aligned'. Does this mean that labor are about as cr@p as tpm?
That's the only conclusion to be drawn. Imo no one in either party has any credibility.
Media have swarmed around the scandal of Te partly maori’s leaked email like bees on a kōhatu, but have largely ignored the paper trail. The trail is there — clearly marked and public.
Eru Kapa-Kingi was on his mother’s payroll, then dumped, then reappeared as a contractor through Tautoru Limited. Parliamentary Service warned Mariameno Kapa-Kingi about a six-figure overspend and explicitly told her to sever ties with “Eru / Tautoru.”
(Tautoro Limited (Companies Office NZ), set up in 2019, is a kaupapa-Māori consultancy whose directors include Eru Kapa-Kingi and two family members. It offers services such as content creation, social-media strategy, event management, Tiriti education, and governance advice — all work a parliamentary office could plausibly contract.)
That alone sparks questions that a curious reporter could — you know — actually ask:
1. When exactly did Eru leave the payroll, and when did Tautoru start billing?
2. Who signed off the invoices, and how much was paid?
3. Were the contracted services materially different from the staff duties he’d just been sacked from?
4. Was any conflict of interest declared when this arrangement was rubber-stamped?
5. How much of the MP’s electorate budget went to family-linked entities?
6. And was the $133,000 overspend connected to any of it?
All answerable through an OIA request to Parliamentary Service. The answers exist. They’re just waiting.
Stuff’s Glenn McConnell, under the grandiose headline “The $130,000 question: Why Te Pāti Māori torpedoed one of its own”, delivers… nothing of the sort.
His ‘analysis is a neat copy-paste of the party’s late-night emails, a high-fidelity stenography of internal comms questions.
They hang like unattended kōwhai blossoms, fragrant and unanswered.
Yes, the $130,000 question is asked — yet not answered. Not chased. Not wrestled into daylight.
I’m sure the newsrooms are “onto it.”
Just don’t hold your breath. The OIA clock ticks its leisurely 20 working days for an obligatory reply.
—PB
Rotten to the core.
PS Rotten to the core .... and in Parliament planning to be the next government! Apathetic NZers may get what they deserve in spades.
This is typical gutter politics that you would expect from those who advocate tribalism.
It's akin to a gossipy old knitting circle of grandmas trying to outdo each other upon whose grandchild is the best.
And all funded by the taxpayer. But hey, we're entitled to rip whitey off.
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