Graham Adams: Maori nationalism takes a hammering in 2025

At the end of 2024, Māori nationalists were riding high in their quest to assert a special place in the nation’s laws and policy.

In November, the video of Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clark leading a haka in Parliament and ripping up a copy of David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill racked up hundreds of millions of views worldwide.

Graham Adams: Maorification Is National’s Achilles heel

Its opposition to Treatyism is bafflingly haphazard.

At times it’s impossible not to wonder whether some of National’s ministers — and the Prime Minister — have early-onset Alzheimer’s. It is as if they have found themselves in government but can’t remember exactly how they got there and why they won.