Opposition parties move towards 'formalising' collaboration

• In an end-of-year interview with RNZ, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer says they needed to "get past ourselves" and collaborate: they have worked well with the Greens in the past, and are figuring out how to team up with Labour.
• Labour says discussions between the three are quite casual and informal, but the Greens say they are meeting regularly and planning on formalising that arrangement.
• Te Pāti Māori will consider contesting general seats at the next election, and intends to grow the Māori roll in part to reduce the number of general electorates.
• The party would also prioritise tax policy and protecting Te Tiriti, saying the contentious Māori Parliament policy should be debated nationwide, rather than in Parliament

Te Pāti Māori this year has gone from strength to strength, building on the six Māori seats won at the election and focusing on mobilising their supporters - culminating in the hīkoi mo te Tiriti which echoed their stance on ACT's Treaty Principles Bill.

Polls show support for the party has since surged, with 1News-Verian and Taxpayers Union-Curia each separately showing a 3 percentage point boost, to 7 percent and 5.5 percent respectively.

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer says the focus is on ejecting the current coalition from government - and that means working more closely with the other opposition parties.

"We just have this cruel government. And... our strategic focus, really intensely strategic focus, is to make this a one-term government," she said.

"You will see that we've been talking across and figuring out: how do we work together through the Treaty Principles Bill? How do we work with Labour? We have worked in the past with Kakariki [the Greens], easily."

She said the party had taken on the message of Kiingi Tuuheitia to Māori, before his death in August, age 69. It meant an adjustment in attitude.

"To be Māori every day, be proud to be Māori, and also do it as a united people and that kotahitanga, that theme of kotahitanga, really has embedded with us, and so we had to, you know, get past ourselves.

"In order to... hold the vision of what unity would look like, we actually needed to be bigger than ourselves and open up a movement that was able to be inclusive of Te Pāti Kakariki and Te Pāti Labour, and those people who're disenfranchised from National, and those that are sitting on the fence.

"I think we've been able to do that and capture a large proportion of people who are largely disengaged and couldn't see themselves in the political scope, particularly as we're dealing with this government, which was dismantling everything that had incrementally been fought for."

Te Pāti Māori has often in the past been cast as a reactionary, protest party - using performative politics to make a point - including by the co-leaders themselves, who have said in the past they felt they needed to break the rules to achieve change.

However, Ngarewa-Packer said they recognised the tension between that approach and a more proactive, constructive approach which would be needed in government.

"I think so, from a proactive perspective," she said.

"We have an obligation to use our influence wisely and keep calm and... use your energy, turn your anger into something constructive.

"Sadly, it is Māori being the most imprisoned, the most impoverished, the most uneducated, the most unhealthy. We don't want those stats so in order to address that, yeah, you have to have a degree of activism and reactivism, but also transformational. All those things equal the same thing.

"We want to be the movement that leaves no one behind."

Meetings and missives: Labour, Greens on collaboration

The most clear early sign of collaboration between the opposition parties was a media release in early November under a letterhead from all three parties, opposing the Treaty Principles Bill.

Near the end of that month, another joint release opposed the government's review of Early Childhood Education regulations.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the three parties would continue to "find areas where we can work together".

"We are still going to be competing for votes at the next election, but I think we can do that in a way that shows that we can work constructively together, that we can reconcile our differences, that we can also be clear on the areas where we don't agree and where we won't compromise.

"I think we can do that before the election as well, so the Kiwis know what they're voting for.

"There'll be areas where we can work together and but there will also be areas where we take clearly different positions and will be free, as all parties are in the election, to say 'this is not something that we would compromise on'."

While Labour had been having "ongoing" internal discussions about collaboration, talks between the three parties so far were "only very informally and casually".

Greens co-leader Chloe Swarbrick had a different take on it.

"We're meeting regularly as the leadership of the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and Labour and identifying where those areas are for collaboration," she said.

"Because I think New Zealanders are sick and tired of politicians all at each other's throats, and want to see a unified opposition whereby we are putting forward constructive solutions and obviously holding this government to account for its policies.

Asked how regular those meetings were, she said there had been one in the past month or so, "and they will be an ongoing fixture moving into the new year".

"Let's just be straight up about the fact that what we are confronted with on this government's agenda - despite them being very unserious - is deeply serious. This agenda knowingly takes us backwards with regard to inequality, shredding climate action, and obviously there are the very evident attacks on Te Tiriti or Waitangi.

"The opposition parties take that very seriously, and we are formalising that collaboration so that we can hold the government to account.

"Where we can find that common ground, we will be working together, but people can, of course, expect to see differences in our policies.

'Competing vigorously'

The collaborative approach could face some headwinds. For one, Te Pāti Māori last year heavily targeted the Māori seats, winning six of seven - but Labour will be keen to reclaim them.

Labour's targeting of the Māori seats was responsible for ejecting the Māori Party in 2017, and Hipkins said they would again be "competing vigorously in the Māori electorates, absolutely".

"That... doesn't mean that we can't work with the Māori Party, but it does mean we'll be competing vigorously with them.

"We'll be going out there and competing for every vote we can get in the next election ... we won the party vote in all of the Māori electorates so we'll be getting out there and aiming to get every single vote that we can."

And - turnabout, fair play - Ngarewa-Packer said Te Pāti Māori would also consider contesting the general electorates.

"We really love the tangata tiriti, non-Māori who come on board and follow us and actually find their voices and love, and get what it is that we stand for as a people. So, absolutely we can see that the general seats is going to be something that we'll be discussing."

Te Pāti Māori has also been actively urging more Māori to join the Māori roll. Ngarewa-Packer said this was a deliberate strategy to increase the number of Māori seats, and in turn decrease the number of general seats.

"By having more in the Māori roll, we will create more Māori MPs, and we will create our own ability to be able to take over the space, effectively, and also smallen the [Māori] electorate sizes, because they're just crazily, crazily huge.

"But [also to] change and challenge some of the general seats like the likes of [David Seymour's seat] Epsom ... usually they're rich electorates, they're general electorates that, those are some of the ones that need to be dismantled as we continue to grow the Māori seats."

However, the review of electoral boundaries for the next election has already begun, the Māori roll growth so far not enough to trigger a reduction in general electorates for 2026.

Even should that strategy be successful in subsequent elections, it would not result in a specific electorate being removed, rather general electorate boundaries would be shifted to account for overall population changes.

Tax and Treaty priorities, not a Māori Parliament

Another potential sticking point - often raised by political opponents - is Te Pāti Māori's policy for a Māori Parliament, which Hipkins has repeatedly ruled out.

The idea resembles concepts in the Matike Mai report, a project proposed by the Iwi Chairs Forum in 2010 which aimed to explore options for a different constitutional arrangement based on honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi and He Whakaputanga.

Led by Moana Jackson and Margaret Mutu, it was produced by a working group between 2012 and 2015, consulting over 10,000 people including through more than 250 hui.

Ngarewa-Packer said the idea was not fully fleshed out, and exactly what it might look like was still up for debate.

"People are just horrified 'what do you mean you want to [do this, you're] separatists! separatists!' No. What we're talking about [is] what it should have been, had the Tiriti been honored, had our natural development not been interfered with. How would we have migrated the strengths of these two peoples - and multiple - to actually land something that looks more like us and less like Great Britain.

"You look in our policy, we're really clear on this: We did not want to be telling the nation what to do. We wanted to put the nation back on this path of discussing 'let's stop defending, let's stop attacking, what would the ideal solution be?'

"And it shouldn't be led by Debbie the politician, and it shouldn't be led by David Seymour the politician, either, it should be something that we talk about as a nation."

She highlighted other priorities for the party, should coalition negotiations become a realistic prospect in 2026: tax and Treaty.

"The most significant thing for us is that we leave no one behind and we stop the unfair tax system in Aotearoa, because we keep seeing the rich are getting richer and our view is ... if you can learn you can earn, you can't be well if you don't have a roof over your head.

"Things that we'd be really emphatic about is addressing the unfair tax system, so it's really great to see Labour come to the table finally about capital gains tax. The other things would be, is the protection of Te Tiriti, full stop. Full stop. And then back to the discussion of Matike Mai."

Another focus would be on changing the environment of Parliament - both the physical space and the culture - to better reflect all New Zealanders.

"This place is not ... and I mean, folks, look at this office - it's not a space that is relatable for a lot of our people that are out there."