But has he lost a war?
He didn’t forecast this. The former weatherman, in winning the Waiariki seat for Labour, may perversely have consigned his party to three more long years in the cold. Benn Bathgate reports.
IT’S a quick flash across a familiar face – but it’s real anger.
Ta¯mati Coffey, the newly minted LabourMP for Waiariki, looks relaxed, if a little tired, talking to us in a busy Rotorua cafe sporting a black t-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Ma¯ori Labour.’
It’s his very familiarity – and genuine likeability – that makes uncharacteristic anger so remarkable, when the topic of Ma¯ori Party co-leader Marama Fox’s post election remarks about Labour arises. Ma¯ori voters were, she said, like a beaten wife returning to an abuser, one who had ‘‘abused our people over and over again’’.
Coffey steams. He knows she was hurting, he says, but the remarks were out of line and a show of disrespect to the Waiariki voters who overwhelmingly cast their party votes to Labour. Labour picked up 57.9 per cent of the Waiariki party vote, against the Ma¯ori Party’s 19.9 per cent.
Coffey believes the comments reflect a wider problem in the Ma¯ori Party at the election: a sense of entitlement to the Ma¯ori vote. ‘‘Yes they’re Ma¯ori, but we’re Ma¯ori too. I thought that was very telling that she was saying stuff like that. I think that will ensure we don’t see her in politics again.’’
The 38-year-old orders a soy milk mocha – this is Rotorua, but Coffey spent much of his career working at TVNZ in downtown Auckland. He came out, politically, ahead of the 2014 election to contest the Rotorua seat for Labour, something that might have surprised those who knew him from Breakfast, Dancing with the Stars and New Zealand’s Got Talent, but was less of a shock to those closer to him. Coffey graduated from Auckland University in 2003 with a degree in political science. Where others may have had posters of sports or pop stars in their bedroom, Coffey had a picture of the Beehive.
It was a risk to walk away from what he admitted was a very lucrative career – especially after he fell well short in the Rotorua elecotrate in 2014. But his shift to the overlapping Maori seat of Waiariki was just in time to ride Jacinda’s wave.
But in pushing for a personal vote in the Waiariki electorate, when elsewhere Labour’s primary focus was on the party vote, Coffey has lost the Left one, perhaps two, seats that would have supported a Jacinda Ardern government. He didn’t just knock the Ma¯ori Party out of Parliament; he knee-capped a likely coalition partner.
Fox makes no bones about it: the Ma¯ori Party would have teamed up with Labour; their members wanted a change of government.
‘‘We as a party would have gone back to our members to decide, and from what I know they were leaning Left,’’ she explains.
And the fact is, by turfing out Ma¯ori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell, the voters of Waiariki may have sacrificed Labour’s chance at leading a government.
Fox says Labour showed a lack of vision, ignoring arrangements that could have seen their Ma¯ori MPs in Parliament via the list, joined by hard-left Mana Party leader Hone Harawira in Te Tai Tokerau and the Maori Party back in Waiariki. ‘‘It was shortsighted of Labour,’’ she says.
Wisdom or sour grapes, take your pick. But now, as Coffey takes his seat in Parliament, he will have even more grounds than his Labour colleagues to hope Ardern can negotiate a Labour-led government. He knows the Left bloc could have been bigger, the National Party caucus one seat smaller – but for his determination to win a seat for himself at all costs.
So did Tamati Coffey kill the Ma¯ori Party? ‘‘I got that on the night and I’ve had it non-stop. It’s petered out a little bit, but maybe.’’
He’s clear though that ultimately, the voters made the call. ‘‘Some of their supporters would like to term it like I’m the big bad wolf, but I’m not. I did not force 9000-odd people to the voting booth and I did not force their hand to tick that box.’’
Coffey also revealed some of the inner turmoil that accompanied the election night, surrounded by bullish supporters. ‘‘As Te Ururoa Flavell was giving his concession speech I had to rein in my supporters and say, hey guys, I know this is what we wanted but we’ve got to be respectful right now because there’s a guy up there crying. It could have been me and in three years time, it might be again.’’
Coffey has a huge electorate to cover, an inbox steadily filling up with invitations and requests, and like all the Parliamentary newbies, he’s grappling with the nuts and bolts of being a jobbing MP. ‘‘All that stuff that happens behind the scenes that normal people don’t know anything about, but in order to be the best possible MPyou can be, you need to know that stuff.’’
There’s also the more mundane business of life that continues in the background.
The washing machine that broke, the dishwasher that packed up, the oven door that fell off, the toilet seat that fell off.
Things got so bad, he said, they stopped inviting campaign volunteers to their Rotorua home.
‘‘Our house was falling apart,’’ he says, laughing.
Coffey credits Tim Smith, his partner and campaign manager, for holding the fort as well as running their business, Rotorua’s Ponsonby Rd lounge bar.
He’s equally effusive about the role Te Arawa kaumatua Ken Kennedy played in his campaign, and talking about the man who mentored him another flash appears – one of genuine sadness.
Kennedy, who he knew from their joint roles on the Citizens Club board, was filling a role that ideally, someone else would have held. ‘‘It would have been my grandfather if he was alive but he’s not and I needed someone to fill that role for me.’’
Some Ma¯ori Party supporters would like to term it like I’m the big bad wolf, but I’m not.’