Political battler steps up as deputy
Labour deputy leader Kelvin Davis is a former principal, political battler, and the first Maori to take on the job.
Of Ngapuhi descent, he leads Labour’s Maori caucus. His promotion to Labour’s second most senior spot would give a “sense of satisfaction” not only to Maori MPs but to Maoridom, he said yesterday.
Unlike Ardern, Davis is from the more conservative side of the party and represents a mostly rural electorate — Te Tai Tokerau.
He is a hard man with a sometimes aggressive style of politics. He once confronted former Prime Minister John Key outside the debating chamber over his failure to protect Kiwis in offshore detention centres, calling him “gutless”.
Raised in the Bay of Islands, he moved to Auckland in the mid-1980s to teach in Mangere. He later returned to the Far North to head Karetu School — “a school with needs”.
Now living in Kaitaia, he is close friends with New Zealand First leader and Northland MP Winston Peters and Labour-turned-NZ First candidate Shane Jones.
Davis entered Parliament on the list in 2008. After failing to beat Mana leader Hone Harawira in a 2011 byelection and the 2011 election, he left Parliament and said he was quitting politics. But he changed his mind and was given a political lifeline when Jones resigned in 2014.
Davis has made an impression in the Corrections portfolio, where his claims of prisoner mistreatment at Mt Eden Prison led to an inquiry.
He had not even planned to be at yesterday’s caucus meeting but, in a text at 4.30am, he was told to catch the next flight from Kerikeri. “It was the fastest shower I have ever had.”