Labour turns back on JT
Mayoral candidate says he is considering a legal challenge to the party’s decision
The Labour Party has refused to renew the party membership of Auckland mayoral candidate and former Cabinet minister John Tamihere. Tamihere said he is considering a legal challenge to the decision because he had been given no just cause for the move.
He sent in his application from the Labour Party website in December with a $100 donation. It was returned to him this week after a decision by the party’s ruling New Zealand Council at the weekend to reject his membership.
“I’ve been excommunicated,” said Tamihere. “I feel like I have been thrown out of my church.
“I haven’t been a member of any other political movement in my life.”
Labour Party president Nigel Haworth declined to comment last night because a process was in train.
“The party is still addressing the issue and until everything is finalised in the process of addressing it, I can’t comment.”
Tamihere said he was sure the decision was about the fact that Labour’s ruling New Zealand Council last December had endorsed mayoral incumbent Phil Goff, a former wLabour Party leader.
Goff has yet to declare that he will be seeking a second term but he ran as an independent candidate last time.
Tamihere is also running as an independent candidate with former Auckland mayor and former National MP Christine Fletcher as his running mate.
“I’m just amazed that a group of people not from Auckland can determine who the mayor should be in that ruling council,” Tamihere said.
“There is a clause that allows them to review membership because Jack the Ripper could get on or whoever. They
are spuriously using that clause to deny me membership.”
He said he was considering a judicial review of the rejection “because I don’t like injustice”.
Tamihere said he had been a member of the Labour Party since he was aged 8, when his father signed him up. He had last renewed his membership in 2017 and it had lapsed some time in 2018.
“I’m 100 per cent certain this is about the Auckland mayoralty,” Tamihere said.
One of the party’s representatives of the Ma¯ori council, Te Kaunihera Ma¯ori, on the New Zealand Council, Rudy Taylor, did not think Tamihere had received natural justice.
He would not disclose the discussions that had taken place before the council voted to reject Tamihere’s application to renew his membership.
“I am disappointed that people saw JT in a different light . . .
“They could have had more heart to the thinking about JT but it was a democratic vote and they have their choice.”
Taylor said he had also held a meeting at Waitangi on February 6
I’m 100 per cent certain this is about the Auckland mayoralty. John Tamihere
with Haworth to discuss the New Zealand Council’s decision to endorse Goff.
The clear message had been that the Ma¯ori council preferred to make its own decisions on whom to support for the Auckland mayoralty, Goff or Tamihere.
Taylor said natural justice would have meant both Goff and Tamihere got to appear before the council before it made a decision to endorse Goff.
Tamihere is never far from controversy. He was an MP from 1999 to 2005 and a Cabinet minister from 2002 to 2004. He stepped down as a minister pending allegations around tax payments on a golden handshake he had received after leaving the Waipareira Trust.
He resigned but was later cleared. However, he fell out with many colleagues in 2005 when Investigate magazine published an article based on his trenchant criticism of them during what he thought was a confidential discussion.
He also lost his job as talkback host for taking a sceptical view during the height of the Roast Busters revelations, when teenage boys bragged about having sex with drunken young girls.