Rise once more
like me reminding everyone of it. Last time around, he called me a ‘‘loser’’ but, given a Tamihere insult is always delivered with a smile and a laugh, it never stings.
He has a universal – and not completely convincing – defence to all this: he’s a workingclass bloke with a working-class sense of humour and his people don’t care about the things he’s said.
The modern Labour Party, he says, is a middleclass, academic-led party which no longer represents him. He’s not, he tells me, a ‘‘refined man’’. I’ve always found this hard to accept: he’s highly intelligent, a qualified lawyer, dresses smartly and drinks cappuccino and red wine.
And the Ma¯ori Party? Well, they were a mess, he explains, and he was proven right by the 2014 election. Riven by the 2011 split with Hone Harawira’s Mana Movement, they were reduced to two seats and one electorate, and then in 2017, to none. He blames not Harawira, but the Ma¯ori Party leadership of the time for failing to keep control.
He acceded to the co-leadership last year with Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, and things are different now, he says.
A new generation of educated kids from Kura Kaupapa have emerged who are not afraid to speak up. Where does a 61-year-old Tamihere fit into this? He talks about his organisational and administrative skills, effectively outlining a traditional party president’s role, which may help explain his unusual decision to take a list position of seven.
Speaking up is important to Tamihere. He says the majority of Ma¯ori in the Labour Party are subjugated and subdued, including Henare, the one he wants to supplant but says he quite likes. ‘‘There’s 120 people [MPs] go down there, and only about 12 stand up,’’ he says, and most Ma¯ori MPs end up ‘‘being a nice brown face’’. Worse, he says, is Winston Peters, who ‘‘puts us down to get the white vote’’.
In the Northcote constituency where Tamihere is presently sipping his second cappuccino, the seat is being contested by two young, ambitious, hardworking, well-educated Ma¯ori professionals in National incumbent Dan Bidois and Labour challenger Shanan Halbert. Surely that shows things are getting better? Nah, says Tamihere, declaring Bidois is an ‘‘apologist’’ for his ethnicity (he still thinks Bidois will win the seat).
And no, he says, finding an example, things aren’t better ‘‘when we know Ma¯ori will contract cancer 10 years earlier [than Pakeha] but can’t be screened for it 10 years earlier, so we have statesponsored manslaughter’’.
The difference with a Ma¯ori Party MP, he says, would be the ability to speak freely and defend their people’s interests. ‘‘How do you front-foot your Ma¯ori-ness? Are you overt about it?’’ He has been a ‘‘nice
white brown man’’, he says, and now: ‘‘I don’t want to be framed by your views of the world… I am a liberated native.’’ He laughs.
If the Ma¯ori Party has a role to play postelection, he says they would not talk to National. He says Judith Collins has retreated to her base, prompting anti-Ma¯ori policy. Is she racist? No, he says, just opportunist.
Even if they are outside Parliament, he sees a role in shaping the conversation. Look to the mayoral election, he says. Even though he was well beaten by Goff, he says Goff lifted a stack of his policies post-poll, including a review of Auckland’s controversial council-controlled organisations, such as Watercare.
What probably frustrates John Tamihere the most about his lack of airtime is the few chances he’s had to get deep into debate on policy.
The one idea he’s had some play for is his idea of a separate Ma¯ori Parliament with its own devolved budget. But actually, sitting behind that is a more powerful idea that could actually be a gamechanger for everyone.
The seven Ma¯ori seats are based on the roughly half of Ma¯ori enrolled on them.
The difficulty in changing rolls, claims Tamihere, is a way to eventually ‘‘assimilate’’ all Ma¯ori onto the general roll.
But if Ma¯ori were automatically enrolled on the Ma¯ori roll, with the option to switch almost instantly, then the number of seats could double. And a Ma¯ori party that won over half of those would be a permanent kingmaker, regardless of the ruling party’s colour and with that, have the opportunity to exert pressure for better outcomes for Ma¯ori. Repeatedly, as we talk, he comes back to one particular phrase: ‘‘Change comes.’’