Mongrel Mob lifetime member Harry Tam posted images on social media showing members meeting with Lyndon, a sitting Green MP and candidate Michel Mulipola, with Te Pāti Māori MPs Oriini Kaipara and Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke.
He captioned the images: “Mongrel Mob whānau, health and wellbeing election hui with the Green and Māori Party candidates”.
Kaipara posted images herself, saying she and Maipi-Clarke had “dropped in to meet the Whero whānau”.
“The kaupapa [theme] wasn’t about us but about the health and wellbeing of the Mob community. Many will raise eyebrows, throw stones and cast judgment over our visit but the truth is, every member of a gang is a member of a whānau, a whakapapa [lineage] and a part of New Zealand society.”
Paul Goldsmith, National’s justice spokesman, said gangs “profit off misery and addiction by peddling meth in our communities and they make victims of Kiwis up and down the country”.
“These are the people Labour’s coalition partners in the Greens and Te Pāti Māori are prioritising in their campaign – these photos showing their senior MPs campaigning at a Mongrel Mob gang pad.”
Speaking today, Davidson said meeting with gangs isn’t a new thing.
In 2021, she, with the Human Rights Commissioner of the time, visited a Mongrel Mob gathering in Hamilton. Davidson at the time called it a “fabulous community event for justice”.
“We are unapologetic about making sure that we can engage with all communities, especially communities who are living on the margins. So we’re proud and we have done that year and year again,” she told reporters today.
“Those communities are the very people who hold the solutions to being able to live good lives, so it’s not a new thing.
“We’re not apologising for making sure that everyone has a chance to engage in democracy and has access to politicians.”
She added that the Greens also met with victims.
Asked about the meeting, Swarbrick said it was her understanding Lyndon, the party’s health spokeswoman, attended “on the basis that those who are in gangs also need access to healthcare”.
“I just contextualise this and the fact that in this past term of Parliament, we have received the Royal Commission of Abuse into state care, which documented very clearly how gangs were grown in this country from the seed of state violence.”
She said there was work for politicians to do in “actually understanding, on the ground, the experiences of those who are oftentimes so hard to reach”.
Swarbrick denied it was about garnering voters, but a “greater understanding”.
“We again are trying to understand the needs of every New Zealander.”
She said there was a need to end the “cycle of violence and the cycle of criminality and the cycle of gangs in this country”.
“The way that we best do that is that we understand what is driving that in the first place and we stop that cycle.”
Asked if she accepted some New Zealanders would perceive this as the Greens and Te Pāti Māori looking for the votes of gang members, Swarbrick said she understood “different people will have their views on the way that we choose to go about engaging with structurally marginalised parts of our society”.
She said if politicians wanted to address issues like criminality and ensuring access to healthcare and housing, “then we do need to have those kinds of engagements”.
Swarbrick was asked if she would have advised against it if Lyndon had come to her about the meeting before attending.
“That didn’t happen. At the end of the day, this is the situation that we are in right now.”
Asked again, Swarbrick said the Green Party made decisions based on evidence and she needed to “understand more of the context as to what has played out here”.
“But at the end of the day, we come back to the same basic point, which is that there are people in our society who are on the margins, who currently are swept up in cycles of criminality and victimisation.
“They too need to be deradicalised. They need to be reconnected with services that allow them to reintegrate with society.”
Jamie Ensor is the NZ Herald’s chief political reporter, based in the press gallery at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist in 2025 for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.