{"id":171026,"date":"2025-12-06T20:53:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T20:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/171026\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T20:53:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T20:53:41","slug":"te-pati-maori-tensions-expected-to-loom-as-party-agm-goes-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/171026\/","title":{"rendered":"Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori tensions expected to loom as party AGM goes ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4K9OC5X_MAORI_PARTY_BACKGROUND_GFX_png\" width=\"1050\" height=\"680\" alt=\"MAORI PARTY GFX\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nTe P\u0101ti M\u0101ori, including co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, are gathering for the yearly AGM in Rotorua on Sunday.<br \/>\nPhoto: RNZ\n<\/p>\n<p>Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori will gather for its long-awaited Annual General Meeting in Rotorua today, after months of turmoil that led to the expulsion of two of their six MPs.<\/p>\n<p>Mariameno Kapa-Kingi will now attend the full AGM following <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/te-manu-korihi\/581016\/mariameno-kapa-kingi-reinstated-as-a-member-of-te-pati-maori-in-interim-high-court-ruling\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a high court ruling reinstating her to the party<\/a>, while T\u0101kuta Ferris remains expelled and won&#8217;t be in attendance.<\/p>\n<p>Ferris told RNZ he wasn&#8217;t surprised Kapa-Kingi was reinstated, and it was just &#8220;the next step in unfolding this big fat mess&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He said the AGM agenda was &#8220;sterile&#8221;, suggesting it would be shut down following the updates provided.<\/p>\n<p>Items on the agenda include updates from the party president, the co-leaders, and the electorates, as well as a financial report, constitution amendments and general business.<\/p>\n<p>Ferris said following the news of Kapa-Kingi&#8217;s reinstatement, &#8220;you&#8217;ve got this whole other conversation that&#8217;s going to rear its head tomorrow.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It also put the membership of the National Council &#8211; who made the decision to expel the MPs &#8211; &#8220;on notice&#8221;, Ferris said. He said their conduct will be scrutinised when the whole case is heard in February.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If it&#8217;s not up to standard, well there&#8217;ll be consequences.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, Justice Paul Radich said there were serious questions to be tried regarding Kapa-Kingi&#8217;s expulsion.<\/p>\n<p>In response, Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said on Friday she looked forward to hosting party members and &#8220;bringing this directly to them&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The ruling discussed the party&#8217;s concerns that reinstating Kapa-Kingi would likely &#8220;create extreme tension within Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori&#8217;s MPs and leadership&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Ferris agreed there would be tension, but not only within the parliamentary members of the party.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s going to be resentment and tension from the membership that arrive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But he indicated the senior nature of those in attendance would &#8220;quell all of that carry on.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said there would be &#8220;senior M\u0101ori leadership&#8221; in attendance.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Those senior leaders are going to show up expecting an open marae style conversation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If they [party leadership] try and run the sterile agenda, that&#8217;s just another notch in their belt.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said the wider membership would also want to &#8220;say their piece&#8221; and if the agenda didn&#8217;t allow for that, &#8220;then that just won&#8217;t be a good look.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This ain&#8217;t going away until someone shows up to have a proper conversation in a forum of accountability,&#8221; said Ferris.<\/p>\n<p>Part of Kapa-Kingi&#8217;s application for a temporary injunction had included orders to restrain party president John Tamihere from acting in his role as president because he hadn&#8217;t been &#8220;validly re-elected&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>While he acknowledged the re-election issue required further consideration, Justice Radich didn&#8217;t see it as necessary to preserve her position as party member and the immediate concern of Tamihere chairing the AGM was addressed by the party making an assurance vice-president Fallyn Flavell would now chair instead.<\/p>\n<p>Ngarewa-Packer said in response to the ruling she was pleased the president&#8217;s position had been preserved.<\/p>\n<p>The AGM begins on Sunday morning in Rotorua, part of the Waiariki electorate.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/radionz.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=211a938dcf3e634ba2427dde9&amp;id=b3d362e693\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori, including co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, are gathering for the yearly AGM in Rotorua&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-171026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}