Mulipola is an activist, comic book artist and professional wrestler, and does not feature on the party\u2019s list.<\/p>\n
In a comment, Mulipola said he\u2019s known for strong takes on social media and was responding to a significant global event.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that I\u2019m a candidate for the Greens I\u2019m taking into account their kaupapa and don\u2019t want distractions from the important campaign we have underway to bring about progressive change for people in South Auckland. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to a strong, clean campaign for the M\u0101ngere seat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The party\u2019s co-leaders were approached for comment, but said Michel\u2019s statement covered all the party needed to say.<\/p>\n
It had been posted on Instagram by Mulipola\u2019s account, bloodysamoan, which states in his bio that the views are his own – with an authorisation statement from the Green Party.<\/p>\n
The account has more than 2800 posts, including political commentary and activist content – and has gained more than 20,000 followers.<\/p>\n
Michel Mulipola, now a Green Party candidate, posted and then deleted a meme about Charlie Kirk’s death on social media.<\/p>\n
Act MP Simon Court told Newstalk ZB the post was \u201cdisgusting\u201d and a \u201cgross meme that essentially references Charlie Kirk being shot and bleeding to death on a university campus\u201d.<\/p>\n
Court stated it seemed \u201cgrossly inappropriate\u201d for the Greens to be selecting a candidate posting something that appears to violate the non-violence aspect of the party\u2019s charter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the Greens leadership need to look into their own souls. If they\u2019re going to be a serious political party, would they want to have a candidate who\u2019s expressed such vile views on social media?\u201d<\/p>\n
While announcing his candidacy on social media, Mulipola described himself as being unafraid to \u201cruffle feathers\u201d and to \u201chold the powers-that-be to account\u201d in his candidacy announcement video.<\/p>\n
\u201cTogether, we can turn these mean streets into the Green streets of M\u0101ngere,\u201d he said, and urged people to register to vote.<\/p>\n
Mulipola\u2019s announcement was commented on with messages of support from sitting MPs.<\/p>\n
The post is now deleted from Instagram.<\/p>\n
After Kirk\u2019s death, Act leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour paid tribute to him in Parliament.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo see somebody who is not elected lose their life because of violence, when they were trying to promote the freedom to speak without violence, is a bitter irony,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Azaria Howell is a multimedia reporter working from Parliament\u2019s press gallery. She joined NZME in 2022 and became a Newstalk ZB political reporter in late 2024, with a keen interest in public service agency reform and government spending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mulipola is an activist, comic book artist and professional wrestler, and does not feature on the party\u2019s list.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1443,74,19050,1558,19956,15308,88102,11687,3054,634,2518,23746,42,91058,18153,6804,1446,1073,45081,43,204451,4762,3117,45788,18938,1072,17426,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-395651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-about","tag-after","tag-assassination","tag-been","tag-candidate","tag-charlie","tag-cops","tag-criticised","tag-criticism","tag-death","tag-green","tag-greens","tag-headlines","tag-joke","tag-kirk","tag-light","tag-making","tag-media","tag-mngere","tag-news","tag-nowdeleted","tag-party","tag-post","tag-posting","tag-rightwing","tag-social","tag-speaker","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395651","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=395651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}