The race to claim Te Tai Tonga is officially on: Labour’s Rino Tirikatene will be defending, as much as he ever has, against Te Pāti Māori candidate Tākuta Ferris if tonight’s Whakatau 2023 debate is anything to go by.
While the Curia Market Research polls of the electorate has Labour as the preferred party at 31 per cent, it has slumped down from its actual 2020 election result by about 24 points. Using the same comparison, Te Pāti Māori has risen 12 points, National is up five points and the Greens and Act are both up four points.
The changes since the 2020 election don’t stop there. Tirikatene had more than 50 per cent in the previous election results, while the polls now say he is the preferred candidate at 36 per cent. His opponent, Ferris, is on 25 per cent according to the poll.
Te Tai Tonga voters’ top issue
Although both candidates admitted to not reaching every township on their campaign trails yet, they acknowledged voters’ top issue as the cost of living.
Tirikatene and Ferris both sang their party’s respective songs on how to tackle the issue: Labour getting inflation down and Te Pāti Māori’s idea of removing GST off kai.
Although they both shared nothing new in that regard, a question posed to the less experienced Ferris was how to get older voters on his party’s side. The electorate poll had younger voters as his main source of support at 26 per cent, while older voters were less keen at 19 per cent.
He said working collectively, party and all age groups, was the answer.
“We have to speak to our older voters around voting for their mokopuna. We have to think about what our mokopuna need.
“Te Pāti Māori is about developing a movement that claws in mokopuna Māori. We have a broad base of young people, and they need to be educated; they need to understand what the system means to their lives, and our kaumātua and mātua need to demonstrate that.
“Our people have been long disengaged from it and we need to start now.”
Mental health an issue for rangatahi
One rangatahi voter told the debate her top priority for her people was mental health.
Tirikatene wants the same, and believes that doing it in a way led by Māori is key. But having a National/Act coalition government pus all of that work at risk, he argued.
“We need to take it to the next level through the Māori Health Authority, directing and guiding the whole health system to ensure that we have Māori-led solutions to Māori mental health.
“This is a taonga. We want it to flourish. We want it to drive those changes for instance in mental health and hauora, supporting our Māori providers that do a wonderful job.”
Which party works with which?
Speaking of coalition governments, both candidates fired shots at the potential matchup of coalition partners.
Tirikatene made his stance on NZ First leader Winston Peters very clear.
“He was so hard to work with. In our first term of government, it was very difficult to put things through.
“He’s a whanaunga of mine from the north, so I respect him as a great Māori politician, but I don’t agree with his politics. His statements that [Māori] are not indigenous - it’s just inflammatory kōrero and he’s this cat with nine lives. He just keeps coming back.”
Meanwhile Ferris passionately fired away at the idea of a National-Act partnership.
“You’ve got a National leader who’s openly undermining the work that has been done by generations of Māori leaders. Then you have their coalition partner [ACT] which is completely out the gate when it comes to Māori things, trying to referendum away Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
“They’re not tenable things for us. Te Pāti Māori are straight up the guts and we won’t have any of that.”
Attack of the tax policies
The first true back-and-forth happened towards the end of the debate, discussing each party’s policies on tax.
After Ferris reiterated his party’s wealth tax policy, among other tax policies, to increase the company tax rate to 33 per cent, as a way for “redistribution of Aotearoa’s wealth,” Tirikatene lit the fireworks off.
“I think Te Pāti Māori’s policy will basically take us back to the stone age in terms of the impact it will have,” Tirikatene said.
“We want to support our small businesses, Māori contractors, we have Māori corporates as well.
“That will totally rip apart our economy and totally lose confidence internationally.”
Ferris was quick to fire back. “What about the people that we’re supposed to serve? Our people have been in poverty for generations, Rino. When are we going to break them out of it?”
Tirikatene responded subtly, saying, “We are always working on those.”
Changes in the political spectrum have changed for Te Tai Tonga in the post-Covid election. Support has risen for some parties, while others have gone the other way. But Ferris still needs a big swing in the voting booths his way if he’s to defeat Rino Tirikatene.
Up next, the candidates for Hauraki-Waikato will have their Whakatau 2023 debate next Tuesday, October 3, @ 7pm on Whakaata Māori, MĀORI+ and teaonews.co.nz.
