Pere Huriwai-Seger was on his way home from Tāmaki Makaurau when he stopped in Wellsford to grab some kai—he wasn’t expecting to run into NZ First MP Casey Costello.
Costello came under fire in the media last year for sending a document to health officials advocating for cuts to tobacco tax. The document, leaked to RNZ, controversially claimed that nicotine was no more harmful than caffeine.
Initially, Costello denied the document’s existence, backtracking and saying she didn’t know who wrote it or how it ended up in her office.
Huriwai-Seger, who closely follows the actions of NZ First and Hobson’s Pledge—a lobby group aiming to redefine the constitutional place of Māori in Aotearoa, and of which Costello was a founding trustee—felt compelled to say something.
Huriwai-Seger co-founded activist group and media platform Aotearoa Liberation League with his wife, Samah Huriwai-Seger.
He didn’t have his phone on him to record the interaction; he’d left it in the car with his Samah while he popped in to get food. Despite being tired and just wanting to eat, he said he couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
“I make a lot of online content talking about what New Zealand first does, and you know you can’t shy away from those opportunities in person to express your feelings because you know, kanohi ki te kanohi is the most important thing for me. If you’re trying to get your point across, there’s no better place to do it than in person.”
They were seated at separate tables with one between them. At first, Costello engaged in kōrero about the rollback of smoke-free legislation.
“We’re not going to agree,” she said. “How about you just move on?”
He chose to stay, responding that if she was going to push divisive policies, she couldn’t expect not to “get it” from the public - to clarify, he meant facing public feedback.
“As soon as I said, ‘get it,’ she jumped on that wording and said, ‘Are you threatening me?’ Then she stood over me,” Huriwai-Seger said.
“I just thought it was completely outrageous for one of our elected officials to use stand-over tactics on a member of the public—and not just any MP, but the Associate Minister of Police. Instead of engaging in the debate, this is how our political leaders choose to handle things.”
He kept asking questions. A bystander eventually stepped in, asking Costello to lower her voice, saying his whānau could hear her from across the room. She sat down, lowered her voice, and began taking photos of Huriwai-Seger.
He felt she was trying to provoke a response—one she didn’t get. Then, he said, she flipped the script, claiming she felt intimidated and unsafe, and said she would call the police. That worried him, given her role as Associate Minister of Police.
He gave her space, ordered his food, and then returned to ask whether the police were coming so he could make a statement and share his side of the story.
He wanted to engage in real debate—on the rhetoric being used to divide communities, on the “war on woke,” on attacking words rather than addressing issues, on Costello’s role in Hobson’s Pledge and their push for the Treaty Principles Bill. He criticised how NZ First, in his view, has long fueled division, with Winston Peters even going as far as to claim Māori aren’t indigenous.
“And I said, shame on you, Casey Costello, for using your whakapapa against our people.”
He believes Costello has weaponised her identity as a Māori woman, especially in a political context where female politicians do face disproportionate abuse. However, from his perspective, much of that abuse has come from within NZ First, pointing to how Shane Jones and Winston Peters have spoken to MPs like Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke and Tamatha Paul.
“People are talking about the power imbalance between a tane and a wahine but for me, the power imbalance is that I’m a tane Māori and she’s a member of Parliament, Associate Minister of the police, who’s threatening to call the police on me after she has just intimidated me and tried to stand over me.”
Te Ao Māori News has reached out to Casey Costello’s office for comment.
