Te Pati Māori political donations scandal gets worse

Jul 22, 2024

Sympathy should be extended to Te Pati Māori MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp, who announced yesterday that she is taking six weeks off parliamentary duties to recover from kidney disease. This, of course, doesn’t give her a pass from the continued scrutiny applied to her political donations and allegedly improper electioneering that got her into Parliament last year. The first part of the official government inquiry is due in nine days.

New allegations about Te Pati Māori political finance

Further details of undeclared political donations to the Te Pati Māori continue to emerge. The latest was broadcast yesterday on TVNZ’s Q+A, about donations-in-kind given by Manurewa Marae to Kemp in her successful campaign to win Tamaki Makaurau off Labour’s Peeni Henare. The Electoral Commission is now reviewing how Kemp made use of the Manurewa Marae van without declaring it as a donation in her electoral return covering this election.

All candidates must submit a list of gifts and financial campaign donations worth over $1500. According to TVNZ’s Whena Owen, the van she used to campaign for months would have cost around $6000. Although Kemp listed $48,513 in donations, there’s no mention of anything from the Marae. She may have rented the van from the Marae, but that would also require declaration in her expenses return, and that doesn’t appear to be there.

Two weeks ago, Whena Owen reported that the Marae’s van was being used for Kemp’s electioneering last year, raising questions about how a registered charity could allow their resources to be used for partisan campaigning. Charities given tax exemption status are strictly prevented from assisting political parties in their campaigning. Q+A reported the Department of Internal Affairs said that “registered charities must not support or oppose particular parties or candidates.”

Electoral law expert Andrew Geddis said yesterday that the issue involves potential breaches of both the Charities Act and the Electoral Act.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that Kemp was the chief executive of the Manurewa Marae at the time. She has refused to comment on this story or any other allegations about inappropriate or misuse of resources to help her or the Te Pati Māori election campaign.

John Tamihere’s “fiefdom” under further scrutiny

Kemp’s marae is also at the centre of many other allegations of inappropriate electioneering and conflicts of interest. These relate, primarily, to the alleged misuse of contracts with the state, which helped Kemp and Te Pati Māori to electioneer. Hence, the government has initiated an investigation to clear up the matter.

The Manurewa Marae is certainly no “ordinary Marae”—but it is part of a much larger business and NGO operation run by Te Pati Māori president John Tamihere. The former Labour Cabinet minister has created what many call a South Auckland “fiefdom” reliant on government contracts.

There’s a lot of money involved. Tamihere’s various companies get funded directly by the government under the Whanau Ora scheme. For example, the Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency (WOCA) is a company managed by Tamihere (the Chief Executive) and his wife Awerangi Tamihere (the chief operating officer). Its legal name is Te Pou Matakana Ltd, and it has the Whanau Ora contract for the North Island.

The company is a social services clearinghouse, funding welfare and health providers, especially in Auckland. This year’s Budget allocated $182m for the next financial year. There are some large “management fees” on the books for controlling the money—$6 m in 2023.

Other senior figures from around Te Pati Māori are also involved. The organisation’s patron is Sir Mason Durie (John Tamihere’s father-in-law), and its chair is Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, who was number eight on the party’s list last year. Other directors include Takutai Tarsh Kemp and Lady Tureiti Moxon (number 21 on the TPM party list).

One of the company's shareholders is the Waipareira Trust, which is also run by the Tamihere family—John Tamihere is the chief executive, and once again, Awerangi Tamihere is the chief operating officer.

The other owners of WOCA are the National Urban Māori Authority (NUMA) and the Manukau Urban Māori Authority (MUMA). The latter was set up by Willie Jackson’s mother, June Jackson, but is now run by his wife, Tania Rangiheuea. Together with the Waipareira Trust, Muma owns various radio stations and other investments.

Therefore, there are various concerns about how much these organisations overlap and exist as another wing of Te Pati Māori, albeit funded by the state. However, government funding for the Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency (WOCA) is now under threat, according to Te Pati Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. She wrote an opinion piece for the Herald earlier this month, arguing that the National-led Government was putting WOCA contracts “up for retender”. She accused the government department Te Puni Kōkiri of lacking “goodwill, transparency and honesty” regarding its awarding of contracts to WOCA.

According to a former staffer for WOCA, Haimona Gray, Ngarewa-Packer’s article was a blatant lobbying attempt in favour of “Te Pati Maori's largest single donor”. He argued in his own opinion piece that the Te Pati Māori co-leader was attempting to put a positive spin on the Tamihere fiefdom, given all the negative media coverage in recent months, but in reality was something of an own goal because it reads as “a tacit acknowledgement of the overly close relationship between Te Pati Māori and The Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency that has gotten both parties into trouble with the public in the first place”.

Gray argues that there are now questions about whether WOCA, with its annual government funding of $182m, now “largely exists to provide extra taxpayer funding to a parliamentary political party”.

The Manurewa Marae assistance in local government election campaigns

The Manurewa Marae is also under further scrutiny for its involvement in local government politics. At the last local government elections 2022, the Marae’s Trust Board donated $3500 to two candidates standing for the Manurewa Action Team.

It’s not known if further contributions were given to election campaigns. Still, according to The Post’s Andrea Vance, three senior marae figures also stood for election – the marae’s chair, Rangi McLean, the marae’s now-CEO Hilda Peters, and now-MP Takutai Tasha Kemp.

Local Democracy Reporter Mary Afemata has also uncovered this month that complaints were made to Auckland Council in 2022 about “how staff at the Manurewa Marae were collecting voting papers and also using vaccination events as campaign events”. According to these reports, “during vaccination events people were encouraged to vote for the Manurewa Action Team”.

Andrea Vance uncovered further evidence, including various social media communications that seem to confirm this was happening. In one Facebook Live session, John Tamihere said: “[J]ust got to motivate your whānau, get on the phone, go around their houses, pick up their voting forms, tick the boxes for them. It's probably illegal, but I'm asking you to do it anyway… No, look because the whole system is rorted against us, so you’ve got to level it up somehow.”

Tamihere’s Waipareira Trust under threat of deregistration

The Department of Internal Affairs is currently investigating the charity status of John Tamihere’s Waipareira Trust. The Charity Services division of Internal Affairs is the state’s regulator of charities, and has successfully deregistered other campaigning groups in the past, such as the conservative Family First, for being too political.

Charity Services is also assisted within the Department of Internal Affairs by the Charities Registration Board—this entity decides which organisations get their tax-free status. Recently, it was revealed that the Board is chaired by a Labour Party activist, Gwendoline Keel.

She stood for the party at last year’s election, and although Keel temporarily stood down while campaigning, she continues to be the regulator’s chair. This has raised questions about conflicts of interest and whether it’s desirable to have one party activist making decisions about organisations closely connected with other political parties.

Nonetheless, Keel and her board are currently considering Waipareira Trust's tax-free charitable status after Charity Services just completed a four-year investigation into its financial relationships with Tamihere and Te Pati Māori. This investigation report has been passed onto the board to decide what to do about its registration as a charity.

Reporting on this two weeks ago, the Herald’s Matt Nippert said that it was “rare” for Charity Services to pass on a referral to the Charities Registration Board and that if the Board decided to deregister the Trust, then the loss of the tax-free status would be highly negative for Tamihere’s organisation, as it would “trigger a one-off tax levied on net assets. According to Waipareira’s most recent annual reports, this potential tax bill could exceed $20 million.”

Nippert sought comment from Tamihere on this, reporting: “His sole and complete response to the Herald was: “F*** off! Print that!’” Nippert has long covered the financial relationship between the trust and Tamihere’s political campaigns.

This started when the Waipareira Trust donated $100,000 to Tamihere’s 2019 campaign for the Auckland mayoralty. Once Tamihere became a candidate for Te Pati Māori in 2020 and then its president, the Trust provided further campaign funding – totalling $385,307.

Much of the money was officially converted into a “loan,” and Charity Services demanded that Tamihere repay the loans. He did so last year, but coincidentally, the Trust increased its executives’ pay by 77 percent that year—to an average of $510,679—which made Tamihere’s ability to repay the loan easier.

The Department of Internal Affairs has dealt with other complaints, such as the allegation that the Trust organised a public Matariki concert but essentially used it as a launch party for Te Pāti Māori’s election campaign last year.

Does Te Pāti Māori accept donations from mining or oil companies?

While the various government contracts and funding arrangements involving Manurewa Marae, Whanau Ora, and the Waipareira Trust are of concern, there have also been several other concerning donations made to Te Pati Māori. In 2020, the Electoral Commission referred the party to the Police over $320,000 in undeclared donations.

Although the Serious Fraud Office ultimately decided not to prosecute the party, one of the undeclared donations has continued to raise questions. $120,000 was given to Te Pati Māori from the Aotearoa Te Kahu Limited Partnership. This entity was a solicitor’s nominee company used to channel funds. The company is now closed down.

Newstalk ZB investigative writer Philip Crump has recently dug into the donor further: “Whilst it’s difficult to ascertain, filings include an email address belonging to Greymouth Holdings – and that website is registered in the name of former Fay Richwhite banker and CEO of Greymouth Petroleum, Mark Dunphy. The name Aotearoa Te Kahu seems to be a hat tip to the Kahu exploration well off the Taranaki coast.”

Certainly, the company and the party have had ties before. Former co-leader Tariana Turia even praised the company for its “commitment to consult with tangata whenua over drilling.”

Interestingly, the other undeclared donations that Te Pati Māori failed to declare in 2020 were $48,880 from the National Urban Māori Authority and $158,224 from John Tamihere, who at that time was one of the party's co-leaders.

The party's failure to explain why the 2020 donations were not declared is still of great concern. Back then, the party made weak excuses and largely failed to answer questions about what could have been corrupt practice.

Now, in 2024, the party still isn’t providing convincing answers. Therefore, it’s worth asking how seriously Te Pati Māori takes corruption issues and the untoward influence of big money in politics. Based on what has happened since 2020 with these various political finance scandals, the answer appears to be that they don’t really care.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

Key Sources

1News: Q + A with Jack Tame – Co-leader on Manurewa Marae, 20 years of Te Pāti Māori | Q+A 2024

Mary Afemata (Herald): Manurewa Marae accused of politicising vaccination events

Haimona Gray: Debbie Ngarewa-Harris And The Risk Facing The Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency?

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer (Herald): Whānau Ora, we need certainty of its future

Matt Nippert (Herald): Investigation into Waipareira political donations referred to Charities Registration Board (paywalled)

Whena Owen (1News): Fresh questions raised on Tāmaki Makarau MP's electoral return

Whena Owen (1News): Branded van raises new questions amid Manurewa Marae claims

Rawiri Taonui (Waatea News): Pre-election Data and Enrolment Allegations at Manurewa Marae

Andrea Vance (Sunday Star Times): Manurewa Marae's election donation raises further questions of political neutrality (paywalled)