Te Pāti Māori - the Kingmakers.

Six months to go.

Six months from today, on the 14th of October, Aotearoa will go to the polls. The policies will have been announced, misinformation spread, a scandal or two played out. People will be lining up at school halls and community buildings to cast their vote and choose our next government.

The billboards are taken down and the politicians can relax after six weeks of seven day a week campaigning. A final duty, a photo opportunity, a smile placing their vote in the cardboard box. Then home for a long evening of results as the changing permutations are discussed.

Voters choosing between a National/ACT bloc, who will reduce taxes and in order to pay for that also the funding of public services. Obviously these parties are rather more focussed on communicating the tax cuts than the service cuts.

Or a Labour/Greens bloc who would make small increases in the funding of public services, but not enough to address how stretched our teachers, nurses, and police are. Of course the size of the support party, relative to the major party, will be significant.

If ACT gain a lot of votes they’ll have more influence, and can push National for larger cuts to taxes and services. If the Greens are more than a minor partner it would give them a mandate to seek larger increases in government spending, and an increase to the top tax rate to pay for it. I assume, based on things James Shaw has said this year, that greater action on climate change will be a bottom line regardless.

The standard narrative is that the people in the centre, the undecided or swing voters, determine which bloc wins the election. However most polls in recent months indicate neither bloc winning sufficient votes to form a government. Each would require a third partner, a kingmaker, to get across the line. And options are extremely limited.

There is an outside chance New Zealand First will get across the 5% threshold and return again. But I suspect that would require some major event or scandal to occur for it to eventuate.

It is much more likely that Te Pāti Māori (TPM) will be in the position to negotiate a coalition agreement with one bloc, or potentially even with both. The later scenario leaving them able to play one off against the other, as we’re seen Winston Peters do in 1996 and 2017.

Māori party co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. Photograph: Kiriana Eparaima-Hautapu

Given most scenarios in recent polls indicate TPM would be needed to form a government, there is surprisingly little written about them and their policies. It often seems fringe parties, who have essentially zero likelihood of making it to parliament, get more coverage than TPM who may hold the balance of power. It’s surprising there isn’t more discussion of possible coalition arrangements.

TPM cover the aspirations of Māori across the political spectrum. But despite forming in opposition to Labour’s foreshore and seabed legislation, the natural home of many of their supporters, given the treatment of Maori in this country, is on the left. Although of course TPM have only ever been in government with National.

Despite ongoing frustrations with Labour, including over the rate at which important issues are being addressed, the words we hear from the TPM co-leaders seem a lot friendlier towards the left than the right. Certainly Labour, and even more so the Greens, are much more aligned with TPM when it comes to Treaty and social justice issues, than National and ACT.

TPM currently depend on winning Māori electorates for their place in parliament. Both National and ACT have expressed that they would like these Māori seats abolished. As with their other grievances on things Māori, be it a form of affirmative action or these seats, their opposition doesn’t really seem to be due to concerns of Māori privilege. That would be absurd, and these people are not idiots. No, they oppose moves to improve things for Māori because they know it will play well with people they want votes from.

Curiously the Maori roll does benefit National. It creates anomalies in electorates like Northland, or where I grew up in Rotorua. We end up with pink faced pakeha MPs who have no interest in the aspirations of local Māori. Were it not for the Māori roll taking voters out of the general electorates those seats would go to Labour more often.

Despite them going with National I respected the previous TPM leaders. Unlike Winston seeking the baubles of power I never thought the leaders of TPM had any motivation other than seeking the best they could get from National for their people.

One place I worked must have been near somewhere Tariana Turia was working, she sometimes arrived at the car park when I did. Quite tiny in person, but with the heart of a lion. One of the saddest speeches I’ve seen in New Zealand politics was given by Te Ururoa Flavell on the night of the 2017 election, after he lost his seat and the party did not make it back to parliament. I was glad to see TPM return in 2020.

I’m not going to cover all the TPM policies here, and of course there is a limit to how many they could achieve in negotiations. But these are some I thought sounded good which could potentially find their way into a Labour/Greens/TPM coalition agreement:

• Immediately raise the minimum wage to $25 per hour and legislate for an annual increase to keep up with cost of living increases

• Raise abatement rates for benefits and student allowances

• Introduce free public transport for students at all levels

• Universal student allowances, including restoring full eligibility for postgraduate, part-time, and long course students

• End new onshore oil and gas permits and withdraw existing onshore and offshore oil and gas permits within five years and aim to decommission sites by 2030

• Phase out synthetic nitrogen fertiliser on farms by 2025 and bring methane emissions from agriculture into the ETS to disincentivise intensive methane-emitting agriculture.

If you’re all good with the Treaty, the idea of sharing power, and programmes to support more equal outcomes for Māori then you might find you have nothing to be worried about from TPM.

In fact some of you who have taken the Political Values test recently, that uses your responses to assess which political party fits the things important to you, may have found TPM was one of your better fits.

So who will TPM go with?

Christopher Luxon was asked this week “Are you going to be able to win the election by working with the Māori Party?”

“The short answer is no,” he replied, adding “this is a party that now believes in two separate systems and that is something we cannot support…It is highly unlikely National would work with Te Pāti Māori.”

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said she wasn’t putting too much weight on Luxon’s comments, saying it was taxing “keeping up to date with whatever National’s latest leader has to say”.

Seriously though, can you imagine Rawiri Waititi in a Christopher Luxon cabinet? He’d last about as long as Hone Harawira in a John Key one!

TPM have already ruled out going into any coalition with ACT. Rawiri Waititi said: “It’s a no. Absolutely. It’s a hard no…All I see is a party that is just actively campaigning against the rights of the tangata whenua and other minorities. All of those types of things. I can’t support them.”

Ironically National and ACT, both of who claim to want a meritocracy rather than anything that seeks to address Māori under representation, have chosen to attack a series of Māori MPs. Not on the merits of how well they were doing the job, but based on them being Māori.

We have seen both parties deliberately play to supporters criticising, or demanding apologies from, Nanaia Mahuta, Poto Williams, Marama Davidson, and Kiri Allan. Things they would never expect from a male pakeha MP.

Wouldn’t it be delicious if on election night, assuming the results are similar to what we’ve seen in the polls and TPM hold the balance of power, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer stood in front of the cameras and gave the following speech.

This campaign has been ugly and divisive. National and ACT have used fear and misinformation about water management and co-governance to try and win the election. They have not fought it on ideas or ambitions, other than their own, they have fought it by spreading misinformation about Māori sharing the governance of this country.

For that reason we are ruling out any relationship with these two parties, either now or into the future, if they continue with this racist nonsense that only seeks to take our country backwards.

We’ll be sitting down first with our friends the Greens to agree priorities that we’ll negotiate with the Labour Party. While we haven’t always been happy with progress from Labour in addressing the things that matter to us, and to many of the people of Aotearoa, they are moving forward. Those other parties want to change into reverse. It was an easy decision.

If we cannot reach an agreement with Labour we may need to sit on the cross benches. But we are confident that between the three parties, Te Pāti Māori, the Greens, and Labour we can form a government that will focus on addressing inequality - be it of wealth or of treatment based on race. On protecting our environment, and on coming together as a country where all people are valued and respected. Because that’s what we value. He tangata.