Do we like them?

Do we like Rawiri Waititi?

Our score: 5 out of 10. No harmful record found and a clear stand for Māori rights, but a rough joke, a party split and unresolved accusations leave it middling.

Waititi is from Whangaparāoa (Cape Runaway) in Te Whānau-a-Apanui and is a minister of the Ringatū faith. He spent close to 20 years in the iwi's kapa haka group, and from age 13 lived with his aunt in west Auckland. He later worked at Te Whānau o Waipareira under John Tamihere, whose daughter he married.

He lost his first run at Waiariki in 2014, then won the seat in 2020 and became co-leader. He says his political turning point was protesting seabed mining off the East Coast. In 2023 the party won six of the seven Māori seats, its best result ever.

The party's haka protest in Parliament against the Treaty Principles Bill got him a 21-day suspension in 2025, reported as the harshest sanction Parliament has handed out. Whether that was fair punishment or the House leaning on the opposition depends on who you ask.

The wheels came off in 2025. Two MPs, Tākuta Ferris and Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, were expelled after a public falling-out, and the party faced accusations of running a dictatorship-style model. At the December 2025 AGM Waititi said the matter should have been handled in-house and acknowledged the party could have done things differently.

On the harm check, Ferris complained about “Indians, Asians Black [sic] and Pākehā campaigning” for a Māori seat, and Waititi said he and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer did not support how those comments were made. Party president Tamihere backed the substance of them. Waititi also joked at a 2022 conference that karaka berries “still got the poison in them”, aimed at ACT leader David Seymour, who wanted an apology. We found nothing from him on trans or LGBTQ+ people, and that is a gap, not a clean bill.

The campaign is about the Māori electorates: Te Pāti Māori asks supporters to give it the candidate vote and the party vote to whichever opposition party they like. Waititi has urged Māori to enrol and has opposed the repeal of Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements, which link iwi and councils on resource management. Labour's Chris Hipkins has called senior roles for the party under a Labour-led coalition “unlikely”.