Katene is a strategic pick for the party – a Fulbright scholar, son of the chairman of Ngāti Toa and a “proud Porirua boy” hailing from one of the electorate’s larger urban populations.
“We have to win Porirua,” Labour MP Willie Jackson said.
“[If you] win Porirua, you just about win this whole [electorate]. If we can’t win with the Porirua son, his father is the chair [of Ngāti Toa], then come on …”
Jackson roused the crowd in the marae wharenui with jokes. He introduced the “honorary Māori” in his team, finance spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds, who had gained the title by “virtue of her eight Ngāpuhi kids”.
People laughed at Jackson’s quip at the historic tensions between Ngāti Toa, the iwi of paramount chief Te Rauparaha, and Ngāi Tahu, the iwi of new Labour candidate Mananui Ramsden, who was sitting in the crowd.
“This is the start because Mananui and TP [Te Pūoho], they will fix things in terms of the two tribes. They are two bros together.”
(Ngāti Toa leader Dr Taku Parai later reassured Ramsden he was “whanaunga” and “the hatchet was buried years ago”.)
Ramsden (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Waitaha, Rangitāne, Raukawa, Tainui) is the former chairman of Te Rūnanga o Koukourarata and running in the South Island Māori electorate, Te Tai Tonga. Tākuta Ferris currently holds the seat as an independent.
Parai said Katene, his nephew, would have “all sorts of things fired at you” in Parliament, but “when you look after your mana, you look after ours”.
Hipkins said his party had not done well in the 2023 election when Te Pāti Māori wrestled six of the seven Māori seats from them. Labour retained Ikaroa-Rāwhiti with MP Cushla Tangaere-Manuel.
In Te Tai Hauāuru, Ngarewa-Packer beat Labour’s 2023 candidate Soraya Peke-Mason by 9162 votes.
Māori who were fed up with a persistent cost-of-living crisis after Covid had voted for change, he said. Hipkins hoped they would feel dissatisfied with the “change” of Government and would vote this time for Labour.
Either way, Labour would “go all in” to get the Māori vote, he said. Yet six of those seats have a Te Pāti Māori MP with the experience of at least a term in Parliament.
Hipkins brushed off his party’s landslide loss again to Te Pāti Māori in the 2025 Tāmaki Makaurau byelection as a completely different ballgame. Te Pāti Māori, he said, would not be able to rely on the same tactics they had in that contest.
There were loose references from reporters to Katene’s rival, Ngarewa-Packer, who is from Pātea, a town more central in Te Tai Hauāuru than Porirua.
In his first press conference with Labour, Katene rejected suggestions he was just focused on urban Māori in the likes of Porirua, saying he would ensure he was “not sitting in Porirua and assuming what people’s lives are like in Hāwea”.
“The first thing I need to do is make sure I am in those communities, hearing the stories of their lives.”
Katene thanked his family for putting up with a man who “Forrest Gumps towards grandiose ideas” and said the start of his political journey at Takapūwāhia Marae was a “stone’s throw” from his childhood home on “Katene Corner” in Porirua. He said his daughter had that morning referred to Hipkins as “Uncle Chippy”.
“We know that people are doing it hard right now. We see it at the petrol pump; we see it at our supermarkets, at our healthcare clinics,” he said.
“But I also see hope. I see hope when I watch Te Matatini, when I watch Manu Kōrero, and I see hope when I watch our nation celebrate Matariki together in unity.”
As Hipkins spoke from the podium inside the wharenui, a man sat nearby wearing a Toitū Te Tiriti tracksuit, representing the influential Māori movement behind the 2024 hīkoi to Parliament that last year abruptly broke ties with its once close ally Te Pāti Māori.
The Te Tai Hauāuru seat has a memorable history for both parties. The late Dame Tariana Turia held the seat from 2002 for Labour.
But in 2004 she resigned from the then Helen Clark-led Labour Party over the foreshore and seabed controversy and successfully recontested the seat in the subsequent byelection for the newly formed Māori Party.
Te Tai Hauāuru is the second largest Māori seat by land area and covers much of the western North Island, stretching from around Ōtorohanga to Porirua. It includes New Plymouth, Whanganui and Palmerston North.
Recent political polling shows Labour will need Te Pāti Māori to form a government, yet Hipkins remains coy over his feelings for the party.
In October last year, Hipkins said Te Pāti Māori looked a “long way away” from being ready for a role in government. This was a reference to the months of inner turmoil the party had experienced, which culminated in two of their MPs being expelled. One of those MPs, Mariameno Kapa Kingi, has since been reinstated to the party after court action.
The Labour leader refused to update that statement when asked by reporters on Wednesday, saying questions over the party’s health were for Te Pāti Māori.
“There is still a lot of water to flow under the bridge before we get into the campaign itself, let alone who might form the next Government.”
Labour’s candidates for the Māori seats are: Te Pūoho Katene (Te Tai Hauāuru), Willow-Jean Prime (Te Tai Tokerau), Kerrin Leoni (Tāmaki Makaurau), Kingi Kiriona (Hauraki Waikato), Toni Boynton (Waiariki), Cushla Tangaere-Manuel (Ikaroa-Rāwhiti) and Mananui Ramsden (Te Tai Tonga).
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.