GRAHAM ADAMS: Why does the left soft-soap Māori gangs?

The Coalition parties can barely believe their luck as the gang scandal continues to engulf their political rivals even as advance voting begins.

Little wonder Oriini Kaipara has been described as a “sleeper-agent for the centre-right” given that a video she posted of herself at a Mongrel Mob hui — alongside Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, Green MP Hūhana Lyndon and Green candidate Michel Mulipola — sparked the political firestorm.

Belated attempts to mount a counter-attack by publishing photos of National MPs alongside gang members is only slightly easing the agony for the left but at the cost of keeping the issue in the media spotlight. Not least, it has given National more opportunities to advertise the fact Labour voted against legislation the government passed this term to clamp down on gang crime.

National is doing its best to hide its glee. In his newsletter to supporters on Friday, Chris Bishop tried to levitate above the tumult:

“Every election there’s always an unexpected event or ‘moment’, but I did not see a two-week rolling controversy over left-wing parties seeking support from gang members coming [in this campaign]. It’s definitely distracted attention from what should be the major focus of the election (how our economic plan is beginning to work and we shouldn’t go backwards) but has also probably focused attention on just how crazy a Labour/Green/ Māori Party government would be.”

The left’s “craziness” with regard to Māori gangs has certainly been on full display since Kaipara’s inflammatory social media posts. And it is nowhere more apparent than when they argue that gangsters should not be ostracised or condemned because they are part of society and have family like anyone else.

The very mention of “whānau” is meant to wash away a myriad of gang sins. Yet the view that that we should hate the sin while loving the sinner only goes so far when the sins include meth dealing, intimidation, bloody violence, sexual abuse and rape.

In fact, it has been estimated that gang members — who make up a quarter of one per cent of New Zealand’s adult population — are linked to 18 per cent of all serious violent crime, 19 per cent of all homicides, 23 per cent of all firearms offences, 25 per cent of all kidnapping and abductions, and 25 per cent of all the crime harm caused by illicit drug offences. Their appalling treatment of women is no secret.

However, even staunch feminist Sandra Coney has defended Kerrin Leoni — a candidate for the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate — campaigning for the gang vote at a Mongrel Mob gathering: “Whether we like it or not, [gangs] are part of us. They are the product of the society we have created. We should continue to extend a hand, not turn our backs.”

But while Jacinda Ardern’s mantra “They are us” worked very well when innocent Muslims were murdered in a mosque, it really doesn’t work so well among the public when it is used to support gangs.

Nevertheless, that sentiment has been trotted out blithely by Oriini Kaipara and Greens co-leader Marama Davidson, among others, in defence of MPs explicitly drumming up Mob votes and posting videos and photos of their encounters.

Leoni justified a video clip of her urging gangsters to oust the government while wearing a Labour jacket and a photograph of her holding a party placard at a Mongrel Mob gathering, saying: “I cannot change who my whānau are or who I grew up with, nor would I ever turn my back on them.”

Chris Hipkins, realising how offensive those images would be to many voters, turned to the theme of families himself when he told journalists he had made it clear to Leoni that her role as a Labour candidate was no longer tenable. He became teary when he said: “It’s her family! All of us navigate family situations in politics, and it’s bloody hard.”

It’s true that you can’t choose your family, but if it includes members of an organisation that unrepentantly peddles misery and violence — and you are neither willing to denounce their behaviour nor distance yourself from them — politics is always going to be a very risky career choice.

It is obvious that anyone hoping to be a successful politician would be reckless to tell voters, for example, that their family members have always been neo-Nazis and that they will always stick by them because they are kin. Posting photos of sitting among them while they gave Nazi salutes and shouted “Sieg Heil” would immediately torpedo any political future.

Yet, when it comes to Māori gangs we are apparently expected to view them with indulgence on account of the negative effects of colonisation, “intergenerational trauma”, and because they have wives, children and many relatives (although some will be wondering whether the word “whānau” is so elastic it covers anyone Leoni knows who happens to be Māori and turns up to a shindig).

While appealing to “whānau” is a common justification for cuddling up to gangs, a video clip of Kaipara’s pitch for Mob votes at their pad revealed another reason the left often treats them as valued citizens rather than as members of organised crime groups.

She told them: “You are tangata whenua. You are of this land. You are Maui’s descendants. You are the descendants of Toi, of Kupe, of Tupaia.”

Kaipara appeared to imply that Māori ancestry and a supposed mystical connection to the land should automatically confer special rights on Mob members — including state housing and other benefits — in order to restore their “mana”.

Her approach looks like a muddled variant of a “blood and soil” ideology — as if being both “of the blood” and “of the land” is inherently ennobling.

The historical manifestations of a “blood and soil” ideology in Nazism are so repugnant, of course, that very few will acknowledge any such similarity. And it might seem far-fetched at first glance given that “blood and soil” is normally seen as a right-wing ideology while Te Pāti Māori is classed as a party of the progressive left with its promotion of wealth taxes and massive state spending.

However, it is also an ethno-nationalist party that embraces a romantic nationalism rooted in the idea of a supposedly paradisiacal existence for Māori before colonisation turned a South Pacific Garden of Eden into a hellhole for them. Certainly much of our legacy media and political class seems to find that myth seductive.

Auckland University professor Dame Elizabeth Rata has described a “blood and soil” ideology as a common element of ethno-nationalism:

“It is the idea that an ethnic group indigenous to an area is autochthonous. The group is ‘of the land’ in a way that is qualitatively different from those who arrive later. As a consequence of this fact, the first group claims a particular political status with entitlements not available to others.”

Indeed, a core part of Te Pāti Māori’s philosophy is centred on two classes of citizens, with all non-Māori living in New Zealand purportedly the guests of anyone with a Māori forebear.

Rawiri Waititi made that division clear during the first reading of the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill in March 2024. He argued that the proposed measures to ban gang patches in public and to give police greater powers to disperse their members hadn’t worked in the US or Australia.

“[The gangs] just moved from one region to another… And I heard the Minister [Goldsmith] today say… ‘I wish they could relocate to another country and leave us alone.’

“E kī rā, if the majority [of gang members] are Māori, you’ve got the manuhiri [guests] kicking tangata whenua out.”

Waititi appears to believe gangsters should be treated with respect by the vast majority of New Zealanders who don’t have Māori ancestry, despite their viciousness and depravity.

It will come as little surprise to many voters, of course, that the Greens’ view of gangs is just as crazy and divorced from reality.

During the second reading of the bill, Green MP Tamatha Paul recommended the government speak to gang leaders:

“They’re just normal people. Go and have a chat with them. I think you’ll find they’re quite nice.”

Graham Adams is a freelance editor, journalist and columnist. He lives on Auckland’s North Shore.