RODNEY HIDE: I asked AI to find Rawiri Waititi's worldview

Rawiri Waititi proved the easy one. He doesn't hide anything. He says he's "unapologetically Māori" and he means it.

I gave my AI research assistant the job. Read his maiden speech, his interviews, his bills and his votes. Work out what he believes about truth, human nature, purpose, government and markets. Tell me where it comes from. Quote him exactly and source every quote. Keep what he said separate from what you think it means.

It did the research and wrote it up. Here is its report.

The AI's report

Raised by the village

I started with where he comes from. Waititi was born in Ōpōtiki and spent his first 12 years at Whangaparāoa, near Cape Runaway on the East Coast. He told E-Tangata in 2020: "I was brought up not just by my parents, but by the whole village."

He was in the first wave of kōhanga reo. At 13 he was sent to Auckland to live with his aunt, Dame June Mariu, and went to Rutherford High School in Te Atatū. His grand-uncle was Hoani Waititi, the Māori educator.

He whakapapa to many iwi, with his firmest links to Te Whānau-ā-Apanui and Ngāti Porou. He is a Ringatū minister and swore his parliamentary oath on that faith. He is a kapa haka exponent who has performed with Te Whānau-ā-Apanui for more than 15 years, and holds a master's degree in mātauranga Māori from Te Wānanga o Raukawa.

Before Parliament he was a teacher, a lecturer, a worker in Whānau Ora services at Waipareira, and for eight or nine years a relationships manager for the Te Whānau-ā-Apanui rūnanga. He is married to Kiri, the daughter of John Tamihere.

My reading is that he was formed by marae, iwi, faith and performance, not by books. I found no political thinker he cites.

The noose

His maiden speech in December 2020 tells you most of what you need to know. He told the story of his tipuna Mokomoko, hanged in 1865 for the killing of the missionary Carl Völkner at Ōpōtiki, a conviction 1News describes as wrongful. Mokomoko's last words, Waititi said, were "take the noose from around my neck so that I may sing my song."

He pulled off his tie. "Therefore, I will adorn myself with the treasures of my ancestors and remove the colonial noose around my neck so that I may sing my song."

He promised that the party's "unapologetic Māori voice will be heard and that our Māori cloak is felt and is present in every piece of legislation and bill passed in this House." He said he'd be a pebble in the shoe of those stuck in colonial ways.

That is the frame. History is a story of Crown injustice against his people. Western forms, down to a necktie, are instruments of it. His purpose is to cast them off.

Colonisation explains everything

I found the same idea applied to almost every issue.

On the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day holiday in 2022, he voted against and called it an "example of colonialism in practice." He said New Zealand "must acknowledge the brutal genocidal and ongoing impact of colonialism, of the imperial project that was overseen by the House of Windsor and its forebears."

On the conversion practices ban in 2022, which he supported, Wikipedia reports he argued conversion therapy rested on European colonial ideas about gender and sexuality alien to Māori.

On his party's sports policy, which spoke of Māori "genetic makeup being stronger than others", he denied it was racist when Jack Tame pressed him in September 2023. He said the party was "trying to empower people that are climbing out from the bottom of the bonnet of colonial violence for the last 193 years." The wording was later deleted from the party website.

On his own people: "Unfortunately, colonisation has done its job on our people, a bloody damn good job. So some Māori are quite happy with the way things are."

My reading is that this last line matters most. When Māori disagree with him, the explanation is colonisation. That makes the thesis hard to test.

Tino rangatiratanga

His answer is self-government. In February 2024 he argued Māori have a right to govern themselves and called for a Māori Parliament.

He has acted on it. During Covid in 2020 his iwi closed the road on the East Coast. He told E-Tangata: "You don't have to accept Pākehā telling you what to do and what to say. When your people need to be protected, you just do it."

He wants the country renamed Aotearoa and te reo to be "a living language for all of Aotearoa." He says "it's the tangata whenua who are the selling point for our country. It's not the European culture."

His message to schools in his electorate was "never ever let anybody treat us like second-class citizens in our country. We must always act, always lift, and always stand as number one. Because we are tangata whenua."

Protest as method

Much of his record is protest inside the House. He issued a challenge at his swearing-in in 2020 over pledging allegiance without reference to the Treaty. He was thrown out in February 2021 for not wearing a tie, and the rule was dropped the next day. He was ejected in May 2021 for a haka after accusing Judith Collins of racism over the Māori Health Authority. He was ordered out again in May 2023 for an unsanctioned haka welcoming Meka Whaitiri.

In August 2023 he was suspended for 24 hours for referring in the House to suppressed court proceedings. In November 2024 he joined the haka that halted the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill. He refused to appear before the Privileges Committee, calling it a "kangaroo court". In June 2025 Parliament suspended him for 21 days.

At his party's conference in July 2023 he joked about slipping poisonous karaka berries into David Seymour's water: "re-indigenise yourself with some native seeds." Seymour asked for an apology.

My reading is that he treats Parliament's rules as colonial forms to be tested, not neutral rules to be kept. He has sometimes won. The tie rule went.

Government and markets

On economics he is a redistributor. He backed a wealth tax and removing GST from food in his 2023 interview with Jack Tame. His member's bill to take GST off food was defeated at first reading on 22 March 2024, with only his party voting for it. He defended Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority.

On foreign policy he wants neutrality. He supported the Russia Sanctions Act in 2022 but later called the war a "proxy war" for the United States. He wanted New Zealand to be "the Switzerland of the South Pacific" and said Māori should not fight other indigenous peoples on their whenua.

On social issues he votes with the progressive side: for safe zones around abortion providers, for the conversion practices ban.

I found nothing from him on markets as such. His own working life was in iwi, education, Whānau Ora and boards, and he talks of getting the iwi "our fair share of resource" from government.

The tensions

I found four.

First, faith and the social votes. He is a Ringatū minister. Yet he cast his votes on abortion safe zones and conversion practices as rejecting colonial European ideas. I found nothing where he explains how his own faith bears on those votes.

Second, mana and process. He says Māori leaders "must never compromise" the mana of their people. Yet in November 2025 his party expelled two of its own MPs, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris. In March 2026 the High Court ruled Kapa-Kingi's suspension and expulsion unlawful under the party's own rules. Justice Radich said the process could not be seen as "promoting whanaungatanga" or reflecting "the attributes of rangatira". Waititi said the party respected the ruling and looked forward to "repatriating" her. To be fair, the party president, John Tamihere, was the respondent, and I haven't established Waititi's personal role in the decision beyond announcing it with his co-leader.

Third, the Crown. He wants a Māori Parliament and self-government. Yet much of his platform is more from the Crown's Parliament: tax changes, a separate health authority, more resource from government.

Fourth, Te Kooti. The faith Waititi ministers in was founded by Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Tūruki. In 1866 the Crown arrested him without charge and sent him to the Chatham Islands, where he was held without trial for more than two years. He asked to be tried and never was. The Ringatū church dates its origin to the visions he had there. In 2012, in the Rongowhakaata settlement, the Crown acknowledged that detention was unjust and apologised. That much fits Waititi's frame.

What follows does not. In the early hours of 10 November 1868 Te Kooti's men attacked Matawhero in Poverty Bay. Te Ara's biography puts the dead at about 54, more than 20 of them Māori. NZHistory says nearly 60, roughly equal numbers of Māori and Pākehā, most killed with bayonets, tomahawks or patu. They included women, children and babies; the memorial lists a one-year-old and an infant.

In April 1869 he raided Mōhaka, seeking utu against Ngāti Pāhauwera. He fought a guerrilla war until he reached the King Country in 1872. In 1883 he was pardoned, so he was never tried for any of it. By any ordinary standard, killing unarmed civilians in their homes at night is murder. So the faith Waititi ministers in was founded by a man whose men murdered civilians. That sits awkwardly with a frame in which violence runs only from the Crown. To be fair, the Crown's own record in that war includes what its 2012 apology calls "dishonourable summary executions" at Ngātapa, and Te Kooti spent his last 20 years preaching peace and the law. But I found nothing of Waititi addressing Matawhero.

The verdict

I'd call him a decolonising tino rangatiratanga nationalist. He sees history as a Crown injustice against his people, the injustice as continuing, and the Westminster forms around him as its instruments. The good life is Māori living as Māori, in their language, on their land, under their own authority. The state's job, until then, is redress and resource.

It comes from whakapapa, the marae and Ringatū faith, not from theory. Unlike Swarbrick he cites no thinkers. Unlike Davidson he doesn't frame it as a universal web of connection. It is about his people.

There are gaps. I couldn't get the full Hansard text of his maiden speech, so those quotes come from 1News, RNZ and Te Ao Māori News reports. I didn't find the primary source for the February 2024 Māori Parliament call, which comes from Wikipedia. I didn't assess his electorate work.

End of the AI's report.

What I make of it

I find what AI unearthed alarming. I had always dismissed Rawiri Waititi’s violent words and threats as performative theatre. I considered it hyperbole. He appears as a teddy bear.

That is no longer the case for me. Te Kooti was a murderous religious fanatic. Waititi is a minister in a church that reveres Te Kooti as a prophet chosen by God, a Māori Moses leading his people out of bondage to reclaim their land.

Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader