Māori Party MP Alleged to Have Misused Census Data for Campaigning

The allegations suggest pork barrelling involving the Indigenous vote.

Maori Party co-leader Jahn Tamihere (L) and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters (R) share a joke during Newshub Nation's Powerbrokers Debate in Auckland, New Zealand on Oct. 1, 2020. Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

Māori Party (Te Pāti Māori) MP, Takutai Moana Natasha Kemp, has been accused of misusing private information, collected during the census, for political campaigning.

The issue is now part of an official investigation by Stats NZ after a whistleblower from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) made the allegations, and also reported it to police last week.

The Māori Party strongly denies any wrongdoing.

A Complex Web of Relations

Ms. Kemp was previously CEO of a “Manurewa Marae”—a complex that belongs to Maori tribe—and stood down after beating incumbent Labour MP Peeni Henare by 42 votes in the Tāmaki Makaurau (urban Auckland) Māori seat at the recent election.

The Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency paid Manurewa Marae to promote the census between March and June last year.

The agency’s role is to hire non-government organisations to deliver services to Māori so that “decision-making happens free from an overly risk-averse and micro-managed environment.”

The Agency’s CEO is John Tamihere, who is also president of the Māori Party.

He was recently subject of an investigation into $385,307 given by the charity the Waipareira Trust—where he is also CEO—which funded his campaigns for Auckland mayor in 2019 and for the Maori Party campaign at the general election.

After an extensive media investigation, the charity’s 2022/23 annual return recorded it as a loan which had been fully repaid on May 31.

In addition to the MSD whistleblower, a number of former marae workers have alleged that hundreds of census forms were photocopied and retained; and data such as personal contact details, household occupancy, and birth dates were entered into an online database and sent to the Waipareira Trust.

Mr. Tamihere denies this.

They believe that information was then used to target voters in the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate.

Voters Encouraged to Switch to Maori Electoral Roll

The Maori electoral roll is significant, because it benefits the Maori Party—one of the largest parties for the Indigenous population.

New Zealand is split between the general electoral roll, and the Maori roll, which is a special category of electorate that picks positions for representatives of Māori in the national parliament.

Marae staff have been accused of delivering census forms, included enrolment forms which voters could complete to change from the general to the Māori roll, and that people were given $100 supermarket vouchers, wellness packs or food parcels, to induce them to complete the forms.

Some of the food parcels and wellbeing packs were stuffed with Te Pāti Māori flyers, one ex-employee claimed.

They say they were given a “team challenge” to get as many people as possible to complete the census. The incentive was $100 per form, with some teams earning tens of thousands of dollars.

When they returned to the marae with the completed census forms, they claimed they had to enter the data twice in order to receive the incentive payment—once into a Jotform (an online survey platform) for Waipareira Trust, and secondly into a marae registry.

Instead, the forms should have remained confidential and passed to Stats NZ.

The former staff allege that the marae also held multiple “activation days,” which could cost up to $10,000 each.

These were community events that offered free hāngī, ice cream, hot drinks, and merchandise like hoodies, with food truck operators paid from marae funds. These events were ostensibly targeted at increasing participation in the census but also encouraged roll switching, with a $100 gift card on offer for those who completed the form.

Messages between Ms. Kemp and staff reveal that she was aware of, and encouraged, the data collection.

When 109 forms were collected in a single day, she wrote: “Awesome ... we want to collect data from the forms. Name, address, contact number, ethnicity can we get the 109 names onto a spreadsheet please. We will double check the census data and tick off from the data base.”

Police Not Contacted

The former staff say attempts were made to alert Stats NZ and MSD at the time, but neither agency acted.

They have also lodged personal grievance complaints against the marae, alleging various mistreatment, including bullying and constructive dismissal.

Although it is illegal to provide food during the advance voting period (a practice known as “treating”), the Electoral Commission chose not to refer the matter to the police despite complaints from the Labour, National, and Vision NZ parties.

In addition to denying the census information was retained and misused, Mr. Tamihere accused the complainants of “having a gripe” and said he would not permit Ms. Kemp to be interviewed.

“When we do relationships with our people and they come to our maraes, we either provide kai [food] or kai manaaki packaging. You call it an inducement, we call it maanaaki [the art of nourishing, being generous and caring about the treatment of others].”

Stats NZ Appoints External Investigator

Stats NZ confirmed it has appointed an external investigator to look into the allegations of “inappropriate use of incentives and inappropriate treatment of the census forms.”

A spokesperson for the agency said it partnered with the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency to lift low 2023 census response rates from Māori in Auckland.

She said information collected via census forms or any Stats NZ survey is protected by the Data and Statistics Act 2022 and the Privacy Act 2020.

“The allegations that census forms were copied and retained, that the information was used for other purposes, and that reports of this nature were not followed up are very serious,” she said.

“We are investigating.”

Mr Tamihere is believed to be the highest-paid chief executive of any charity in New Zealand.

The Waipareira Trust’s annual report records that its 13 full-time-equivalent senior management personnel were paid an average of $510,679 per annum, exceeding the salary of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.