When Nanaia Mahuta was elected MP in 1996 she was only 26 years old.
A new political system, the MMP, had just been implemented and the Treaty settlement process had just begun with its Iwi, Tainui, first on the block.
“There was a lot of hope and ambition about what the process would hold, even though it was an imperfect process, it was the start of something big,” Mahuta tells Newsroom from her home in Hadley.
Having handed over her ministerial credentials on Saturday, Mahuta is now out of Parliament and relieved of the responsibilities of the caretaker government.
Losing her Hauraki-Waikato seat to Te Pāti Māori sees 21-year-old Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke out of Parliament after opting not to run on the Labor Party list and without the chance to make a speech.
Reflecting on nearly three decades in Parliament, Mahuta says holding the seat of Tainui (now Hauraki-Waikato) since 2002 has not been without its challenges.
In 2016, Māori King Tūheitia put a stake in the ground and sided with the Māori Party – pledging his full support for the Kīingitanga movement.
Andrew Little was Labor leader at the time and until then Mahuta was the central link between the party and Kingitanga.
Tūheitia and Mahuta are first cousins and were close to his mother Queen Te Atairangikahu, who reigned for 40 years.
The long-running dispute began after Tūheitia accused Labor of saying it would never work with the Māori Party. The Labor Party denied this and at the time some of their MPs accused the King’s closest adviser and newly appointed Māori Party president Tuku Morgan of inaccuracies.
Tūheitia claimed that Labor’s reluctance to work with the Māori Party was reason enough to withdraw his support and in turn created a personal rift between himself and Mahuta.
There were frequent rumors over the years that she was being lined up to become Tūheitia’s closest advisor, then turned to replacing him on the throne.
“The type of role that people were embracing me for is not a role that I would have,” Mahuta told Newsroom.
His speech saying Kīingitanga would never support Labor again put Mahuta in a difficult position for the next three elections.
“We have to remember that the King, from the leadership of Andrew Little, made a pretty clear statement about his support for the Maori Party. That never stopped, he supported Hannah and the campaign.
“It became a bit more difficult for me to navigate that because the families felt they had to choose between the Kīingitanga and the King and what he wanted and what they wanted politically.”
She describes her personal relationship with Tuheitia as “challenging”.
To try and earn her spot this year, she says she had to make some conscious choices and knew the deciding outcome would come down to participation.
“For the Maori Party, their strategy was to get the youth vote out, so that would be their target. But we had also strategically said that we were able to work with the Māori Party and the Greens, so there were bigger strategies at play,” Mahuta says.
“I tried never to let the small-minded nature of what was going on with me and the King personally affect and affect the wider strategic political objectives that were necessary for the Hauraki-Waikato electorate.”
“Probably because I’ve experienced it, it seems like it was easier to criticize a Maori woman in Parliament than anything else.”
Nanaya Mahuta
Mahuta came off the party’s list in 2017 with all her Labor colleagues standing in Māori seats as part of a strategy to boost Māori representation by attracting more MPs to Parliament both on the list and in the electorates.
It worked and the Maori team grew, as did the women’s representation.
“After the 2020 election I made a different calculation based on a phenomenon I had never seen before in an election. I’ve been on the receiving end of some really toxic criticism, so like Jacinda (Ardern) I was going through the summer term thinking, is this really the kind of Parliament I want to be in?
“Things were toxic around the reform initiatives I was promoting, but outside Parliament it was particularly challenging,” he recalls.
“I found myself going out to dinner one night with my husband, not even in our hometown, it was in a small town up north, and people were taking videos of us eating.
“In the back of my mind I knew things had changed and it wasn’t as respected as it once was.”
Mahuta puts much of this down to Parliament’s protest in 2022, which she describes as “a turning point for a lot of things”.
It led her to take the decision to stay out of the party list in the 2023 elections as well.
“I also did it on a calculation that I didn’t really want to be in Parliament unless I had a good strong mandate from the electorate, and even then, it would be difficult to get back into Parliament if we were to be in Opposition.
“So I asked myself if I should go through the paces all over again, and in 27 years of service, I was ready to accept a Democratic result and I was ready to accept the high prospect based on trend and polling that I might let’s not become a government, and that was indeed the result.”
Mahuta describes the way Maipi-Clarke campaigned as “non-threatening” to her, which she believes was “quite intentional”.
“But he campaigned on a message designed to mobilize the youth vote.
“I think there were a few things during the campaign that were absolutely designed to get a youth vote, for example, the ram raid comment and a home invasion.”
Police investigated and concluded the incident was not a home invasion, and Maipi-Clarke clarified her own observations of a ram raid, telling TVNZ’s Marae she felt she had ram raided her privacy.
Mahuta said these allegations by Maipi-Clarke were “like wildfire on social media platforms and just grew legs”.
“Once she clarified that she felt it was a ram raid and she felt she had been invaded it was too late, the social media plane had flown and had the intended effect among the young voting members.”
“These are not stings when you enter Parliament. You have to have strong will and character and know yourself very well to withstand the pressure of this place.”
Mahuta does not want age to be a barrier for young people entering politics and believes it is “aspirational” to have them there.
“But it’s whether or not they can cope with the kind of place they are in, because under the scrutiny of, say, journalistic criticism, that in itself can be a real testing time.
“I worry about all the women who have the skill and ability to serve in a New Zealand parliament, but look at the place and think, why put myself through this?
“Probably because I’ve experienced it, it seems like it was easier to criticize a Maori woman in Parliament than anything else.”
Mahuta has young children and is worried about what they hear at school and in their circles about their mother.
“It’s really just the children who carry the attitudes of the parents for the most part – especially if you’re a minister and you have children, that might be something you really have to think about.”
You don’t need to dress it up to make it sound worse than it is, Mahuta tells Newsroom.
“These are not stings when you enter Parliament. You have to have strong will and character and know yourself very well to withstand the pressure of this place.”
Looking back on her career, Mahuta is adamant that she has no regrets and is proud of her achievements in many roles.
She rates the flagship water reform under Jacinda Ardern’s government as one of her proudest.
“It was absolutely necessary and people hung up on the wrong things. You need a financially viable way to invest in water infrastructure, and that’s only part of the story. Clean water relies on good land use, so there’s a bigger chunk sitting there.”
He had the chance as Minister for Local Government to do something and refused to kick the can down the road “because when I was a backbench MP these issues were raised and nobody bothered to do anything about it”.
Being the first wahine Māori to hold the role of Minister for Māori Development and the work she did around Māori areas and history in schools stands out during her time in Parliament.
When she became the first woman, and indeed Māori, to hold the Foreign Affairs ministerial portfolio, she said she immediately learned to understand and value the job.
Asked if it was more of a challenge than she expected, Mahuta described foreign policy as “a microcosm of domestic policy”.
“I think the two portfolios that prepared me well for foreign affairs were actually local government and Maori development, funnily enough.”
In both 2011 and 2014, Mahuta contested the leadership of the Labor Party (2011 as an MP on a ticket with David Cunliffe) and on both occasions she says her reasoning was to test whether Labor was ready to be led by Māori.
“We’re a Labor Party that values the Treaty of Waitangi and Māori representation and seats, and you’ll see both times I challenged that, I put the party on notice to say, is it time?
“Because I think it’s time and I think the time is coming very soon where we can have Maori leadership in a Labor government, but in a way that we lead to say we’re here for everyone.”
Mahuta says she is taking time after the election to regain perspective after being the subject of extreme criticism in recent years.
“Some of the supporters of this third-party message are now sitting in Parliament, so it’s an interesting time.”
He hopes the Labor Party will never forget that it is a party that is “essentially for working people”.
As for what’s next for her, that’s still a work in progress, but she doesn’t rule out a multi-tribe role, or even the Kiingitanga.
“Whether it’s Tainui or Maniapoto or Ngāpuhi wants me to do something, then I’m open to doing something that will be useful and I don’t want to do anything.
“I want to do something that I can add value to and be part of a change and a shift towards improving outcomes for iwi and tribal members, but also contributing to that wider financial inclusion.”