Oriini Kaipara’s Tongariro claim is out the gate

When flames tore through Tongariro National Park, most people saw an ecological tragedy. Te Pāti Māori MP and Māori supremacist Oriini Kaipara saw a supernatural sign. She claimed the blaze was a “message” from the late paramount chief Sir Tumu Te Heuheu Tūkino VIII, urging that the land be returned to iwi. “It was gifted in good faith. It’s time to give it back,” she said.

Is she on drugs? Turning a destructive fire into a spiritual endorsement for land transfer is the kind of magical thinking that belongs on the fringes, not in Parliament. It reflects how deeply Te Pāti Māori has drifted from everyday New Zealanders and the realities of governing a modern country. At this stage they should just join up with the Greens, they’re just as delusional.

Suggesting that natural disasters carry political messages invites chaos, not leadership. It treats mythology as a substitute for science and ideology as a replacement for law. If every storm, quake or eruption is reimagined as ancestral commentary, then facts no longer matter, only mumbo jumbo faith does.

A Member of Parliament should be grounded in reason, not ritual. This sort of rhetoric shows Te Pāti Māori doubling down on grievance politics, turning heritage into a weapon rather than a bridge.

Tongariro National Park was gifted to the nation - all of it. It stands as one of New Zealand’s few truly shared treasures. To now demand it back for a select few is not justice, it’s revisionism. The generosity of that original gift is being rewritten as a mistake, its symbolism twisted into a call for exclusion.

And for what? There’s no plan, no policy, no explanation of how a “return” would work. Who governs it? Who funds it? Do ordinary New Zealanders lose access? The silence is deafening.

Kaipara’s appeal to tikanga and whakapapa might impress other racist Māori, but to the wider public it looks like mysticism dressed up as moral authority. Tikanga is supposed to be about balance and respect. Instead, it’s being used as cover for divisive politics that pit Māori against everyone else - it’s mumbo jumbo.

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Te Pāti Māori likes to talk about mana and mauri, but not much about mortgages or medical waiting lists. Ordinary people are struggling with costs, housing and education. Meanwhile, its MPs are busy interpreting wildfires as spiritual telegrams - what a whākn’ joke.

New Zealanders want fairness, not fables. They want competence, not cosmic messaging. They want a government that looks forward, not one forever chasing symbolic battles over land already held in trust for everyone.

The fire on Tongariro was not a message from the ancestors. It was a warning from reality. When politicians abandon reason for ideology, and turn faith into policy, the country burns in more ways than one.