GORDON LIGHTFOOT | Politics
NOT FAIR!
Prime Minister Chris “Chippy” Hipkins was annoyed today when he found out that another one of his MPs, Meka Whaitiri, had decided to ditch Labour and join Te Pati Maori.
However it wasn’t the fact that the party had lost yet another member that annoyed him. He was more annoyed that he didn’t have the same freedom to simply exit Labour and join the Maori Party.
“Another one’s gone?? Gah!! I wish I could just decide to escape like that!” said Hipkins in a statement from London, where he is attending the King’s coronation.
“Why can’t I just quit and join the Maori Party? I mean, I know why, but still, it’s not fair!”
Whaitiri is about the fourth to leave in the last year, but it’s hard to keep up and know that for sure. There was Gaurav, Jacinda, Stuart, and now Meka [was that all of them?].
Hipkins revealed that this incident was not the first time he had thought about what it might be like to join Te Pati Maori. “I even got a DNA ancestry test just to check if maybe I did have any Maori whakapapa. It was a long shot, but I thought I could potentially be another Paul Tito!” he laughed sheepishly.
“But no, it basically came back all Scottish and Irish. Shocking, I know…”
Hipkins would not say whether any other parties had caught his interest, and said he was just trying to focus on the coronation for now. “Nah, don’t think so, not at this stage. The timing isn’t right.
“For now I think I’m just gonna be stuck with my lot,” he sighed.
More to come.
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