Nanaia Mahuta speaks at the annual Labour Party conference. Photo: RNZ / Lillian Hanly
Former Labour minister and Hauraki-Waikato MP Nanaia Mahuta says it is an "important" and "exciting" time to be "re-entering" politics.
She made the comments during her first public appearance with the party since its election defeat.
During the party conference in Christchurch, Mahuta's 27 years of service were honoured and she was presented with a life membership.
Party leader Chris Hipkins handed over the award to acknowledge, thank and celebrate an "outstanding member of the Labour whānau and an extraordinary New Zealander".
He said she had dedicated her life to being a "servant of the people" and was a "true source of hope, vision and aspiration".
Hipkins spoke of Mahuta's work establishing Māori wards and working to implement the Three Waters policy, which saw her face "outright racism" as a result.
In accepting the award, Mahuta spoke to the members who she said gave her the "great honour of serving a party I believe in".
"I am here because of you, the faithful members of the Labour Party who continue to fight the fight day in, day out, for the values that we all believe in."
Those were social justice, workable solutions to address inequity and poverty, and building a shared vision for the country, she said.
She told the audience to look around the room, "look at the person next to you".
"This is New Zealand. This is the New Zealand we want, for our tamariki, for our mokopuna, and it embraces everybody."
She encouraged the audience to support the current Labour caucus, "charged with the responsibility of navigating a political system that has to bring everybody with us, whether they voted for us or not".
One year on
It was the first party-related event Mahuta had attended since taking a year off after losing her seat at the last election.
Mahuta told RNZ it was great to "re-enter" the political perspective of the Labour Party one year on.
"I gave myself one year post the election to be able to reflect on the 27 years that I've spent serving, and I needed that time for me."
Some of the audience at the Labour conference. Photo: RNZ / Lillian Hanly
But she said she had come back specifically to ensure the party delivered a Labour government that could support the types of issues she believed were core to New Zealand.
"For example, Te Tiriti in its place within the constitutional foundation of this country is not negotiable, and it's important to me that Labour continues to ensure that that is the case, and they're doing that."
She said it was an "exciting time" to be re-entering politics, but that it was important as well.
When asked if she would be running in the election, she said that was not her "intention".
"My intention is to be able to support a strong Labour bid to earn the trust of voters to say, 'this is what we stand for'."
She said it was going to be a "battle" to pitch in 2026 in a way that would convince a broad range of people that "there's nothing to fear from having a strong foundation and vision for our future".
Over the past year, she felt the Labour Party had been more emboldened to say it did stand for "Treaty-based decision making", which would lead to a path of building "our sense of national identity and who we are as a country", she said.
That was "unlike the others who want to turn the clock back and want to put all of this in question".
Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke from Te Pāti Māori won the Hauraki-Waikato seat at the 2023 election. Photo: RNZ/ Samuel Rillstone
Reflecting on the previous term, she said while she was proud of Labour's achievements, it might have "tried to do too much in the period of time that we had the opportunity to govern".
"We have to reflect on that. We have to show the constituents and the voters of New Zealand that, on questions like CGT, we've got to take people with us. So that's our aim now, is to build the constituency of support to go forward."
Mahuta was unseated in Hauraki-Waikato by Te Pāti Māori's Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who recently started a haka in the debating chamber during the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill.
Maipi-Clarke was young, and "her passion should be applauded to the extent that she is not defined by an opinion of what's not right", Mahuta said.
"She has been growing in a community of being positively and confidently, Māori, Waikato, Ngāpuhi and everything that she can whakapapa too. That's important, and that's the generation that my kids are growing up in."
The important task ahead for Maipi-Clarke was to develop her skill set to "translate that into political capital that delivers to her people", and she should be given "time to grow that talent", Mahuta said.
"There's one thing doing the haka, there's another thing delivering to her electorate," she said.
"The threshold of expectation is to deliver. It's not what you say, it's what you do."
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
