Tania Waikato tells Q+A she doesn’t want to be in Parliament, but has chosen to run after whānau and supporters encouraged her.
The lawyer and social media advocate was announced as a new candidate for the Green Party late last year. Waikato gained a high profile in 2025 while leading social media campaigns to lobby submissions against the Treaty Principles Bill and Regulatory Standards Bill.
She says she had put off seeking candidacy for some time due to the “political climate”, but seeing Māori and those on low wages struggle had changed her mind.
“For me to sit by and watch what has been happening under this coalition, it’s just become something that I can’t accept anymore,” she says.
Her candidate bio says she re-joined the Greens in 2025 after first joining in 2012. In early 2025, Waikato represented Te Pāti Māori at Parliament’s privileges committee over the performance of haka in the debating chamber. She has also acted for activist group Toitū te Tiriti at the Waitangi Tribunal.
At number 13, Waikato is the highest-ranking Greens candidate from outside Parliament.
The order of the Greens’ candidate list is voted on by the party membership.
“I actually asked if I could sit below all of the sitting MPs when the list came out. And that was out of respect.”
She rates higher than two sitting Green MPs: Scott Willis, who lands at 14; and Mike Davidson, who fell back to 20.
Waikato is campaigning on Green Party policy, but emphasised a personal goal of constitutional reform for New Zealand.
She reveals that prior to her interview on Q+A, she had received tattoos along her hands reading “He Whakaputanga 1835” and “Te Tiriti o Waitangi 1840”, referencing two of the New Zealand’s founding documents, along with the text “Never ceded”.
She says more and more New Zealanders are showing interest in learning about Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
“We are in the process of what I would call realising where we come from as a country.
“What it looks like to transform our constitutional framework is to essentially say: Te Tiriti is the supreme constitutional law in Aotearoa.”
Based in Tauranga, she will contest the Māori electorate of Waiariki, currently held by Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi. In 2023, Waititi was returned to the seat by an emphatic margin of nearly 16,000 votes over Labour candidate Toni Boynton.
Asked if Te Pāti Māori’s recent internal ructions give her an edge over Waititi when appealing to voters, she stated that her campaign would be focused on what she can bring to the electorate as a leader, and that Te Pāti’s issues were their own to deal with.
“Te ao Māori works in a very unique way in terms of our leadership. I don’t have to go out and campaign and say ‘vote for me’. People already know if they’re going to vote for me or not, and that is because of the mahi I have done.
“Our people will follow you if you hold your mana in a way that aligns with them.”
Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of NZ on Air
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