Photos of New Zealand MPs smiling and giving thumbs up beside patched Mongrel Mob members have ignited one of the fiercest controversies of the country's 2026 election campaign. What Te Pāti Māori and the Greens describe as a routine health and wellbeing hui, their critics describe as the political endorsement of a criminal gang — and Labour leader Chris Hipkins has responded by barring both parties from the police and corrections portfolios.
What happened: the gang pad photos
Earlier this week, Te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara posted photos from what she described as a "health and wellbeing election hui" at the Mongrel Mob gang pad in South Auckland, featuring Kaipara alongside fellow Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, Green MP Hūhana Lyndon and Greens candidate Michel Mulipola. Mongrel Mob life member Harry Tam posted similar photos showing the politicians smiling and giving thumbs up in front of Mob posters and flags.
"The kaupapa [theme] wasn't about us but about the health and wellbeing of the Mob community," Kaipara wrote, adding that critics would "raise eyebrows, throw stones and cast judgment" but that "every member of a gang is a member of a whānau, a whakapapa [lineage] and a part of New Zealand society."
The backlash: Hipkins' captain's call and the right's attack
Act co-leader Nicole McKee wrote: "Look who's courting votes at a Mongrel Mob pad." National MP Katie Nimon said: "For families across Hawke's Bay, gang violence and intimidation are not political talking points." Act leader David Seymour declared that "Labour/Green/Te Pati Māori let gangs and violent crime out of control," while Health Minister Simeon Brown claimed a left coalition would let the Mongrel Mob dictate law-and-order policy.
During Wednesday night's leaders' debate, Labour leader Chris Hipkins made a captain's call: the Greens and Te Pāti Māori would be barred from the police and corrections portfolios in any Labour-led government. He said political parties should not be campaigning alongside gangs or seeking their support, and pointed to gang violence against women. Labour's Māori electorate campaign chair Willie Jackson conceded the meeting was "not a good strategic move", though he reminded critics that National governments — from Robert Muldoon to John Key's eight-year Hauora Project with the Mongrel Mob — had also engaged gangs.
The defence: "manufactured outrage"
Te Pāti Māori's general manager Kiri Tamihere-Waititi — wife of co-leader Rawiri Waititi — hit back on Instagram, calling the backlash "manufactured outrage" and "an absolute stitch-up" by the right bloc. "This is normal for us, eh? It's normal for Māori to go and sit with our gang whānau. Why? Because they're our whānau ... We don't discriminate in that way," she said. She accused opponents of deliberate fearmongering designed to paint Labour as soft on crime, saying the pressure had forced Hipkins' hand: "It puts old Chippy under pressure and he's fallen for it."
Green co-leader Marama Davidson doubled down, telling RNZ: "We don't change who we are as a political party just for the campaign, you know." She insisted engaging with all communities was standard Green practice, said she had met gangs before and would do so again, and would not rule out funding for Mongrel Mob-run rehabilitation services.
Why it matters for Election 2026
The row has exposed a fault line at the worst possible moment for the left. The Greens have climbed to record support by campaigning on economic issues such as supermarket prices and power bills, keeping their more contentious social positions in the background. This week, one of those positions moved to the front of the campaign — and gang policy is a much harder sell than cheaper groceries. With the left bloc's unity visibly strained by Hipkins' portfolio ban, the controversy has handed the government a potent law-and-order weapon in the final stretch of the campaign.
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Volatile Reaction (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
Whatever voters think of the photos themselves, the episode has laid bare the tension between two claims: that gangs are part of the community and must be engaged, and that smiling for the camera beside them is an endorsement no MP should make. With Election 2026 approaching, that argument is now being fought in the open — and its outcome could shape who governs New Zealand.
Sources: Newstalk ZB · NZ Herald · Democracy Project · Stuff