Te Pāti Māori's co-leader Rāwiri Waititi has said the party wants to defeat the National-led government after one term and has announced a plan to do it by the 2026 election, according to RNZ.

This is not a casual comment. Waititi is describing something the party is actually working toward as an organisation.

Here is how Te Pāti Māori plans to do it. First, it will keep the support it already has in the Māori electorates. The party currently wins all seven of those electorates. Second, it will try to get more votes across the country overall. Third, it will position itself as a party that any centre-left government after the election would need to include. Under New Zealand's voting system (called MMP), a party that reliably wins seats in specific electorates has real power when it comes time to form a government — because larger parties may need to work with smaller parties to have enough seats to govern.

Why announce this now? Parliament has about two and a half years to run before the election. Opposition parties that want to win need to start building their team, raising money, and getting their message out long before campaigning officially begins. Making a public statement about what you want to achieve is part of that — it tells supporters, donors and voters what you stand for, and it tells the government what ground it needs to defend.

For the National-ACT-New Zealand First coalition, this announcement is a clear message that Te Pāti Māori is not just disagreeing about policy in Parliament. It is organising to remove them from power. That is what opposition parties do, but saying it this openly and directly is a deliberate choice.

There is a bigger question here about what happens after the election. Te Pāti Māori, Labour and the Greens would all need to work together to form a centre-left government. Those three parties have sometimes worked well together and sometimes disagreed publicly — especially about how fast and how far to push Treaty-related change. When Te Pāti Māori says it wants to defeat the government, it is also signalling that its interests line up with Labour's for the next election. This will put pressure on Labour to say clearly whether it would actually want to work with Te Pāti Māori and under what conditions.

One thing Te Pāti Māori has not yet explained is how it will actually do this work. Will it run voter registration campaigns in Māori electorates? Will it coordinate with other opposition parties on which issues to focus on first? These details matter. The party has announced where it wants to go, but not yet how it plans to get there.