Summarised by Centrist
Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke is facing another potential misstatement controversy.
In mid-June, Maipi-Clarke posted a photo with Minister for Women Nicola Grigg, saying it related to “an announcement I’ve been working on since last year” and that she had been “supporting the minister for women in extending fully funded breast screening from age 69 to 74.”
According to Grigg, she had never spoken to Maipi-Clarke about the government’s breast screening policy and said she did not know what the photo would be used for.
However, Maipi-Clarke’s office released an email showing the MPs had discussed access to mammograms the day before the post. In that email, Grigg said the government had “made good on an election year commitment to extend the upper age.”
That weakens Grigg’s claim of no contact, but does not appear to support Maipi-Clarke’s broader suggestion that she had been “working on” the policy.
The extension was a National election commitment, funded in Budget 2024 under former health minister Shane Reti, with implementation beginning gradually from October 2025.
According to Hansard, Maipi-Clarke has not discussed breast cancer screening in the House. During the 2024 Budget debate, when the funding was delivered, she said: “I’m not here to talk about the Budget, because ‘What Budget?’ There’s nothing in it for us.”
The dispute follows another deleted post in which Maipi-Clarke claimed to spend “65%” of her time advocating for jailed rangatahi. Ministers Mark Mitchell and Karen Chhour challenged that, saying she had visited one prison and had not visited or requested to visit a youth justice facility.
The claims have also become social media fodder, with critics mocking Maipi-Clarke as taking credit for work she had little or no role in.
Editor’s note: The pattern is becoming the story. For the second time in a week, Maipi-Clarke has been challenged over whether her public claims match the record of what she actually did. During the 2023 election campaign, Maipi-Clarke said during a debate that her house was “ram-raided”, but police later said the incident had been “incorrectly reported as a ram raid” and was “more correctly referred to as a theft”.
