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Billy Te Kahika resigned as co-chair of Advance NZ after his party won just 0.9 percent of the vote in last weekend’s election.
Advance NZ co-director and former national MP Jami-Lee Ross said he understood that Te Kahika wanted to re-run the New Zealand Public Party alone.
“Billy decided he wanted to go and do his thing and it’s his right,” Ross said Monday.
Ross said Advance NZ “was never about a person, nor was it about a choice.”
READ MORE:
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He said he respected Te Kahika’s decision to leave the party: “I have nothing bad to say about Billy.”
PHIL JOHNSON / Things
Billy Te Kahika at a protest in Auckland’s Aotea Square in September.
He said the board would review the election campaign in order to prepare for the 2023 elections.
The review would be “about asking tough questions about what went wrong,” he said.
Party supporters received the news in an email from Ross on Sunday night.
He promised that the party would restructure, saying that Te Kahika’s departure “is not the end of our party.”
“The rush of the election campaign made everything run hastily,” he wrote.
“The plan for the future will see a special general meeting held early next year, and a reconstituted party, with a new structure at the national level, will continue in preparation for 2023.”
Te Kahika took a radical line in the campaign and spoke about various conspiracy theories, including questioning the reality of Covid-19, the health effects of 5G, a supposed secret United Nations agenda, as well as the publication of videos with anti-Semitic overtones.
He obtained 976 votes in the Te Tai Tokerau electorate.
