'A mistake': Hipkins on Ardern's sign-off of $2.75m for Mongrel Mob-run programme

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says his party was wrong to provide funding to a Mongrel Mob-run addiction programme when it was in power. 

In 2020, when Dame Jacinda Ardern was Prime Minister and Hipkins was a senior minister, Labour approved $2.75 million in Proceeds of Crime funding to go to Hard 2 Reach, a consultancy run by Mongrel Mob honorary life member Harry Tam, so it could deliver the marae-based rehabilitation programme Kahukura. 

Hard 2 Reach worked with a collective of Mongrel Mob chapters, alcohol and other drug (AOD) clinicians, fitness instructors and suicide prevention educators to deliver the programme. 

The funding was revealed a year later and Ardern defended the decision, which was signed off by her and ministers Grant Robertson, Poto Williams and Kris Faafoi. 

But following a recent political uproar where Green and Te Pāti Māori MPs and candidates were photographed posing with Mongrel Mob members at one of the gang’s Auckland pads, Hipkins told RNZ’s Morning Report “that was a mistake”. 

“Supporting meth addiction is absolutely something governments should do, but giving the money to the gangs is wrong.” 

Te Pāti Māori MP Oriini Kaipara meeting with members of the Mongrel Mob during the 2026 election campaign. 

The funding was pulled in 2024, with Police Minister Mark Mitchell describing initial decisions by Labour to support the programme as “perverse”. 

A report into the programme’s final intake said a “significant” number appeared to stay clean in follow-up testing three months after it finished. 

Hipkins has repeatedly criticised the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori since photos were published on social media last week showing Mongrel Mob members meeting with Green MP Hūhana Lyndon and candidate Michel Mulipola, as well as Te Pāti Māori MPs Oriini Kaipara and Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke. 

This morning, Hipkins told Ryan Bridge TODAY with Nadine Higgins that he had “no time for gangs”. 

“Through my electorate office, I have supported victims of gang violence, including women who have fled from gangs because of the violence in them. 

“I have seen that in my own electorate, the damage that gang drug dealing is doing. Methamphetamine use has tripled in the last three years and the gangs are the ones peddling that.” 

He said no MPs should be visiting a gang pad or campaigning there. 

Hipkins earlier labelled the move as a “huge error of judgment” and later ruled out both Te Pāti Māori and the Green Party from holding several major ministerial roles if they came to form the next Government. 

He is also committed to no funding being given to gang-led programmes after Green co-leader Marama Davidson said she was open to supporting services like the Mongrel Mob-led meth rehabilitation programme that was funded in 2021. Hipkins said such a move would be “like asking the arsonists to put out the fire”. 

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says his party was wrong to provide funding to a Mongrel Mob-run addiction programme when it was in power. Photo / Stephen Barker 

But National’s justice spokesman Paul Goldsmith said last week that Labour “cannot be trusted on gangs”. 

“If the Greens and Te Pati Māori’s meetings with gangs were an error, what was Labour’s $2.75 million gift to the Mongrel Mob in 2021?” Goldsmith said in a statement. 

“Ruling out their coalition partners from holding law and order portfolios makes no difference. In a single-party majority Government with all law and order portfolios held by Labour MPs, crime skyrocketed and the Mongrel Mob was given almost $3 million.” 

Yesterday, footage circulated of Kaipara vowing to restore “mana” to gang members during the visit. 

“You are tangata whenua. You are of this land. You are Māui’s descendant. You are the descendants of Toi, of Kupe, of Tupaia,” Kaipara told the Mongrel Mob members. 

“How come you have to beg for, not a handout, for more than support acknowledging your mana? 

“Our policies reinstate what should have always been.” 

Kaipara later doubled down, telling RNZ’s Midday Report she saw whānau who had been trapped by intergenerational trauma. 

She said community engagement was more important than perceptions people might have.