Listen
As political campaigns go, getting arrested is not top of the TO DO list for most candidates - and being loaded into a paddy wagon certainly wasn't what Donna Pokere-Phillips had planned.
But yesterday the Māori party candidate for Waikato Tainui was removed by police after she lay down in front of machinery while trying to stop surveying work for a new road.
Donna Pokere-Phillips says she felt compelled to take a stand with local Maori.
She told RNZ reporter Meriana Johnsen she was invited to the whenua by kaumātua of the hapū, Ngā Muri Kai taua, to support their cause. And that her actions were driven by her emotions.