Her father, Colonel Arapeta Awatere DSO MC, was a prominent member of the Māori Battalion who was later elected to the Auckland City Council.

In a 2019 interview on Māori Television's current affairs programme Te Ao with Moana, Awatere Huata claimed she joined ACT as she supported its educational policy of the funding following the child, as she believed this would make it easier to establish Kura Kaupapa and Kohanga Reo.

In the 1999 election, she polled fifth in Auckland Central but due to her fourth-place ranking on the party's list consequently remained in Parliament.

[9] Subsequently, there were a series of legal battles around Awatere Huata's right to remain in parliament as an independent list MP.

These culminated in one of the Supreme Court's first major decisions in 2004 and she was removed from Parliament,[10] giving the ACT Party a new MP, Kenneth Wang until the 2005 New Zealand election.

On 16 May 2006, she was released on home detention[11] and after her sentence was completed in February 2009, she was able to set up a correspondence teaching centre "The Learning Post".

[14] In a 2019 interview with Moana Maniapoto Awatere Huata stated "I am proud of the fact that because of the issues that erupted around me that led to me being expelled from parliament, I actually helped bring down ACT.

Justice Christine Grice ruled in favour of the Te Hua Whenua Trust's trustees, who disputed the Huata's lease of the land for the past 35 years.