The resistance she faced was real and came from within her own world. Tainui leader Te Puea Hērangi had earlier declined to stand for Parliament herself on the grounds that no woman should captain the Tainui waka. Iriaka's National opponent argued that placing a woman in what he called a man's seat would break with Tainui protocol. She won anyway. And she held that seat for twenty years.

In Parliament she was an unusual presence — described as unsophisticated yet eloquent, gentle and invariably polite. She listened carefully and spoke with care. The result was that both sides of the House listened to her with genuine respect, something few MPs across any era can claim. She never performed outrage. She painted pictures instead — of elderly Māori without housing, of rangatahi without training, of rural communities arriving in cities with nothing to hold onto. Her focus was relentlessly practical and relentlessly human. She wanted things to actually change for people.

She retired in 1969 and died in 1981, survived by nine children and many grandchildren.

She entered Parliament through grief and succession — as did the woman who followed her. But both women outgrew that origin entirely. Iriaka's threat to run independently against Labour's preferred candidate in 1949 is not the act of a widow being ushered into a seat. It is the act of someone who knew exactly what she carried and was not prepared to be told otherwise.