Ross Meurant: ‘History can be a Bitch’ – once said Titewhai Harawira

February 28, 2021, I penned my first blog for Dr Muriel Newman’s platform: A Step Too Far (1)    T’was but only last week, 3 years plus, that I vowed, not to blog again. I felt I was saying versions of the same thing.

November 14, 2024, and atrocity in the Hallowed Halls of New Zealand’s Parliament, however, was another, Step Too Far.

As Titewhai Harawira once said, ‘History can be a Bitch’, I say, “It sure can.”

October 6, 1987, I delivered my Maiden Speech to Parliament. 

I proud moment for a boy from the rural rump of Northland, who having failed School Cert and worked as a concrete worker until at 19 years of age, by 1966 I somehow ended up in the NZ Police Training School, Trentham.  Perhaps even more surprising was my rapid rise through the ranks – from detective on elite squads under John Hughes (the most outstanding leader I endured as a cop) and Bruce Hutton (the most notorious), via being 2^nd O/C Red Squad to commissioned rank with a BA and part of a Law degree when I took up the role of O/C Criminal Intelligence Section & V.I.P. Security planning.

The take-over of Parliament by war dancing denizens of our Sovereign Parliament was like a clarion, calling the majority of Kiwis to stand with Hon David Seymour, as he valiantly stood defiant against a radical Māori menace.

I too, once stood defiant – and as a result my new Holden car was torched outside the bedroom window of my 7-year-old daughter at our family residence on Northcote Point.

Why?   Because in the same debating chamber debouched yesterday, I said the following;

“We must also maintain our vigilance against extremist elements in our society that would exploit our racial difficulties and that advocate the overthrow of the New Zealand Government by armed force and the removal of white New Zealanders.

“Who are the people who want total Maori control of New Zealand? They are Maori radicals who espouse a philosophy of nationalism, yet accept assistance from communist States and training in Third World countries. Those people include Atareta Poananga, Titewhai Harawira, Hinewhare Harawira, Rebecca Evans, Donna Awatere, Hilda Halkyard Harawira, and Emily Karaka, who are the principal cell of the Maori nationalist movement in New Zealand. They call the shots. Males are regarded as inferior, and sit in the second row. They include Arthur Harawira, Hone Harawira, Mangu Awarau, Benny Dalton, Dr Pat Hohepa, Eru Potaka-Dewes, Norman Te Whata, Syd Jackson, and Haami Piripi. Those people operate under several organisational labels---the Waitangi Action Committee appears to be the umbrella group, with PENAK, NFIP, MLPA, Rangitahi Action Group, and Te Ahi Kaa some of the subsidiary groups.

“As an inspector of the New Zealand Police, I---along with others---watched the movement grow. Those people were first seen at Bastion Point in 1978; they then moved to Waitangi, and turned our national day into an annual battle between police and protestors. In 1981 New Zealanders experienced unprecedented violence in the streets as members of the group recruited, organised, mobilised, and motivated gang members across the nation, from the Mongrel Mob to the Headhunters, to clash with the police. They have moved underground, and they are now a greater danger; they now plan to overthrow the New Zealand Government.

“Poananga stated: ``We want all the land back, every inch of it.’’ She also said that they will resort to the barrel of a gun to achieve their goal. That group will never succeed with its objective, but---as with the Black September movement in the United States---it will cause a lot of misery and turmoil, and the danger it presents to the nation must not be underestimated.

“What are those people doing now? They have even moved inside the system. Rebecca Evans, for example, has taken a job in broadcasting. Goebbels understood the importance of the news media. Others have taken up a variety of welfare positions, particularly within the mental health field. The group is now ensconced at Carrington Hospital in Auckland, and uses that hospital’s telephone, stationery, and office space. At one secret meeting they had with Abu Laghood, a Palestine Liberation Organisation representative, the principal question asked of Laghood was: ``How do we get firearms and explosives from the PLO?’’

“The group has become so powerful at Carrington Hospital that it is able to affect the channelling of hospital funds away from projects given priority by hospital management into the dubious area of Maori mental health. Maori mental health includes the indoctrination of young Maori gang members with the concept that they are in prison or discriminated against because of the white man, and that their salvation lies in revolution.

“The group at Carrington Hospital now controls a Maori ward. Access to that ward is only on the authority of Titewhai Harawira---even the doctors must get Harawira’s permission before they enter the ward. I say that that is an outrage---an outrage that has happened only under the Labour Government, and that is happening at this moment. The group has become so powerful that a hospital superintendent spoke out publicly about their actions earlier this year. He was not exaggerating about the group’s influence, because, unfortunately, when the issue was forced again last month it was Dr Radcliffe, the hospital superintendent---not the radical social workers---who was put off the hospital staff. I put this outrage before the nation as an issue that demands an immediate and independent inquiry now.

“Those Maori nationalists form a network throughout the country. Hone Harawira is the principal trustee for the Aupouri Ngati Kahu Te Rarawa Trust in Northland, which has received $1.5 million from the training assistance programme, the Access programme, and the Department of Maori Affairs in the past 3 years. Haami Piripi, who is chairman of the Aupouri trust, is also head of the Rangitahi Action Group, which is subservient to the Waitangi Action Group.

“The Aupouri trust administers some 14 training groups, one of those being Whakakoro Kohanga Reo---language nest---which is administered by Hilda Halkyard Harawira. Another of those groups is the Ani Wha Niwa in Kaitaia, which is administered by Hone Harawira. The Taumata Kohanga Reo spent its initial setting-up grant of $5,000 on the purchase of a vehicle. The accountability of the Aupouri trust for the moneys it receives is questionable, at best, with the opportunity for misappropriation being considerable. I share the concerns of intelligence-gathering agencies that the political activities of the Waitangi Action Committee are funded by moneys stolen from grants made to the trust or other welfare sources.

“Group members have extensive contacts abroad. In 1978 Awatere, Evans, and seven Socialist Unity Party members went to Cuba, where Awatere and Evans met with the Palestine Liberation Organisation leadership for the first time. Evans says that she learnt there that 400 000 Maori people could take on 3 000 000 whites. Awatere and Hilda Halkyard Harawira went to the Vanuatu celebrations, and in 1980, together with Hone Harawira, they participated in the boycott of the Brisbane Commonwealth Games. On 4 April 1987, Awarau and Dalton and two others booked to fly to Libya, and recently Hilda Halkyard Harawira went to Denmark to receive a communist-supported peace prize. As recently as last month, Poananga, Harawira, and Hohepa went to Fiji to seek Colonel Rabuka’s help to overthrow the New Zealand Government by armed force.

“I place this information before the nation, which also demands an inquiry into the distribution of $1.5 million through the hands of those terrorists. Those people are dangerous; they are growing in strength, and in confidence, and we must move to put into place the State machinery to deal with them. The police are neither equipped nor trained to deal with terrorists. A terrorist has a totally different psyche from the everyday criminal. As a nation, we must look at setting up a government unit to maintain surveillance of and to infiltrate that kind of terrorist group.

Irony can also be a bitch.

As I was delivering this speech, Labour MP Hon Geoffery Palmer seated opposite me, was onto his desk phone and heard to say “You should listen to this”.

As I stepped down from delivering my Maiden Speech, Hon Whetū Tirikātene-Sullivan and Rt Hon Dr Sir Peter Tapsell crossed the floor from the Labour benches and thanked me for what I had presented.

National Party bosses, Jim Bolger, Don McKinnon and Bil Birch, never said a word

Ross Meurant BA MPP.  Company Director. www.gena.co.nz  Former Police Inspector, Member of Parliament & Honorary Consul.

(1)   https://www.nzcpr.com/a-step-too-far-bi-cultural-partnership/

(2)   https://www.klaut.media/single-post/ross-meurant-maiden-speech

(3)   https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2024/08/ross-meurant-civil-war.html