Roger Childs: Tariana Turia – Tribes First, Country Second

Her … backward-looking negativism is driving a wedge between New Zealanders, regardless of their ethnic origin, and it’s time it ceased. –United Party leader, Peter Dunne in 1997

A controversial figure

John McLean: Root & Branch abandonment of.......roots

Dame Tariana Turia died on 3 January 2024, at 80 years of age after suffering a stroke. Her father was American (with, apparently, some Native American ancestry) and her mother had Māori ancestry. Turia chose to strongly identify with her Māori ancestry. Fair enough.

Turia entered New Zealand’s Parliament in 1996 as a Labour Party representative. She won the Te Tai Hauāuru (West Coast North Island) Māori electorate seat at the 2002 election, a Parliamentary seat she held until 2014, at first for the Labour Party and then for the Māori Party which she formed in 2004 in protest over then Prime Minister Helen Clark’s foreshore and seabed legislation. That controversial legislation extinguished the prospect of New Zealand’s activist Courts awarding people with Māori ancestors dominion over New Zealand’s foreshore and seabed.

Lindsay Mitchell: Remembering Tariana Turia

Dame Tariana Turia has been well-remembered by many over the past few days. She was warm, had a great sense of humour, and was, above all, highly principled. People I trust have said so and I believe them. Having never met her, however, I knew her only by the thoughts she publicly expressed.

On not infrequent occasions Tariana outraged the public. The word 'holocaust', in relation to the Maori experience of colonisation, was first used by Turia in 2000 as a Labour MP. Later, in 2008, as Maori Party co-leader, she likened the banning of gang patches in Wanganui to the treatment of Jews during the second world war. Both comparisons provoked an outcry.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 27/10/23

Oh, look- the founder of the Maori Party has expressed support for the Nats on the health issue

It’s all quiet – yet again – on the Beehive front.

Nothing has been posted on the government’s official website since Grant Robertson (performing his duties as Minister of Sport and Recreation rather than Minister of Finance) announced his travel plans under the heading Sport Minister to represent Govt at RWC final.

Mike Butler: Harawira’s murky past

An alleged offender in Northland’s latest high-profile sex case had been working for former Te Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira and paid by the taxpayer, according to news reports last week. (1) Harawira and his family seized a leadership position in New Zealand’s treaty grievance industry. The eratic positions of Hone and the Harawiras over the years show lack of moral compass and unfitness for leadership.

The link between Harawira and Patrick Rivers, who goes by the name Mangu Awarau, one of Mr Harawira's closest friends, is the latest in a line of murky links with the former politician ousted in the September 20 general election.

Awarau spoke at Mr Harawira's election night function, just days after being charged with raping a girl younger than 12. Awarau has pleaded not guilty to three sex offences.

Mike Butler: Cannons Creek guide to social reform

Andy Oakley grew up in a troubled family in a state house on the mean streets of Cannons Creek, a suburb of Porirua City approximately 22km north of Wellington. The cultural mix at his school was half European New Zealander and half Maori/Polynesian. There, everyone had an equal opportunity either to end up in prison or become the mayor.

Oakley, who dropped out of Porirua College without a qualification and became a father at age 16, became an engineer, a racing driver, and a businessman, achievements that could be the subject of a riveting biography. Instead he wrote Cannons Creek to Waitangi – Te Pakeha's treaty claim for equality.

Mike Butler: No retreat on race-based funding

Just eight years ago, the headline announced “Government in retreat over race-based funding”(1). The nation was heading for a general election. National Party leader Don Brash had delivered his nationhood speech on the drift towards racial separatism the preceding year that had sparked a surge in his party’s support -- the biggest gain by a political party in a single poll in Colmar Brunton's polling history.

The “retreat over race-based funding” was part of the Labour government’s strategy to recoup the ground lost to National in the February poll. The interesting aspect of the Herald report was that no one seemed to know a total cost of race-based funding.

Mike Butler: Settlements class action planned

It was only a matter of time before claimants would try to take action against the government alleging the treaty settlement process is flawed, divides tribes, and causes fighting within tribes.

Wellington-based lawyer Moana Sinclair visited Taranaki this week to offer claimants the opportunity to support a class action lawsuit against the Crown that includes claims from Rangitane o Manawatu and Deirdre Nehua, the widow of far-left activist Syd Jackson. Sinclair said five Taranaki sub-tribes had expressed interest in supporting the lawsuit.

Mike Butler: Whanau Ora money trail elusive

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters this week tried to find out from Whanau Ora Minister Tariana Turia whether she handed out cash to Maori social service providers to help them prepare bids to become commissioning agents for the Whanau Ora scheme.

The government’s Maori department, Te Puni Kokiri, is running a process to appoint non-government organisations as commissioning agents who will allocate Whanau Ora funding to providers of health and social service providers.

Mike Butler: Early Maori pillaged nature

The guardianship argument is still being used by the Maori Party despite overwhelming evidence that early Maori burned about half of the forest that covered the South Island in a reckless quest for food. An article in the Wanganui Chronicle on Thursday with Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia’s byline on it voiced opposition to proposed changes to the Resource Management Act partly because they “undermine the role of Maori as tangata tiaki of their traditional rohe”.

Mike Butler: Buying votes at Ratana

In late January every year, political party leaders join the pilgrimage to festivities at Ratana Pa at Turakina to try to buy votes, and this year was distinctive in that the pitches were blatant and unashamed. Prime Minister John Key told the faithful that National reached significantly more treaty settlements in the past four years than the last Labour government did in nine.

Mike Butler: Try discussing Maori privilege

Try talking about Maori privilege in polite society. You will be called a racist and reminded of all the poverty, bad housing, educational disadvantage, and general under-performance that Maori have been made famous for. This is a story of separation and privilege that we all must face some day.

In 2003, in a report commissioned by Te Puni Kokiri (the Government’s Maori affairs department), the Institute of Economic Research said that Maori were paying slightly more in tax than they received in transfers --if they paid $2.404 in tax they received $2.312 in social benefits.

Mike Butler: Compo for treaty breaches by Maori

All is not as it seems in the grievance-redress world, because while Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia blubbered her way through her speech to Parliament during the past week, three of the four bills being rushed through were awarding compensation to tribes who had breached the Treaty of Waitangi.

Breached the treaty, you may ask, we have never heard of Maori breaching the treaty? If the treaty is a solemn agreement between several signatories, if some parties to the agreement take up arms against the others, surely that would constitute a breach of the treaty? That is exactly what some members of Gisborne tribes Ngai Tamanuhiri and Rongowhakaata, and Bay of Plenty tribe Ngati Makino did about 150 years ago.

Mike Butler: Whanau Ora how bizarre

Whanu Ora, promoted as a one-stop welfare shop for part-Maori families, has never been far from news headlines, mainly courtesy of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters. This week’s latest unwelcome publicity concerned a $60,000 grant to a rugby club that Peters called just another example of “bro-ocracy”.

Peters said the $60,000 grant was to the Rahui Rugby and Sports Club, based in Otaki "to research the vaguely-termed 'whanau connectedness' and 'resilience' in the community." He said that “in reality this is just another example of 'bro-ocracy' where taxpayers' cash is divided up amongst the bros for nonsensical purposes."