Katene Rahui: Maiden Statements 
Katene Rahui: Maiden Statements 
[Volume:651;Page:366] 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 Kei te Manu Korero the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith tena koe. Tena koutou katoa. E nga mana e nga reo rau rangatira ma tena koutou. E aku matua e aku whaea nga karanga maha me koutou kua tae tawhiti mai i Te Wai Pounamu tena hoki koutou. Huri noa i te Whare nei tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa 
[ 
Greetings to you Mr Speaker the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith greetings. Greetings to you all. To the powers languages and the many leaders greetings to you. Greetings also to my parents aunties and the many callings including those of you who came from afar in the South Island. To you throughout this House greetings to you greetings to you and greetings to you all. 
] 
I am the Maori Party manifestation of a 100-day plan. In true Maori Party style our plan took us only 84 days to complete. With the outstanding 16 days we have made a start on our 1000-day plan. The 84 working days between when I was selected to represent the Maori Party in the Te Tai Tonga electorate on 16 July and election day have been a journey like no other. It has been a journey with one aim in mind: I am here to serve my people and because of the love I have for my family. That life of service to and love of others is a lesson well learnt as a member of my whanau hapu and iwi as well as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I was 12 when I first started to serve by playing the piano and the organ at church. Later I taught and led in various Church auxiliaries. I continue to serve others by being here in this House and representing my people and my loved ones to the best of my ability. 
The calling to serve flows within my blood. As I stand here today I am aware of the legacy I owe my father John Hippolite of Ngati Koata Ngati Kuia and Ngati Toa. His influence on my life was profound. Dad was at the forefront of the Maori renaissance in Nelson and later in Hamilton. He was always a strong union and Labour man. In fact in 1967 after the death of Sir Eruera Tirikatene dad stood for selection for Southern Maori but missed out to Sir Eruera’s daughter Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan. Today 41 years later the daughter of John Hippolite completes the circle. 
In the late 1960s with Dr Oliver Sutherland dad undertook research in the Nelson District Court on unrepresented defendants many of them Maori. His action eventually led to the legal aid scheme being opened to criminal defendants. The pursuit of justice and his determination to fight for the people led dad to Korea where he served alongside some 6000 other New Zealanders who took up the duty on our behalf to serve their country. He was always a proud member of the RSA but he could not support New Zealand’s involvement in the war in Viet Nam. His anger was never about his military colleagues—those who did the hard yards on foreign shores. How could it be? He too had been driven by duty and by honour to serve our country. Dad condemned the fact of Western intervention in Viet Nam and served his time instead as a passionate advocate for peace and justice occupying the protest lines. 
In the 1980s my father joined the protest line again in the largest civil disturbance since the 1951 waterfront strike. This period in which 150000 New Zealanders took action to oppose the racial policies of South Africa has been described as a watershed moment in our history. It was the juxtaposition of two ideals that were firmly established in the identity of the nation. Rugby the national icon crashed head first into the national myth that New Zealand had the finest race relations in the world. While the policy of apartheid was played out on South African shores questions inevitably arose at home about how we could allow Maori to be described as “honorary whites” or label those who protested as stirrers and troublemakers. It was a theme that was repeated just 4 years ago in the reactions to those who marched in the hikoi to oppose the Foreshore and Seabed Act. 
My father hated injustice wherever he saw it. He marched in the 1975 Land March and was one of the original claimants in Wai 262 the flora and fauna claim for which we still await the Waitangi Tribunal report 17 years after it was first lodged. Dad was arrested at Bastion Point and at Raglan. This key I wear is his. It opens the padlock on the chains on the statue erected by Aunty Eva Rickard at Whaingaroa to commemorate their land struggle and those arrested there. He worked with social and Government agencies to encourage them to find better ways to work with Maori. He supported his Uncle Rangi Elkington to establish Whakatu Marae in Nelson. And he always tried to interest his children in his activities. I know that he is watching and smiling proudly today from heaven. 
My mother June Gray of Kai Tahu and Ngati Mamoe was also always very politically active. It was never enough to be enrolled in our family; you voted and you supported your candidate any way you could. I have thought about mum as we reflect on the low turn-out rate by Maori in this year’s general election. I wonder how it is that 80 percent of the general population turned up to vote but only 62 percent of Maori eligible to vote on the Maori roll turned up on the day. Representation in a democracy is not only a basic human right. It is also a sign of faith to move forward together as a nation. 
Mum was a member of the Labour Party right up until Labour took its great leap right in the 1980s when she stayed left with her Jim and thereafter she doorknocked for him took petitions out sat at cake stalls drove her children to distraction with her devotion to him and did everything she could to make sure that he was re-elected election after election until she became too sick to carry on. Mum was also a prolific letter writer—writing letters to the editor on local and national issues. I wish she was well enough to be here today; she would be so proud to know that I am here in the House with her Jim even though we have different politics and philosophies. 
So our family was programmed to be political. One of my brothers previously stood unsuccessfully for election to this House. Another has stood unsuccessfully for election to his local council. I am really proud of them but I am even more pleased that my record is better than theirs. 
At about 14 I joined the Labour Party and when I was old enough to vote I faithfully voted Labour for many years. As a young teen I joined the protests against our involvement in Viet Nam. Later raising a young family scaled back the time I could devote to political activities but as a university student I protested against the Springbok tour in 1985 against the education policies of scaling Maori down and against other discriminatory practices. It was at about this time that I stopped voting and supporting Labour. 
My politics have always been defined by my upbringing and my experiences as a Maori a Maori woman and a mother of Maori children. I have always supported parties that provide the most support and benefit for our whanau hapu and iwi. Career-wise I have made the same choices. Although university had not been part of my life plan when our children were of an age that meant I was ready to return to the workforce I decided that I needed to set the example for my children and further my education. I started a Bachelor of Arts degree at Waikato University but after just 1 year turned my focus to the law. It was a decision motivated by the injustices I had observed through my involvement with a group of women involved in Women’s Refuge. While some in the group decided to help through social agencies I wanted to make the law work for our women. 
It was Martin Luther King who said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” It is a principle I believe in wholeheartedly: the principle of collective responsibility not retribution. I cannot be a bystander to life. I chose to immerse myself in the mechanics of law and now the machinery of Government in order to ensure that the powerful and the powerless are reconciled and peace and justice prevail. 
And so our whanau moved to Wellington and my adventure with the law started. It was only a matter of time before the Treaty became my passion. The light switched on through the legal system course and turned to full beam during the constitutional law course. Helping to turn on that switch was Alex Frame who made the Treaty components of my study so vivid and so compelling. It was all about the timing. While I was learning the theory of constitutional law at university that topic became even more vivid because that was the year that Sir Graham Latimer led the Maori Council on its most controversial case when it took on the Labour Government over the sale of State-owned assets and won. 
I spent many hours in the Court of Appeal being educated in the practice and impact of constitutional law. Twenty-one years later the ruling of the Court of Appeal in  
New Zealand Maori Council v Attorney-General  
is worth repeating for the record. In summing up the president Sir Robin Cooke said: “We have reached two major conclusions. First that the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi override everything else in the State Owned Enterprises Act. Second that those principles require the Pakeha and Maori partners to act towards each other reasonably and with the utmost good faith.” Our nation is better for the vision and courage of Sir Graham Latimer and the New Zealand Maori Council in pursuing that case. 
That was a time also when I first watched David Baragwanath QC; now Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias for whom I was later privileged to act as junior counsel in the High Court and Court of Appeal for the Maori electoral option case; and Martin Dawson who was to become counsel for Ngati Koata’s tribunal claims. I mihi to them and to Martin’s whanau. We still miss him and he was never far from our thoughts when 3 weekends ago the iwi hapu and whanau of Te Tau Ihu received the final report of the Waitangi Tribunal into our claims. In the tribunal’s report it traced back the whakapapa of the claims put forward by people such as Martin—claims dating back to as early as 1860 when the people of Te Tau Ihu had already lost most of our original estate. The report describes the after-effects of the Crown’s failure as being evident in grinding poverty social dislocation and loss of culture. But impacts were also evident in the Crown’s failure to protect or to provide for Maori interests and rights in their customary fisheries and other resources. 
I worked at the Treaty of Waitangi policy unit which is now the Office of Treaty Settlements where I observed firsthand the Crown’s attitude and behaviour towards and policies on the Treaty and Maori. I thought it would be the obvious springboard to make change—change for the betterment of our people. Hope reigns eternal. It was a brutal initiation. It is very easy to become cynical and defeatist in that sort of environment. I still think it is vital that Maori keep working within the system to effect change. But it is equally vital that Maori have strong support systems both inside and outside the system in order to keep focused on who we are and why we are there; otherwise we risk system capture or total meltdown. 
While I was working there my husband and I were privileged to represent Ngati Toa at the Maori Congress—for a while with my father who represented Te Runanganui o Te Tau Ihu. Through our involvement with the Maori Congress we were able to represent Maori at various UN conferences. The biggest eye-opener about our participation in those fora was how hard the Crown worked internationally at maintaining the fiction that New Zealand was a harmonious community that our race relations were the best in the world and that the Crown upheld the Treaty of Waitangi. Would that that were true! I mihi to Moana Jackson and Aroha Mead in particular for the work they did and continue to do with the indigenous networks and the UN and say kia kaha. 
Finally after 9 years I finished my law degree and was admitted to the bar. How proud my parents husband and children were that day! The first law firm I worked for as a barrister and solicitor was Woodward Law Office. I remember long days and nights working in Auckland and Wellington—sometimes so long that I would have my youngest daughter curled up asleep under my desk waiting to go home. Like many young mothers I know about the tension between having a career and wanting to be with your children. 
And just to prove what a glutton for punishment I was at that time I was also one of the tutors for the Maori laws and philosophy course at Te Wananga o Raukawa became the director of the course for 1 year sat on the manawhakahaere for some years and for several years tutored the Maori legal entities course there. I mihi to Professor Whatarangi Winiata who has touched so many lives through his influence. 
I moved to the Crown Forestry Rental Trust where I met the most amazingly committed people both those working at the trust and those working for their whanau hapu and iwi. I later was employed by Te Ratonga Ture—the Maori Legal Service—and became involved in the community law centre and met more committed if not driven people. These were people like Tariana Turia Pita Sharples Hone Harawira and Te Ururoa Flavell; people like the absolutely dedicated members of Te Tai Tonga whom I have worked with over the last few weeks; and the 23000 members of the Maori Party who believe they were raised to advocate for positive change and who want a better world for us all. 
It is also right for me at this time to acknowledge the passing of two great totara: Monte Ohia and Rangitihi John Tahuparae. These two men exemplify for me a dedication and love that positive change can make. Haere atu korua me nga mate puta noa te motu ki te Atua. Moe mai i te aroha. 
[ 
Depart you two and the deaths from throughout the land to God. Rest there lovingly. 
]  
I also acknowledge their wives Linda and Rose who truly were their pou tokomanawa—tena korua. 
I began my korero by remembering that there is no greater calling than to be a servant of the people. That calling is not just an individual pursuit; it impacts on my whanau: my husband Selwyn my five children my son-in-law and daughter-in-law my five mokopuna and all the mokopuna to come. And so I end in acknowledging them and their commitment their dedication and their love which I know will fulfil me through the challenges I know will accompany me every day in the life of the MP for Te Tai Tonga.  
No reira kei te Manu Korero e te Whare tena koutou katoa. 
[ 
So to you Mr Speaker and the House greetings to you all 
.] 
Waiata; haka