One morning at Parliament, sometime before the 1984 election, the press gallery was invited up to the Opposition wing to hear a policy announcement by Labour's deputy leader, Geoffrey Palmer, and its MP for Western Māori, Koro Wētere. Jointly they announced that if Labour became the Government it would extend the jurisdiction of the Waitangi Tribunal to hear not just current Treaty issues but historic grievances. Few of those who reported that news, and probably few who read it, knew what an impact that decision would have.
But many Māori did. Wētere and his fellow Māori MPs knew. There were only four Māori seats at that time, all held by Labour. The four MPs were not forceful personalities in Parliament or in front of the public. They attended to their electorates and were respected by Māori voters who gave them the highest majorities in the land. Wētere, an unfailingly pleasant and cheerful MP, popular on both sides of the House, was the most senior of them by 1984 and became Minister of Māori Affairs in the fourth Labour Government.
Tributes at his tangi at Turangawaewae this week have noted his work for the recognition of te reo Māori as an official language and his encouragement of the Māori fisheries settlement. As minister he answered parliamentary questions in te reo and in 1990 he pointedly refused to give a translation. The fisheries settlement, ironically, was a contemporary issue arising from the adoption of the quota management system. That was the only sort of grievance the Waitangi Tribunal could hear when it was first set up. Wētere was instrumental in allowing the tribunal to hear claims back to 1840 and the results have been profound.
Grievances over unjustly alienated land and promises never fulfilled had been passed down generations of whanau, hapū and iwi since colonisation began. Since 1984, there has been a forum for them to be heard and the Crown quickly stopped contesting them. Settlements since the 1990s have provided iwi with considerable capital for investment and though the sums are not full compensation in financial terms, the exercise has given iwi new organisational procedures and leadership, and often co-management roles in resources and national assets.
Having helped Tainui achieve the Waikato-Raupatu Settlement in 1995, Wētere retired from politics at the 1996 election when Labour lost all five Māori electorates to Winston Peters' NZ First. Three years later they all returned to Labour until the Māori Party was formed in response to Labour's foreshore and seabed legislation. By then there were seven Māori seats but Tainui, as Wētere's old seat had become, was one of just two that did not desert Labour again.
