As Tipene and I were the only smokers of the Transit Board we would descend to a sheltered outside spot in Ballance St during the breaks to indulge our (both now abandoned) habits.
Tipene is one of the most interesting, funny, educated, warm and wise people I have ever had the good fortune to rub shoulders with. I regard him as tai (friend).
His knowledge of the geography and topography of New Zealand, especially Te Wai Pounamu (the South Island) is encyclopaedic and was demonstrably valuable.
I recall one proposal put before the Board to straighten a section of State Highway 1, somewhere around Timaru.
Though on paper this corner looked innocuous, there had been two injury accidents and one fatality which made for a BCR (Benefit Cost Ratio) on the proposal well in excess of what was required to fund the project.
Tipene knew the road well and persuaded the Board to defer the expenditure until more detail about the crashes was known.
At the next meeting it was revealed that the two injury accidents and the single fatality all involved the same person; sadly, a local drunk who'd canned off at that spot twice and finally killed himself.
Sir Tipene changed the look of our state highways by challenging the long-ingrained practice of planting only exotics. The Transit Board discovered that this policy - inherited from the long-gone National Roads Board – was on the grounds that native plants could not thrive in a highway environment.
This, of course, was and is nonsense and the success of the new "favour natives" policy can now be seen all around the country starting with the Grafton Gully project in central Auckland where, 20 years on, natives are flourishing.
Co-governance has been a feature of New Zealand politics since 1867 when the Māori electorates were introduced under the Māori Representation Act.
In recent years moves toward co-governance with Māori in a range of settlements and developments has been part of the agenda for all of our political parties.
In 2013 National Party Minister Christopher Finlayson executed a Treaty Of Waitangi settlement with the Ngai Tuhoe which included co-governance of Te Urewera National Park.
The Waikato River deed of settlement, again concluded by a National Government, included the same principle of co-governance. It reads: "The Authority will be made up of equal numbers of Crown and iwi appointed members, including other iwi with interests along the river".
The need for a Māori Health Authority should have become obvious to National and Act during the vaccination phase of the pandemic.
Once Māori health organisations like the Waipareira Trust were fully engaged the Māori vaccination rate took off.
The reality is that there is a "Māori Way" of going about matters like providing health services which originates in pre-colonial Māoridom.
In an advanced but pre-literate society all knowledge was transferred kanohi ki te kanohi.
This is defined as "an important Māori tikanga literally meaning face to face, it implies that if correct contact must be made the people should meet face to face, one on one, so that no misunderstandings, misconstruing, etc can occur".
A clear example of the success of this approach is the Howard League's driver's license programme.
Our driving instructors take recently released prisoners of whom around 80 per cent identify as Māori and help them to get their driver's licenses.
We maintain a 90 per cent pass rate month after month, far in excess of any other provider.
The key, we believe, is that programme is entirely one-on-one and face to face.
We adopted the "Māori way", and it works.
• Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is chief executive of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.
