Budget 2024: National kapa haka festival Te Matatini gets three more years of funding

• Te Matatini receives nearly $50 million from Budget 2024 for the next three years.
• Finance Minister Nicola Willis reaffirmed the commitment to fund Te Matatini in her Budget speech.
• Protests occurred nationwide against the Government’s policies affecting Māori on Budget.

National kapa haka festival Te Matatini has been given almost $50 million in funding in Budget 2024 but the Green Party has called it a “small sugar hit” amid wider cuts to Māori funding.

Te Matatini had not been funded beyond this year. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka said the significance of kapa haka to te ao Māori was something valued “deeply” and the festival contributed positively to “intergenerational learning” among whānau.

“Financial certainty for Te Matatini over the coming years is one thing, however, it will also ensure that through kapa haka, te reo Māori and Māori culture can be enjoyed throughout Aotearoa,” Potaka said.

Groups performing at Te Matatini 2023. Photo / Kiriana Eparaima-Hautapu / Te Matatini 2023

Te Matatini is one of the few Māori initiatives that got increased funding in the Budget. The Budget 2024 summary document is broken down into chapters dedicated to each “vote” or categories of which most include a combination of funding for core services, new government commitments and savings and revenue.

The “Māori development” section only includes “savings and revenue”, which outlines funding cuts to a number of programmes or funds. Te Ringa Hāpai Whenua Fund, which supports infrastructure development of Māori land, was cut as “support will be provided through other mechanisms”, such as a fund managed by Te Puni Kōkiri.

However, Te Puni Kōkiri, the Government’s principal policy adviser on Māori wellbeing and development, had its four-year funding cut by $39.7 million, covering reduction in staff, contractors and consultants.

The Future of Work Forum, which received funding in the previous Budget, has been ceased and its funding cut.

The coalition Government’s policies affecting Māori have been contentious. On Budget Day, scores of people participated in a nationwide protest against the Government’s polices for Māori. There were major delays on Auckland motorways this morning as the slow-moving “carkois” headed into the city.

A campaign group named Toitū Te Tiriti (Honour the Treaty) planned a strike today to “demonstrate a unified Aotearoa response to the Government’s assault on tangata whenua [Māori people] and Te Tiriti of Waitangi”.

The Green Party’s Māori and Pasifika caucus has labelled the Budget “unambitious for Māori, pathetic, underwhelming and lazy”.

In the lead-up to the Budget earlier this week, Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson described the Government as “the most anti-Māori, anti-Tiriti Government I’ve seen in my lifetime” and said she wasn’t expecting to see targeted Māori funding in today’s Budget.

She called today’s funding announcement for Te Matatini a “small sugar hit for kapa haka”.

“Our whānau will see right through this,” Davidson said.

“We have seen the Māori Health Authority scrapped and Māori wards just about discarded while the Government looks to remove all references to Te Tiriti from legislation. All of this alongside a Budget that lacks any ambition for Māori.”