More than 100 people gathered on Rotorua’s lakefront supporting a nationwide movement advocating for tangata whenua and workers’ rights.
Locals from all walks of life “made their stand” for Māori and unions at Village Green from midday to 2pm yesterday as part of Rā Whakamana - a national day of solidarity.
About 150 people attended Rotorua’s event, including members from unions across several sectors.
The Tertiary Education Union, New Zealand Nurses Organisation, Workers First Union, and the Public Service Association were represented.
Iwi leaders and representatives from Te Arawa Lakes Trust also joined the tikanga-led stand.
The rain held off, allowing a kapa haka group from Rotorua Intermediate School and Rotorua Primary School to perform.
A Tauranga hīkoi for the cause was cancelled because of high winds and thunderstorm warnings.
Graham McKean, of the Maritime Union of New Zealand, helped organise Tauranga’s planned event.
“This is the start of a people’s movement to push back against the anti-Māori and unions approach from the present coalition Government,” he said.
October 28 marked the anniversary of the signing of He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni (the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand) in 1835 and the first Labour Day strike in 1890.
That was why unions and Māori came together across the country “on this day and this day only”, said Mike Tane, an organiser of Rotorua’s event and Māori policy adviser for the Public Service Association union.
He said this year’s demonstration marked the beginning of an annual event.
They were celebrating “the voice of the people of Aotearoa”.
In his view: “Government cannot extinguish the voice of Māori and they cannot abuse workers, including Māori workers, in the way that this current Government is doing, by rejecting Te Tiriti o Waitangi and all that it stands for.
“Pretty much everything that [the Government] has done in this term, whether it’s the Treaty Principles Bill, the Regulatory Standards Bill, even removing te reo Māori names from government agencies, is just so ignorant and so arrogant,” he said.
“I think that it all stems from not wanting to understand the reason for Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and how the Crown, over many governments in many, many years, have not actually lived up to their side of that agreement.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s office declined to respond, saying he had previously commented on the issues.
Last year, in a response rejecting Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s comment that the Government was showing “white supremacist traits” in rolling back Māori policies, RNZ reported Luxon called the “rhetoric” “divisive and unhelpful”.
“The coalition is absolutely focused on improving outcomes for all New Zealanders, Māori and non-Māori, after six years in which the country has gone backwards,” he said.
Last week, he urged public service unions to call off the “politically motivated” mega-strike and “get back to the table and negotiate” constructively with the Government.
He told Newstalk ZB the Government would “love to pay everybody more” if New Zealand had a wealthier economy.
When New Zealand First campaigned for the removal of te reo Māori from government departments, Winston Peters said the party’s position was “not an attack on the Māori language - it’s an attack on the elite virtue-signallers who have hijacked language for their own socialist means”.
The ACT Party-led Treaty Principles Bill was voted out of Parliament in April, with National, Labour, NZ First, Greens and Te Pāti Māori voting against it. The bill’s architect, Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour said, “We will never give up on equal rights.”
He previously told the NZ Herald, “The idea that two babies born in New Zealand should have a different place in New Zealand thanks to events occurring nearly two centuries before their birth is abhorrent.”
Bijou Johnson is a multimedia journalist based in the Bay of Plenty. A passionate writer and reader, she grew up in Tauranga and developed a love for journalism while exploring various disciplines at university. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Studies from Massey University.