Dame Tariana Turia 1944 – 2025
Sometimes in her public appearances, Tariana Turia could look like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. In a sense she did.
That public face was of someone who didn’t enjoy the limelight but knew she had a job to do. It was a demeanour that reflected the first-hand knowledge she had of the struggles and trauma her people faced and a willingness to go toe to toe with the institutions that inflicted and perpetuated that trauma, including the crown. The expression was a combination of sadness, a tinge of anger and a large dose of determination and courage.
But it belied another version of Turia, the bigger version. Among her own people and her whānau, her demeanour was quite the opposite. The warmth she exuded can only be captured in one word – aroha, in all its multifaceted layers. That aroha was a magnet to people from all walks of life, from gangsters to children, from politicians to those in the kitchen. Everyone could see their favourite aunty or nanny in her.
If a political career wasn’t in the plan, it was perhaps in her destiny. I interviewed Turia about 2007 for an article on the Rātana movement and her core political beliefs were deeply held and consistent throughout her life. She had grown up in the shadow of TW Rātana, the religious and political leader of the early-20th century who provided a platform for a Māori voice when Māori as a people were largely ignored politically. The crop of leaders Rātana cultivated forever changed New Zealand politics.
Turia’s closeness to the Rātana movement proved pivotal. After finishing at Whanganui Girls’ College, Tariana Woon (her father was American, her mother Māori) trained as a nurse and worked in health while raising a family with her husband, George Turia, in Whanganui. Active in the community, she was noticed – Matiu Rata tried to interest her in joining his Mana Motuhake party but she demurred.
Turia believed that as much as times change and political movements come and go, Māori involvement in politics is usually premised on some common themes.
“Māori people who were prominent, who acted politically, it was for the same reason,” she said in our 2007 conversation. “It was about Māori issues, it was about retention of Māori land, the retention of culture, the retention of language, all of those things, which are about survival, the survival of a race of people. If you track it, it doesn’t matter what people have done – kohanga reo, kura kaupapa, the wānanga, the health services, the social services. That’s about a Māori expression of identity, people wanting to have the right to be self-determining, to do for ourselves. That is about our survival. And that’s what I believe we’re continuing to do. For me, it’s no different.”
Turia, who affiliated to Ngāti Apa, Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Whanganui iwi, grew up knowing Iriaka Rātana, the first wahine Māori MP, and was acutely aware of what she and her political colleagues faced. Rātana, she recalled, “would train down to Wellington wearing her slippers and then take them off and put on her one good pair of shoes. Because she couldn’t afford things in the way that others could.
“It would have been more difficult at that time because there was a complete non-acceptance of things Māori. These people were all native speakers; they were people who had lived at the grassroots with the people. It would have been very difficult for them, because they would have been coming home to all of the issues that were confronting them and then taking those to Parliament, to basically not have them being heard. I think they must have had huge courage. Just to be there and to put up with the kind of racism that they had to put up with.”
The seeds of her journey
Turia’s own path to Parliament may have been seeded in Rātana but having her own family began her political evolution. “When I first had my children and began to think about my dad and the things he’d said and the things I had heard when I was out at the pā, it all began to make some sense to me about what had happened to us as a people. And then I got angry. I spent a lot of years being really angry.”
In 1995, Turia was at the forefront of iwi occupation of Whanganui’s Pākaitore, or Moutoa Gardens. At the same time, Treaty of Waitangi settlements were making headlines – Tainui and Ngāi Tahu’s decisions to settle and the capping of settlements made for a febrile atmosphere. Against this backdrop, Labour sounded out Turia about standing as a list MP in the first MMP election in 1996.
“I was told that Labour was a broad church and MMP allowed for the diverse voices to be heard. And that’s not true. You go into Labour and you are Labour; you’re not there to represent a Māori voice at all. I recall that coming up quite early in the piece in the caucus about loyalty to the party. That had to be the first loyalty and I said, well don’t ever test it. I would never put Labour before my own people. Never.”
She was true to her word. Made associate minister of health, housing, Māori affairs, social services and employment when Labour formed a coalition government in 1999, Turia was in the ascendant in Helen Clark’s first term, albeit “outspoken” and always a champion of Māori, sometimes to the discomfort of the PM and fellow Labour MPs. Corrections was added to her responsibilities for a time and in Labour’s second term she became minister for the community and voluntary sector.
She forced Aotearoa to have an uncomfortable conversation, one it is often still avoiding.
In 2003, Clark reacted to a Court of Appeal decision that found Māori potentially had customary title to the foreshore and seabed that had not been extinguished, and they should be able to test that in court. She decided to take legislative action. Turia had a choice – she could stay loyal to the party or to her people. But it wasn’t a choice. She went with her people and crossed the floor. “I felt a sense of outrage that they think they can do that to us and get away with it.”
Her resignation as a Labour MP forced a by-election in Te Tai Hauāuru. Turia stood as co-leader of a newly formed entity, the Māori Party (now Te Pāti Māori) and was returned to Parliament with a thumping 92.7% of the vote.
She proved her stance wasn’t just a matter of being contrary when the Māori Party entered into a confidence and supply agreement between the Māori Party and National after the 2008 election, which didn’t please everyone. This was based on her earlier relationship with National’s Bill English and a pragmatic desire to achieve tangible results for Māori. One of those results was the formation of Whānau Ora.
Turia had learned from Iriaka Rātana the value of building relationships across the political spectrum to get things done. She was open about this even in 2007 when, though Clark’s decision would clearly cost Labour the Māori vote, no one foresaw the National-Māori Party deal the following year.
“I can remember when Aunty Iriaka was with Labour, the relationship wasn’t always that rosy. For her to get houses in Rātana Pā, she had to go to National. Labour wouldn’t do it. I remember that as a kid – that being talked about. And it kind of gave me an understanding when I went into politics how important it was to have alliances across the House. Of course, it was frowned upon to build alliances with National, me being in Labour. National were the government when I first got in. I often used to talk to Bill English, who was minister of health [from 1996-99], because I’d come from a health background.
“We need to have good relationships with other political parties because at some point we hope to have influence and whoever the party is in power at that time we’d like to have some influence with them. You don’t get influence if you spend the three years leading up to the election bagging everybody. We do speak up if we think they’re wrong about something and we will say that. But we focus on the issues rather than the personalities involved.”
I asked Turia what her whānau who had gone before would make of her political journey, which still had a long way to go. “I think my father would be proud of me. I know that my aunts who raised me finally would be very proud of me because all their lives, they stood up for things.”
Indeed, Tariana Turia stood up for things. By doing so she forced Aotearoa to have an uncomfortable conversation, one it didn’t want to have and is often still avoiding. At its core, the conversation she provoked was about the place of Māori in New Zealand society, about the crown’s abuse of power and the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi. That conversation has often been ugly, not because of her, but because many people, particularly those in power, were unwilling to face up to the truth and reality of what she was saying.
That conversation has now flared up again. Her courage, humility, principled stand, but most of all, aroha, will continue to loom over that conversation and those who conduct it. Those involved in that conversation might want to pause and consider her example and words.
Moe mai rā, e hoa, e whaea, e rangatira. Moe mai rā.