New Year Honours: Hawke's Bay's Derek Teariki gets Queen's Service Medal

Derek Teariki has been honoured for his work with the Cook Islands community. Photo / Doug Laing

A passion for restrengthening the Cook Islands community in Hawke's Bay has led to a Queen's Service Medal for leader Derek Teariki, of Hastings.

Teariki, who grew up in the Cook Islands where he attended Titikaveka College on the southern coast of main island Rarotonga, came to New Zealand at the age of 17, in 1981, initially to live in Auckland, where he worked for Ford Motors and played rugby for East Tamaki.

In 1986 he decided to move to Hawke's Bay with partner and eventual wife Mata, working in Hastings but playing rugby for Napier club Tech.

From his involvement in the Cook Islands Christian Church, he gradually became involved in the Bay's Cook Islands community affairs.

From being on the Cook Islands Council in Hawke's Bay in 1999, he became secretary of the Community Hall Society in 2005, and then, in 2010, president.

They were difficult times amid disputes over the community centre which had been established in Flaxmere, but Teariki, who had become a prison officer in 2001, saw the need to bring the people back together.

He steered the society through significant hall-improvement fundraising and into registration as a charitable organisation and the centre now has facilities including accommodation, showers and toilets, and kitchen amenities, including an industrial chiller.

It can host up to 500 people and has been widely used for cultural and other events, including birthdays and weddings, not only within the Cook Islands community, estimated to number up to 4000 people in Hawke's Bay, but also the wider Flaxmere community.
Teariki has also was a driving force in the establishment of the Cook Islands seniors social group PaMeuta, of which he became secretary in 2014.

He leads its weekly exercise programme, which extends to looking at health, diet and safety issues, and organising an annual out-of-town trip, including the travel and accommodation.

Spreading the commitment across the age groups, he has also organised sports weekends for the community's children.

He said news of the honour, in a letter about two months ago, was a surprise, but he says accepting it thanks his church and elders who have helped him lead some of the aspirations of his people in New Zealand.

With two sons, the elder of whom is also a prison officer, and with two grandchildren, he looks forward to working for the community from some considerable time yet.