PM gets the message at Te Matatini

ON SITE: Prime Minister Bill English is flanked by Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule (left) and Tukituki MP Craig Foss at the Te Matatini festival yesterday. PHOTO DOUG LAING

Prime Minister Bill English made a flying visit to Te Matatini national kapa haka festival yesterday in Hastings and promised the Government will respond to the challenges being issued in many of the performances.

Back in Hawke's Bay just for the visit to the festival, where numbers through the gates swelled to more than 10,000 during the second day yesterday, and asked of the Government, Mr English said: "Of course we are. That is the business of Government in New Zealand."

"You're not doing your job if you're not listening to those challenges and picking them up," he said.

"We've been working really hard on a lot of issues to do with Maori, we get pushed every day by the politicians, the Maori Party in the Beehive, and I have to say I enjoy the challenge."

"We're keen to pick it up, whether it's fresh water, better education, dealing with family violence, building business and enterprise, and we see a lot of success, and it's heartening for the future of New Zealand."

The visit came late on the second morning at Kahungunu Park, the regional sports park transformed in both name and shape to become the home for the biennial event billed as the Olympics and showing its global appeal via the telecasts and live-streaming from event broadcast partners Maori TV.

Channel head of content Mike Rehu there'd been 80,000 visits to the live-streaming on the opening day, and 260,000 video views. At least a third were from Australia.

With most New Zealanders from tourists to All Blacks getting involved in haka-by-demand whenever abroad - "whether they know the moves or not" - Te Matatini Inc's strategy, already based around multiple health and wellbeing, is looking more and more how to take kapa haka to the World, Mr Ross said.

With the sun bearing down on the crowd, and an even warmer day forecast for today, Te Matatini executive director Carl Ross said attendances are now expected to top 60,000 by the time the finals are finished on Sunday.

While most were there with the 47 teams, there would be other from groups that had been among 161 in regional kapa haka throughout the country, drawn to Ngati Kahungunu's big week not only by the appeal of the event but the want to "tautoko" those who had made it.
New to the job, Mr Ross is a former Te Matatini performer, who could directly compare the vast difference from when it was held in Hawke's Bay in 1983.

It was the Hawke's Bay Showgrounds. He was there . with the other teams, all staying on-site.

"We slept all under one roof, in one big barn, and then we went out and competed against each other," he said."

Among the performances yesterday were those of two Ngati Kahungunu groups, Wairoa-based Te Rerenga Kotuku, and Te Kapa Haka o Ngati Ranginui, based in Tauranga.

Being the first from Hawke's Bay, and marking 21 years since making the club Te Matatini debut in Rotorua in 1996, there were some nervous moments, as for all of the 47 teams, but tutor Sheree Cotter-Spooner, wasn't worried as she waited for the arrival on stage.
"There's nothing more I can do now," she said. "It's no use getting nervous."