The new Speaker of the House, Adrian Paki Rurawhe (Ngāti Apa). Photo / Marty Melville
Shane Te Pou (Ngāi Tūhoe) went to Parliament, in Pōneke, to meet the new Speaker of the House, Adrian Paki Rurawhe (Ngāti Apa).
Whakamoemiti ki a Ihoa ō ngā mano. Tuauriuri whaioio ki tonu te rangi me te whenua. Te nui ō tōna Kororia.
Te Aaka o te Mōrehu e
here nei,
Hei whakaruruhau.
Te Aatea kua tuwhera a Te Wairua Tapu,
Te ukaipo.
Te Temepara tapu te Punaiwaiora,
O te whatumanawa.
Ko Rātana te tangata,
Ko Te Māngai o Ngā Ariki te kupu.
Ko Ihoa o nga mano te pa piringa.
Ko te Whetu Marama o te rangi,
E piataata mai.
Te Whetu Marama te tohu o te Haahi.
Te Whetu Marama o te kotahitanga te huarahi tika.
Ko te takutaimoana te rohe, roto, waho, naku katoa. Kei te kapu o te ringa.
Ngā maunga, ngā awa, ngā iwi i raro i a Ihoa te pa kaha.
Te Tiriti o Waitangi me te Paipera tapu te take.
Ko Adrian Paki Rurawhe e tu nei.
......................................................
Praise to Jehovah of hosts. The power and the glory on Earth as it is in Heaven.
The ark of the remnants that binds us is our refuge.
The courtyard blessed by the Holy Spirit my birthplace.
The holy Temple is the spring of life to my heart.
Rātana is the Chief.
The mouthpiece of God brings the word.
Jehovah of hosts is the pinnacle.
The star and moon shines in the heavens.
The star and moon that signifies my faith.
The star and moon of unity is my path.
The sea is my boundary. All in and outside I hold in the cup of my hands.
The mountains, rivers and the people under God give strength.
The Treaty of Waitangi and the Holy Bible are the pursuit.
Adrian Paki Rurawhe stands.
The mihi above was gifted to me by Adrian Rurawhe's kaumatua, personifying, from their perspective, his life journey to date.
Adrian Rurawhe is an unassuming man. A man whose life has been dedicated to service. Service to his whānau, hapū, iwi and to Rātana, his faith.
Many politicians are bold and brash with big smiles and even bigger egos. Rurawhe is of a different breed, and he is going to be a very different kind of Speaker for Parliament.
At first glance, Rurawhe might seem an odd choice for Speaker. A softly-spoken, gentle man, you might think he would struggle to maintain order in a chamber full of 120 boisterous MPs, all straining to land hits on each other and grab a moment of media attention.
The stereotypical image of Parliament's Speaker is on their feet, screaming "Order! Order! over the din.
But Rurawhe exerts leadership in a different way, as we have already seen in his first days in the job. When MPs get rowdy, he speaks quietly but with complete authority.
He hasn't threatened or cajoled, he has simply stated what he ruling is and what will happen next.
MPs used to arguing and accusing the Speaker of bias have found themselves meekly obeying.
There is a reason that newly elected Speakers are traditionally dragged to the chair with feigned, or real, reluctance. Being Speaker can be a lonely job — you're no longer part of the party team that you came into Parliament with.
It means imposing discipline on your own party colleagues and, almost inevitably, drawing the ire of the Opposition, who blame you for their failure to trounce the Government in Question Time.
Rurawhe's predecessor showed the difficulty of being Speaker all too well. Although Trevor Mallard achieved some important changes — making Parliament a more family-friendly place (he could often be seen in the Speaker's chair holding one of the MPs' babies), making select committees more accessible, and doing his best to root out the problem of bullying of staff by MPs — his combative nature and teacher's pedantry for Parliament's rules brought him into constant conflict with the Opposition.
Where Mallard saw himself as the umpire of Parliament, Rurawhe says he sees himself as its servant.
That is an ethos he carries with him from his upbringing in the Rātana Church.
Rurawhe's great-grandfather was Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana, founder of the Rātana Church. To the mōrehu, his followers, he was māngai (representative) of God, appointed to be a saviour of the Māori people.
Labour's enduring link to Māori was established through Rātana's alliance with Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage, after he presented Savage with four gifts: a kūmara with three huia feathers in it representing the loss of Māori land, a pounamu representing lost Māori mana, a broken watch representing the Crown's broken promises, and Rātana Church pin.
These poignant gifts marked a turning point towards a political reassessment of the Crown's behaviour towards Māori. They affected Savage so deeply he was buried with them when he died. To this day, the start of the political year is marked by a pilgrimage of politicians to Rātana Pa to mark TW Rātana's birth.
What would TW Rātana think today — to see Cindy Kiro, a wahine Māori as Governor-General, the Crown's representative in New Zealand, and his own great-grandson as Parliament's Speaker?
Rātana's alliance with Savage, ensured decades of success for Labour MPs in the Māori seats. In fact, the Western Māori seat, now called Te Tai Hauāuru, was held in turn by Rurawhe's grand-uncle Haami Tokouru Rātana, his grandfather Matiu Rātana, and his grandmother Iriaka Rātana, the first wahine Māori MP. A young Rurawhe acted as an unpaid Constituency Secretary as his grandmother hosted constituents in the family home. Quite the political legacy to follow.
But Rurawhe didn't go straight into politics. As he tells it: "At the age of 17, my dad told me that I would be starting work the following day. I was still at school, by the way. I did not need to ask where I would be working. He was a second-generation railway worker, and I was fairly certain I was going to be a third-generation railway worker."
The railway was a huge employer in those days, but Rurawhe, working in payroll, saw its decline: "The last job that I had with Railways was processing final pays. At the time that I had started with Railways there were over 20,000 employees. When I left there were fewer than 5000".
Rurawhe was himself made redundant and, like a whole generation of young Māori, he found himself thrown on the scrapheap of the neoliberal reforms.
That was the beginning of his gradual turn towards a political career – "I vowed at that time that if I ever were in a position to do something about the protection of workers' rights, then I would do so".
It was at that time that Rurawhe committed to becoming proficient in te reo and gained his first experience in governance as a member and then chair of the board of trustees for Te Kura o Rātana.
By 2002, he was appointed head of his iwi — Ngāti Apa. He went on to chair Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Apa for 10 years, including negotiating their Treaty settlement.
During the schism between Māori and Labour over the foreshore and seabed in the 2000s, Rurawhe was a bridge to both camps. He worked as an electorate staffer for Tariana Turia and was there when she decided to leave Labour, but he maintained his Labour connections. Rurawhe told me in an almost hushed tone "I never stopped party-voting Labour. [It's] part of who I am."
In 2014, he was persuaded by Rino Tirikatene, Labour MP and grandson of the first Rātana MP, to stand for Labour in the electorate his ancestors had held and became MP for Te Tai Hauāuru.
"While I found Rino's argument compelling truth be told his mother and my mother had already decided that I would put myself forward for nomination. Who was I to argue with my mother and aunty. The deal was done."
What everyone who has dealt with Rurawhe as a leader knows is he brings the principles of Rātana to everything he does. He sees leadership as about service, not self-aggrandisement. And, because of that humble approach, Rurawhe has never been one of the flashier, headline-grabbing politicians. You never see him on the nightly news, lambasting the other side and calling for heads to roll. He just got on with the job.
That commitment to service of the public was behind his successful member's bill when Labour was still in opposition. Usually, Opposition MPs put up bills that would be embarrassing for the Government to oppose and push forward their own party policies. Rurawhe took a different route. His bill put parliamentary under-secretaries under the Official Information Act. Under-secretaries were in a kind of grey zone before this – not quite ministers but not ordinary backbench MPs, they help with the formulation of government policy, but the public and media couldn't find out what they were doing through the OIA.
"The Official Information Act is one of the few mechanisms of democratic accountability: it gives taxpayers and voters the confidence that decisions are made on their behalf, and that they are right and proper". Even though the Ministry of Justice opposed the Bill, Rurawhe was able to persuade MPs across Parliament that transparency and accountability matter, and both sides of the House (with the exception of New Zealand First) voted for it.
Rurawhe has already made clear that his approach to the role of Speaker will also put accountability first. During Question Time, parties have an allotted number of "primary" and "supplementary" questions, including the government parties. Governments use these so-called "patsies" to give ministers the opportunity to wax lyrical about their achievements. Governments also often leave allotted questions unused to end Question Time more quickly. Rurawhe has said that will end. Answers to patsies will be short and to the point, and unused question slots will be given to the Opposition to use.
This is a break from the old rules. Rurawhe says, he might not be an expert on the detail of Parliament's legalistic rules, but he knows what is fair, and that is what will guide him – that is the kaupapa he has taken from Rātana through his whole life.
It is a promising start to a difficult role. Parliament is already noticeably more orderly and well-behaved. Narional MP Chris Bishop and Act leader David Seymour, who used to argue at length with Mallard have found it hard to get into a shouting match with someone who rules calmly and fairly, and brings down the temperature of debate.
Whether Rurawhe's calm air will permanently affect the tone of debate in Parliament, or whether it will be overwhelmed by the barracking of excited MPs as politics heat up towards the election, remains to be seen. As does whether the Opposition turns against him if they fail to land blows on the Government.
It is far too early to judge whether Rurawhe's style will have a lasting effect on the culture of Parliament – and perhaps asking politicians to be more constructive and collegial is like asking leopards to change their spots.
But it does feel like we are seeing a generational change in the attitudes of politicians. Parliament is no longer the overwhelmingly Pākeha men's club that it was in the 20th century. Bullying staff, which used to be par for the course, now gets an MP expelled from his party.
Perhaps, parliamentary debate can move with the times too - less about pushing the rules to their limit to score points of opponents, and more about serving the people. Perhaps, Rurawhe is the man to help lead it in that direction. A continuation of a life of service.
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