Donna Awatere Huata stays silent

By WARREN GAMBLE

On a visit to her old school, Donna Awatere Huata marvelled at how little the nuns who once taught her had changed.

One of them, Sister Veronica, fondly remembered the girl from Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast.

"You were lovely," the St Mary's College teacher told the MP. "And you said what you thought, which was good."

"So," replied Awatere Huata. "I haven't changed much either."

That was six years ago, a year after she entered Parliament, and she has carried on speaking her mind since. Until now.

For a woman who has built her varied careers on speaking up loud, often, and eloquently, her silence over the education funding row which threatens her political future is out of character.

The former opera singer rated in the same breath as Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, the Maori radical who visited Cuban revolutionaries, the surprise Act MP who embraced the ideas of Sir Roger Douglas, has always won attention.

But it has never been attention this potentially damaging. There are investigations into allegations that public funds given to the charitable trust she helped to set up to run children's reading programmes instead went to help to pay for her stomach-stapling operation, registration at Sydney Fashion Week, and mobile phone calls by her husband, Wi Huata, from China.

Police, the Auditor-General, the State Services Commission and the Ministry of Education are examining the claims.

This week Awatere Huata stood down as Act education and Maori issues spokesperson, and party leader Richard Prebble raised the prospect she could be axed even if the inquiries cleared her.

He is unhappy the MP did not disclose the stomach operation in publicity last year about her 40kg weight loss. She told the Woman's Weekly last August her slimmer figure was due to changed eating habits and was a "triumph of the mind". Awatere Huata has issued brief statements denying the pre-Christmas funding allegations as false and defamatory, but has yet to fully respond.

The Hastings-based list MP indicated she would speak this week, but has again delayed, citing difficulties getting documents over the Christmas break.

Friends also say the December allegations came as the family was grieving the death of her mother-in-law, an influential woman who helped Awatere Huata's husband to bring up their five children while she pursued her career. The Huatas' large commercial orchards had also suffered badly from rain and hail late last year.

The uncharacteristic void and her party's response so far has many commentators predicting the end of a promising, but largely unfulfilled, six-year political career.

Former Act MP Owen Jennings says Awatere Huata is immensely talented, her views on issues such as reading are world-class, and on her day she is one of the House's most fiery and formidable speakers. At times she could make the Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard, blanch "and he takes some blanching".

But Jennings believes she has been an inconsistent and contradictory performer.

"She can be immensely energetic, but at times does not apply herself enough.

"She's extremely intelligent, but at times lets herself down by saying things that are not intelligent.

"In my view she could have been an incredible Minister of Education - she has the talent and knowledge to do it."

Jennings believes her problems stem from messiness rather than subterfuge.

"More often she exposes herself to criticism and questioning out of poor management, rather than anything that might be malicious or illegal or wrong."

A view shared by several in Parliament is that Awatere Huata's closeness and loyalty to her husband have at times been a distraction, sometimes affecting her political judgment.

They highlight the 1999 row which led to the sacking of Immigration minister Tuariki Delamere. The minister was dropped for approving applications for Chinese investors to get permanent residency on condition they put money into Maori projects. Several of the applications seeking exemption from normal immigration policy came from Wi Huata.

Awatere Huata had rung Delamere's office to check on the progress of her husband's applications, but she was found not to have directly lobbied for their approval.

Family has long been the pivotal influence in Awatere Huata's career. Her father was the inspirational commander of the Maori Battalion in World War II, Colonel Arapeta Awatere.

Awatere Huata has said her father's war experiences left emotional scars he never recovered from. It led to violence against her mother and her, and an affair which would tear the family apart.

In 1969, Colonel Awatere, the first Maori elected to the Auckland City Council, was convicted of murdering a man in a jealous rage over his mistress. The man was stabbed in the heart, and Awatere was jailed for life, a literal sentence because he died in Mt Eden prison seven years later.

At the time of his arrest Awatere Huata was on the verge of following Dame Kiri to the world's opera stages.

After being trained at St Mary's under Dame Kiri's teacher, Sister Mary Leo, she had started a glittering international career.

But homesickness and the jailing of her father set her on a new path.

AT Auckland University she embraced a new breed of Maori activism -young, educated Maori directly challenging the decline of their culture, pushing for Maori sovereignty, for the return of "our land".

Syd Jackson's Nga Tamatoa, Young Warriors, was formed and Awatere Huata was an enthusiastic recruit in 1970, a vocal, black-clad woman at Waitangi Day and other protests which shook up the establishment; protests which some credit with awakening a new Maori consciousness about the treaty, Maori language and culture.

Her work as an educational psychologist in South Auckland fed her activism with first-hand experiences of deprivation and suffering.

It was then that she developed her four-minute, phonics-based children's reading scheme, the programme run by the trust at the heart of the present funding allegations.

Her activism reached its peak in the early 1980s.

Her frontline appearance at Springbok tour protests in 1981 saw her arrested 18 times. Her militant Maori-sovereignty views, including opposing intermarriage between Maori and Pakeha, saw her branded as a subversive, and public enemy number one by National Prime Minister Rob Muldoon.

But in 1984 everything changed, for reasons which are still not clear. In a later autobiographical book, My Journey, Awatere Huata says she simply "gave up the radical life or it gave me up ... a fresh wind was blowing throughout the country".

If that wind had a name it was tu tangata, stand tall, the philosophy pushed by Awatere Huata's mentor and friend Iritana Tawhiwhirangi, founder of the kohanga reo movement.

Adopted by leading figures in the Maori Affairs Department, it emphasised creating opportunities for Maori, rather than focusing on their problems.

Awatere Huata saw that in the growth of Maori business, there was "another way of building a nation", says Tawhiwhirangi.

She engaged Awatere Huata in a government contract which came up with iwi authorities as the appropriate structure to manage Maori resources.

"A lot of her colleagues saw her as selling out. I can assure you it was not," says Tawhiwhirangi. "In spite of that criticism she went down that path."

In 1984 she also met her second husband, Wi Huata (her first marriage ended after a couple of years in the early 1970s).

In My Journey Awatere Huata says she had known Huata's family since childhood. She set her sights on the fiery younger man despite his reputation as a drinker and womaniser.

In 1985 Awatere Huata and psychologist friend Maria Mareroa set up their Ihi management consultancy and won lucrative state and private sector contracts to promote greater understanding of Maori issues.

It was a successful business in what Awatere Huata described as part of a "self-confident renaissance of Maoridom" in the mid-80s.

More and more her views were that Maori had to take responsibility to help themselves instead of relying on welfare.

When Act founder Sir Roger Douglas came calling in 1994, his less-government philosophies struck home.

"It's like a 21-year-old child who won't get off the mother's breast," she explained to The Dominion that year. "Sir Roger got the kid's head and pulled it away and said it was time to grow up."

To former fellow activists it was heresy and Awatere Huata was a traitor.

Green MP Sue Bradford, who first met Awatere Huata at university, spoke of her betrayal at an Act rally in 1995 and was struck by Wi Huata. Bradford says she still finds it difficult to understand Awatere Huata's turnaround and has not had a proper conversation with the Act MP since.

As part of a restorative justice programme after Wi Huata was charged with assault, Bradford says: "I had a better conversation with him than with Donna and he ended up visiting the unemployed workers' rights centre and coming to understand the sort of work I did."

Huata was discharged without conviction.

THE lack of vocal public support for Awatere Huata over the funding allegations is seen by some as a mark of her unpopularity within Maoridom.

But another at the forefront of 1970s Maori protests, Titewhai Harawira, does not share Bradford's view of Awatere Huata as having sold out, even though she disagrees with Act policies.

She believes it was Awatere Huata's way of trying to make a difference. It was not an easy road and the MP had worked hard and honestly.

Former Act colleague Jennings says far from being discouraged by her parliamentary career so far, Awatere Huata had seemed more determined than ever before the last election, particularly about education.

His view that the current situation may have arisen through mismanagement, through the distraction of having too many projects on the go, strikes a chord among those who know her, although they do not want to comment on the detail of the allegations.

Tawhiwhirangi recalls one meeting at Awatere Huata's house when there was no power because she had forgotten to pay the bill.

"She's hopeless with the mundane things in life. Her head is in another place.

"She's not a person who can live with just one project, she has several going on at once. She enjoys the challenge."

Tawhiwhirangi says she visited Awatere Huata when the allegations broke and "Whatever happens I know we haven't heard the last of her."