The late Sir Wira Gardiner, of Ngāti Awa. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Hundreds of people packed St Paul’s Cathedral in Wellington to hear tributes to Sir Wira Gardiner, including from Sir Bill English, Hone Harawira and Gardiner’s widow, Hekia Parata.
Gardiner died in March this year, aged 78, but because of Covid, a memorial service was delayed until today. He was aligned to the National Party but after his military career, was a senior public servant and trouble-shooter for both National and Labour Governments.
His last prominent public role was as chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, a job that Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes described as one of the toughest in the country and which he had agreed to do at the age of 77 as a service to his country.
Those who came to honour him included former Prime Minister Jim Bolger, former Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, Willie Apiata VC, Supreme Court Judge Joe Williams, Labour Ministers Kelvin Davis and Willie Jackson, National leader Christopher Luxon, former National Party president Michelle Boag, former solider and public servant Leith Comer, former broadcaster Derek Fox, spy chief Rebecca Kitteridge, and GCSB chief Andrew Hampton who worked for Gardiner as a junior public servant in Te Puni Kokiri.
Hone Harawira said Gardiner had been an exceptional man who had been confident in his ability to front anyone - tribal leaders, gangsters, politicians, whanau, activists and treat them all with the sincerity and dignity.
“Sir Harawira Tiri Gardiner, truly a Maori for all seasons.”
Harawira recounted their scuffle at Waitangi in 1995 when he had been protesting against the fiscal envelope.
Gardiner was chief executive of Te Puni Kokiri at the time and in charge of consulting with Maori over the Government policy of limiting Treaty settlements to a total $1 billion.
“What you may not know,” Harawira said at the service “is that when the police asked him to press charges against me, Wira refused, telling them ‘what happens on the marae is Maori business.’
“And when he rang to tell me what an honourable thing he’d done, I said ‘don’t expect any thanks from me Wira – you bloody started it!’
“Wira spluttered, yelled something nasty to me, and slammed down the phone. Then a couple of hours later, he rang me back and we had a big laugh.”
That was nearly 30 years ago and they had been friends ever since.
Harawira said that when he had resigned from the Maori Party and Parliament to fight a byelection in Te Tai Tokerau as leader of Mana, he had run into Gardiner at as airport.
Just as Gardiner was about to board his plane, he said he knew Harawira was not getting paid as an MP anymore and slipped him a couple of thousand dollars.
He described Gardiner as “blue on the outside, Maori on the inside, and always working the aisles.”
He described an unforgettable night when former Labour Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia had died and was lying at home in Tolaga Bay, supposedly just with family.
Harawira arrived in the middle of the night, the whanau let him in and he went into Horomia’s bedroom “and who should be in there with him – bloody Wira.”
“What are doing here?” Wira had asked Harawira. “Didn’t you get the message? Whanau only.”
“I could say the same about you,” said Harawira.
“Wira and I spent the next couple of hours telling hilarious Parekura sotries, taking the piss out of everybody else, and laughing and carrying on like we’d all grown up together.
“Labour’s Maori leader, National’s Maori front man, and the leader of Mana. A very surreal moment that I will never forget.”
Gardiner wrote a book on Horomia – “Chief” and Harawira said Gardiner had pestered him about writing his book as well: “I should have said yes. It would have been a fun journey.”
Bill English followed Harawira in the line of tributes and said while a nation needed challengers and disrupters, it also needed builders and unifiers.
“Sir Wira was often at the hard edge of conflict which he handled with patience and decency.
“He solved problems and united people with direct korero, respectful disagreement and good manners.”
English also said Gardiner had helped to make possible an unlikely political partnership in 2008 between the National and the Maori Party. It had enabled for the first time a formal pivotal role for Maori in a governing coalition on terms that were supported and accepted by the public for almost 10 years.
“Without Sir Wira’s guidance and confidence building over many years, that big step for our nation would not have happened.
“So in this, as in many things, Sir Wira was bridge between world views to help make our country resilient and respectful. This was indeed, for his time, nation building.”
English described Gardiner as staunch in te ao Maori and a New Zealand patriot.
“He had deep principles of self-discipline, self-reliance, which he also expected of others, and generosity to those who disagreed with him.”
Sir Wira had increased the mana of others through mastery of his own mana.
“Of course, he wouldn’t claim these things, but they were as natural to him as the Te Kaha sunrise,” said English.
“The hope of our country is that others will show the same firm and generous spirit.”
Gardiner served in Vietnam and retired from the Army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. The NZ Army band played at the service and the Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment Colour was taken to the front of the cathedral by members of the 1st Battalion.
Gardiner had five children, three in his first marriage to Pauline Gardiner and two with Hekia Parata.
Parata, a former Education Minister, spoke last with daughters Rakaitemania and Mihimaraea by her side.
She said he was a loving father to all his children and proud koro to his grandchildren. The ninth grandchild was just nine weeks old and had been named Harawira Te Kaha Gardiner.
Te Kaha on the East Coast came to be his hearth and haven, she said. He loved nothing more than sitting on the veranda with a good book and endless cups of tea.
“He was a self-described veranda fisherman. He sat on the veranda and friends and whanau… would drop off the catch of the day.”
He loved writing, she said, at night, in early morning, and at weekends.
He wrote seven books, and left an eighth in the form of a manuscript.
“The ninth awaits a biographer,” she said.
She said the family was grateful for his love and for the full and generous life he led.
“He would say – onward.”
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