Tukutuku panel and carving inside Parliament’s Māori Affairs Select Committee room, Māui Tikitiki-a-Taranga.
Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Parliament’s colonial Westminster underpinnings sometimes jar against modern Kiwi sensibilities, especially with te ao Māori.
A notable recent occasion was the degree to which Parliament was flummoxed by an unsanctioned haka in the chamber.
Among MPs debating that event in its aftermath, some noted that Parliament’s rules – the standing orders – take little or no account of Māori tradition, practice, process, or belief.
They suggested it was time this changed and that parliamentary practice should not be at such a disconnect with tikanga and kawa Māori.
Willie Jackson suggested former Speaker Adrian Rurawhe would be ideal to chair a committee to align Parliament’s rules and processes with modern New Zealand.
Rurawhe recently chaired a special committee set up to scrutinise the (unrelated) Parliament Bill. The committee received numerous suggestions for reforming Parliament that were beyond its remit.
To chat through the idea of reforms to integrate tikanga and kawa Māori into parliamentary rules and practice, Phil Smith from The House met with two members of that Parliament Bill Committee: Rurawhe, Labour MP and former Parliament Speaker; and Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, MP for Te Tai Tokerau and the Te Pāti Māori representative on the committee that discusses Parliament’s rules. The interview is transcribed:
Smith: “Is it possible to have a more Māori-appropriate tikanga for Parliament? Something that is more local, that is more Kiwi, that takes Maori tikanga into account. And if so, what would that look like? Who do we start with?
[To Kapa-Kingi:] You’re a newbie, this is your first term. You’ve seen on arrival just how English, how colonial this institution is.”
Te Pāti Māori MP, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi speaking in the House.
Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Kapa-Kingi: “And, ironically, that experience in itself isn’t new to me. I mean, I’ve worked in enough agencies to know that ‘the norm’ is not ‘my norm’, right? From a Māori perspective.
“Your question, ‘do I think it’s doable?’ I think it has to be. I think it’s a decision to make it so. That it represents all of the voices; particularly – and I think appropriately – tangata whenua voice in the context of te Tiriti o Waitangi, te Whakaputanga [the declaration of independence], all of those things.
“And then all the very ordinary and normalising things that are … rolling around our country, which is bilingual te reo Māori, te reo Pākehā, all of those things that connect us. I think it has to be a far better, more sophisticated appreciation and understanding of Māori ways of being, Māori culture, tikanga, and reo, and all of the value that they can only add to this House.”
Rurawhe: “There are glimpses of tikanga in Parliament, only glimpses. We may have a waiata in the House from time to time, especially when we have Treaty settlement bills. But the overall procedure is Westminster-based, so it’s not even New Zealand-based.
“And there are confusing things that happen, that would confuse most New Zealanders – probably very foreign to everyone, certainly as Māori.
“We have things like pou and carvings at the front of Parliament now, which is great for an expression, particularly of mana whenua, and their place in Parliament.
“At the time I said [it’s] kind of like putting a lovely new cover on standing orders, but not actually changing the content. And so we need to take a really good look at Standing Orders, and the parliamentary processes (which are many and varied), and see how we can make them more appropriate for a 21st century New Zealand Aotearoa.”
The then Speaker, Adrian Rurawhe, at the opening of Parliament’s Te Kāhui Mōuri, holds aloft a copy of Standing Orders and notes that while Parliament’s wrapping may have changed, as yet the rules had not.
Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Smith: “Thinking about the way that things like haka and waiata are used in the House -they’re quarantined. There are beautiful, Māori-focused rooms in this building: the old Māori Affairs Select Committee room, and the new one, Māui Tikitiki-a-Taranga, which is an absolutely gorgeous room. But it doesn’t infiltrate the rest of the building whatsoever. How would you get it to do that in what is more or less a Westminster institution?”
Kapa-Kingi: “I think you could smother this whole building with all of that wonderful symbol … and not shift anything in the mind of the individuals that are the bosses and the thinkers and the lawmakers of this place. The shift has to be in the minds of people. And I think that’s going to take a lot more than putting up wonderful pou.
“Though all of those things are good, I’m not saying ‘don’t do that’ … as you’ve just referred to, there’s two whare that are magnificent and they have all the symbolism. But they are quiet and they are tucked away. So it’s owning up to that reality right now. You own up to the reality, you face it front-on, and then you decide – how do you change the minds of people, as well as the walls of the place?
“And then to consider that, on the outside of this House, those changes are going on all over the place. Our mokos, all of my mokopuna – pink, brown, and caramel – are speaking Māori as another language, and English as another language. So those connections are happening on the outside of these walls. This place needs to catch up with what’s happening outside of these walls.
Smith: “Can you do that just by changing some rules? In terms of getting the thinking inside and the practices inside to change, is there a way of implementing a more Māori kawa within the Standing Orders?”
Rurawhe: “I think it’s going to depend on the courage of the participants in this place. And it’s all driven by party politics. Standing Orders has a committee made up of every party in Parliament. And it makes decisions based on consensus, or ‘the view of the majority’. So until the view of the majority changes, those things won’t change.”
Smith: “It’s quite easy to stop change within the Standing Orders Committee, isn’t it?”
Rurawhe: “Well, basically, if the two major parties agree on something it will happen, unless all other parties disagree. I think it’s always good for New Zealand Aotearoa, that it is representative of the views of many, and I think Mariameno’s absolutely correct; Parliament hasn’t caught up with the rest of Aotearoa.
“It’s a matter of the extent to which the Standing Orders Committee wants to go. For myself, in participating in that, I’d want to know up front – what is the scope of where that committee wants to go to?”
Smith: “How big a picture are you allowed to draw?”
Rurawhe: “Yeah. Well, part of it is I don’t want to waste my time, basically, because if in fact, it’s just piecemeal, you know. You don’t want to do all this wonderful work; because we’ve seen that many, many times. The people in charge get a group of Māori to do some work, such as that. They go away, they do it, they do a great job, they find solutions, and they’re not accepted because: ‘Oh, you’ve gone too far’, ‘What will happen to us?’ ‘What will happen to future MPs?’ ‘They might not like this’.
“That’s what confronts us. And the history tells me that I’m actually not sure if this Parliament’s ready to change. I’d need to be convinced.”
Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Smith: “There’s a bigger question then, I suppose. Would you need to change what the Parliament was and how it operated? Because at the moment, it’s a contest-based majority-rules system. Would it need to be something else to be able to sort of carry tikanga and kawa?”
Kapa-Kingi: “‘How big can the picture be drawn?’ I think it’s such an important point. Because if that’s not enabled then I would step away too, and all of our party would step away, because if it’s not a genuine and authentic shift in the mind of enough to go ‘it’s open, let’s go’. Then it does end up being, sadly, just a waste of people’s time and intellect to put it into the work.
“Emotionally, my enthusiasm would go, ‘yeah, let’s get doing this’. But often that can tire us out and then there’s a big gate in front, and so we wouldn’t want to do that.”
Rurawhe: “There are some other glimpses. I’ll tell you what they are: in the Parliamentary Service, in the Office of the Clerk, because they’re independent in the way they operate, I see genuine efforts to include tikanga, reo – I mean, the parliament has its own kapa haka group. Things like that that give staff the opportunity – but we haven’t done that in the processes for Parliament to have that as well.
“So, a glimmer of hope from those who participate in the functioning of this place. But I think guidance from the political side is what will change what happens in Parliament.”
Smith: “Do you sit in the House and a ruling is made [by the Speaker] or something comes up and you think, ‘oh, I’d change that’? I mean, [Adrian] you must have done this when you were sitting in the Chair [as Speaker], surely?”
Rurawhe: “Yeah well, I would argue that some of my rulings were based on, well, definitely my view of the world. There’s scope for the Speaker to make different rulings.
“When Queen Elizabeth died and we had the debate in the House, everything was set out the way that they’d done things before. And the last thing to be done was a minute of silence. After the minute of silence I was to declare the House was adjourned as [a mark of respect for] the passing of the Queen. I thought, ‘well, that doesn’t feel right’. So I thought, ‘I’m going to do a karakia after the minute’s silence. That wasn’t on the paper to do, but I just did it because I was in the chair and I could. I’m not Anglican, but I did an Anglican prayer because I thought, ‘well, she’s the head of the Anglican church, so I’ll do one of those [prayers], and it’ll be okay’. So, there’s scope for how the Speaker gives rulings, definitely.”
Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Kapa-Kingi: “I think sometimes when you hear the word tikanga (and not just Māori are using that word), it’s a good thing, generally speaking; but what it I think it could invite is more of really understanding what’s behind the word and the context in which those words are reflected.”
Smith: “The way of thinking, the worldview?”
Kapa-Kingi: “Yes, because what happens in the brain usually is … you automate it to your first language of thinking, right? And bang, and that’s what you think it is – so [tikanga is understood as] ‘the rules’.
“And not that that’s completely incorrect, but it is absolutely more than that. It has a different life and a different beginning. It has different origins, like loads of languages. And when you don’t know that and nor care to pursue that, then you’re stuck in that very narrow [definition] but satisfied with that because it meets your own bias.
“So these are some of the things that have to be … gotten out of the way. At the same time as inviting people to open their minds to another way of thinking, and how better off this House would be if we took this question seriously, like really seriously, and decided to sit down and really just understand it in a much more fundamental and future-minded way. Because our Kōhanga kids, which are of a rainbow [vision] right now; they are ready to go, and they are marching before us.
“So I think we’re outdated, I think we’re stuck in our own historical frameworks about it – not just tikanga but reo and things Māori in general – but [we’re] happy to benefit from those things at the same time.”
Smith: “Then that just makes the current institutions more and more outdated. More out of touch with an increasing population that’s different to that.”
The hikoi against the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill reaches Parliament.
Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Kapa-Kingi: “It does. It really does. And I think we saw that in the House more recently again, with this fervour, … to the point of expressing ‘in that particular way’, as you saw. And then of the expressions that are showing up in numbers walking and saying ‘the change has got to come’, and ‘take notice of us, we’ve walked here to tell you’. Where there’s 100,000 people saying, ‘we need change’. So yeah, I think it’s much bigger.
“But just looking on the inside, Adrian, that’s kind of how I see it as a newbie in the House.”
Smith: “Adrian, last words?”
Rurawhe: “I think Parliament should be always a reflection of the people it serves, and at the moment, it’s not.
And I think there’s so many benefits – as Mariameno has said – to those changes that value our tikanga, our reo, our kawa. The same for all New Zealanders as well. I think it should be a reflection of everyone. And as I said, it’s not at the moment.”
Tukutuku panel from inside Parliament’s Māori Affairs Select Committee room, Māui Tikitiki-a-Taranga.
Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
*RNZ’s The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament’s Office of the Clerk.
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