{"id":354815,"date":"2026-03-30T07:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T07:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/354815\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T07:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T07:16:08","slug":"khylee-quince-reflects-on-tikanga-reforms-as-aut-law-dean-tenure-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/354815\/","title":{"rendered":"Khylee Quince reflects on tikanga reforms as AUT law dean tenure ends"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI thought as the first M\u0101ori dean<\/a> I could lead my school through that. It wasn\u2019t always easy making some pretty significant changes, and asking colleagues who\u2019d done things in a particular way for a really long time to change their practice was pretty hard work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ItIt makes a huge difference for tikanga to not just be an add-on at the end of a law student’s degree, outgoing AUT Dean of Law Khylee Quince says. Photo \/ Alyse Wright<\/p>\n

The New Zealand Council of Legal Education (NZCLE) introduced a mandatory separate course on tikanga M\u0101ori in law degrees from the start of last year.<\/p>\n

In May, National MP and Regulations Review Committee member Joseph Mooney, backed by governing parties, used a parliamentary motion so universities were only required to have a stand-alone tikanga paper, not tikanga components in compulsory law papers<\/a>, such as criminal law, property law and torts.<\/p>\n

The move came after the committee heard complaints about the mandatory courses from lawyers Gary Judd, KC, and Thomas Newman.<\/p>\n

Tikanga \u2018not an add-on\u2019<\/p>\n

Quince said it was significant the first thing law students at her university heard was \u201ca M\u0101ori voice talking about M\u0101ori<\/a> law being the first law of this country\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat sounds easy, but it was pretty significant … it just makes a big difference in terms of [tikanga] not being an add-on at the end of the degree, when people have already had a particular way of thinking about the law set in their ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty proud of how that\u2019s come off \u2026 now it\u2019s time to do some other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"KhyleeKhylee Quince’s next research project includes a focus on the impact on children whose parents are in jail. Photo \/ 123rf<\/p>\n

Quince would help with the transition when a new dean was appointed, but otherwise her focus would move to research.<\/p>\n

She and University of Auckland professors Julie Tolmie and Tracey McIntosh last year received an almost $500,000 Borrin Foundation grant to look at \u201cjustice gaps for w\u0101hine M\u0101ori and rangatahi (young people) \u2026 particularly the impacts of imprisonment on children\u201d.<\/p>\n

Parents who\u2019d been in jail and school principals with a high number of pupils whose parents were in prison would be interviewed about the impact on affected kids\u2019 care and education.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea is to create some resources to assist judges making decisions, [and] schools and identify those gaps so people know where the kids are and [are] caring for their wellbeing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m quite excited about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019d also missed teaching, Quince said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrankly, that\u2019s what I\u2019m good at, that\u2019s what I really love about the job, so I\u2019m pretty excited about going back to that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI thought as the first M\u0101ori dean I could lead my school through that. It wasn\u2019t always easy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30884,806,133290,12974,36473,6097,187621,4726,1888,187618,8307,13620,2720,111,43,139,69,90,39872,187619,6653,8263,38291,3767,383,187620,40624,379,2963],"class_list":["post-354815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-achievement","tag-as","tag-aut","tag-change","tag-dean","tag-down","tag-embed","tag-ends","tag-first","tag-khylee","tag-law","tag-leading","tag-mori","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-proudest","tag-quince","tag-reflects","tag-reforms","tag-stepping","tag-students","tag-study","tag-tenure","tag-tikanga","tag-year","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}