Matiu Rata
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Bill Rowling
Bill Rowling
Matiu Rata | |
|---|---|
| 32nd Minister of Māori Affairs | |
| In office 8 December 1972 – 12 December 1975 | |
| Prime Minister | Norman Kirk Bill Rowling |
| Preceded by | Duncan MacIntyre |
| Succeeded by | Duncan MacIntyre |
| 36th Minister of Lands | |
| In office 8 December 1972 – 12 December 1975 | |
| Prime Minister | Norman Kirk Bill Rowling |
| Preceded by | Duncan MacIntyre |
| Succeeded by | Venn Young |
| Member of the New Zealand Parliament for Northern Maori | |
| In office 16 March 1963 – 29 April 1980 | |
| Preceded by | Tapihana Paraire Paikea |
| Succeeded by | Bruce Gregory |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 26 March 1934 Te Hāpua, New Zealand |
| Died | 25 July 1997 (aged 63) |
| Party | Labour (1951–80) Mana Motuhake (1980–97) |
| Other political affiliations | Alliance |
Matiu Waitai Rata (26 March 1934 – 25 July 1997) was a Māori politician who was a member of the New Zealand Parliament for the Labour Party from 1963 to 1980, and a cabinet minister from 1972 to 1975. In 1979 he resigned from the Labour Party and formed the Mana Motuhake Party.
As the first Māori Minister of Lands, and the first Māori Minister of Māori Affairs, writes Tiopira McDowell, in the space of three years from 1972, "Rata reformed Māori land policies, elevated the status of the Treaty of Waitangi and Waitangi Day, increased government spending on housing and education and initiated a small but significant shift towards the protection and recognition of Māori language and culture. The Waitangi Tribunal he was instrumental in establishing would be his most lasting and significant contribution to the nation's political history."[1]
Rata was born at Te Hāpua to Te Āta (Arthur) Waitai Rata and Mereana Harowe.[2] His tribal connections were with Ngāti Kurī, Te Aupōuri and Ngāti Whātua. He moved to Te Wharau, near Dargaville, with his family in 1942. His father died in a logging accident when he was 10, in December 1944; his mother Mereana moved to Freemans Bay in Auckland with her four children to find work as a cleaner. The entire family lived in one room in a rambling house, home to eleven other families, all of whom shared the outhouse.[1]
Rata joined the Labour Party in his teens, in 1951 during the waterfront dispute. "'When you lived in Nelson Street,' he said, 'where 11 families lived in one house, well, there has got to be something better than that.'" wrote Paula Morris, quoting Rata. "[His] childhood experiences formed his sense of social injustice, and therefore his politics."[1]
By late 1947, a polio epidemic was closing Auckland schools. It is believed that this outbreak ended Rata’s formal schooling.[1]
Work and personal life
Rata became a merchant seaman in 1950, at the age of sixteen. Four years later he left marine service, and married Nellie Ererua, possibly around 1957, the year his mother died. During these years, he worked as a farm labourer, truck driver and spray painter. In 1960, Rata started work as a spray painter at the Ōtāhuhu Railway Workshops, where he became a union organiser, rising to join the Ōtāhuhu executive of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. He became chairperson of his local Labour Party branch, and Auckland Labour area organiser for Tapihana Paikea, the Northern Māori member of parliament. Paikea died in January 1963, and Rata won the resulting by-election, becoming a Member of Parliament in March 1963 at the age of 28.[2]
Rata was a committed member of the Rātana Church. He had three children – two sons and a daughter.
