For my first column of 2025 I am compelled to mark the passing of Kahurangi (Dame) Tariana Turia on 3 January. But, unsurprisingly, it is hard to find words to do her and her achievements justice. Here, then, is my imperfect attempt to pay tribute to and acknowledge the founder and former leader of Te Pati Māori, inaugural minister of Whānau Ora, health and disability advocate and governor, and, most importantly, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
Although Dame Tariana had a full life and career prior to politics, and following her retirement took on significant leadership around Whanganui River as Te Pou Tupua from 2017 to 2021, it is the associate health minister and whānau ora advocate and champion I knew best.
From the time she entered Parliament in 1996 as a Labour Party MP and spokesperson for Māori health, Dame Tariana was part of changing the way government approached Māori health. When, in 1999, Dame Tariana became a minister outside of Cabinet and associate minister of health as part of the newly-elected Labour Government, she explicitly sought to improve the way all people – and especially Māori – achieve their health and wellbeing goals.
This is obvious in the original He Korowai Oranga: Māori Health Strategy (2002). As Dame Tariana and the then health minister Annette King said at the time: “At the heart of He Korowai Oranga is the achievement of whānau ora, or healthy families. This requires an approach that recognises and builds on the integral strengths and assets of whānau, encouraging whānau development.”1
She also emphasised in her public writings that it wasn’t enough to look at health statistics and feel bad about what they showed. We had to commit to doing something about them.
“I just believe passionately that we have to see our people’s potential…I read all these things and I think, oh God it feels insurmountable. But we can’t think that. There is a way forward. It lies within our ability to actually look at our own tikanga and the disciplines of it to live our lives by it.”2
In the weeks since her passing, there has been considerable reflection on how she was not afraid of making hard decisions based on her own tikanga and values – like leaving the Labour Party over that party’s Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004, which sparked the establishment of Te Pati Māori.
Similarly, while co-leader of the Māori Party, Dame Tariana was part of negotiating a coalition agreement in 2008, which would have required both hard decisions and tactical manoeuvring. This ultimately led to the Māori Party having a confidence and supply agreement with the National Party that included securing ministerial portfolios outside of Cabinet and eventually allowed support for an expanded whānau ora programme led out of Te Puni Kōkiri.
“I basically need to focus on what is in the best interests of families. I have found it very constructive and respectful – difficult at times when we do disagree – but never, ever, disrespectful. I have really valued the relationship.”3
While we often think about Dame Tariana’s unmistakable impact on Māori health and whānau ora, no reflection on her political career would be complete without noting the contribution she has made to government’s approach to disability.
When Dame Tariana became minister for disability issues in 2009, she worked with tāngata whaikaha (people with lived experience of disability) to address ableism and fix the problems created by the Government’s approach to disability support.
As the Enabling Good Lives website makes clear, the genesis of the improved approach to disability comes directly from the expectations set by Dame Tariana of her officials at the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Social Development to work with an independent working group of disability sector stakeholders to develop a “clean sheet” approach to community participation and day services for disabled people.4
Dame Tariana’s support for disability clearly came from the same place as her support for whānau ora: “I think through Enabling Good Lives people are having much more control over their decision-making, being able to determine what’s in their best interests…I know that there were some providers who were nervous about it because the more autonomy that you give to a family and a disabled person to make decisions for themselves the less likely they are to choose some of the things that are being offered through service providers. But in the end our job really is to do what is in their best interests, to give them back their autonomy to decide.”2
In among all the tributes to Dame Tariana that I have read and heard since 3 January, the consistency of her faith in whānau stands out and made me think about how she surrounded herself with those who shared her faith.
On a personal note, she also had an uncanny knack to make others feel like they could make changes too. I keep returning to two conversations that characterise my experiences with Dame Tariana.
Although I’d briefed her for several years as a government official, my first one-on-one conversation with Dame Tariana was over the phone in the late 2000s.
I was working in a government role and she had been visiting someone who had been thoroughly let down by the health system. She wanted to make sure the person was getting all the support they were entitled to, and she also wanted the opportunity to make it clear to the then minister that the health system needed to change fundamentally.
Our final one-on-one conversation came more than a decade later as I was walking around Whanganui and bumped into her. It was a similar conversation. She had come from a hospital visit where someone had been let down and left worse off by the mismatch between what was written into health policy and what was happening for whānau on a day-to-day basis.
Implicit in both conversations was the expectation that, whether it was my paid job or not (I had left government by the time of that second conversation), I – like everyone who had made a career in the health sector – had an obligation to figure out how to make the biggest impact I could to improve Māori health outcomes.
As I’ve been thinking about the coming year, one in which we will collectively mourn the loss of Dame Tariana, I am struck by how important it will be for those of us working in the health sector to have an impact as the ground shifts.
The Treaty Principles Bill is just one signal that things we might have previously thought were settled in terms of the importance of Te Tiriti and Māori health may be relitigated again. I think part of the legacy of Dame Tariana is that, even times of uncertainty and change, the best results come when we continue to acknowledge that whānau are best placed to set and achieve their own health and wellbeing aspirations.
It seems appropriate to end this with the words of Helen Leahy. In addition to being a long-time advisor to Dame Tariana, in 2015 Helen wrote Crossing the Floor: The Story of Tariana Turia. More recently, she also wrote a lovely tribute to Dame Tariana in the New Zealand Herald where she sums up what so many of us are thinking:
“Our sense of loss is indescribable; but we take comfort in knowing her influence will inspire generations to come”.5
Gabrielle Baker (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kuri) is an independent health policy consultant
