- Tenei te mauri ka whakapiki. Tenei te mauri ka whakakake. Te mauriora ka tau ki runga ki tenei huihuinga. He huinga korero, he huinga tangata. Ko te Hui tenei te whakatau i te mauriora ki te katoa. Haumi e, hui e, taiki e. This week on the Hui ` It's a wananga for tane ` a space to reconnect to the taiao and each other. - It's a real emotional time. It's real fun times, but just really trying to tune in to just what's really going on in here and here. - Come visit. Come see it, and you'll see the mauri, the magic, and then you'll know what it's all about. - And Green MP Kahurangi Carter joins us to talk about free speech and wahine in parliament. Plus ` the programme that is helping more Maori into technology, engineering and science. - This exercise, we're trying to analyse the speed that the mau rakau is moving at, so the velocity of it as it hits the pou. Prior to puhoro, I was not too interested in physics. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2025 - Tatou e pupuri nei I te aweawe o te whenua Tihewa Mauriora, and welcome back to the Hui. The Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency's existing contract expires next month, and a new contract holder is set to be in place from July. For a decade, the Whanau Ora kaupapa has delivered positive results for whanau across Aotearoa, with wellbeing central to its core function. But some of its funding recipients are in limbo about their long term funding prospects. - The top of the South Island is bracing for torrential rain today, with orange heavy rain warnings in place for Marlborough, Tasman and also down the west coast. - Not ideal conditions for camping. - What's up, Cam? - Hey, brother. Great day for camping. - Jadein, how are you, brother? - But no torrential weather warnings are cancelling this weekend wananga. - Yes, she's a bit full. - The kaupapa always goes ahead. - This roopu bound for an adventure. (SWEET MUSIC) - Give the boys a bit of a taste of, um, gathering some kaimoana, trying out some diving. A bit of fishing. - Makoi Takao runs Maranga ` a tikanga based program for tane of all ages and backgrounds that helps reset their outlook on life. Its aim is to get men away from the stresses of everyday life. - Disrupt some unhealthy patterns, expose some of the boys to, like, things they haven't done before. - They'll set up camp at Waikutakuta, or Robin Hood Bay, north of Blenheim. - Ko takutaku hiahia mo enei tane, kia whakaarohia he aha hoki atu kei waho o ratou nei me ki o ratou... comfort zone, kia puta atu kia haerere ki wetahi atu wahi ke, ako I etahi pukenga hou. - Many of these guys have never pitched a tent. Most used to the comforts of home. - It was excellent seeing you guys working together. Putting up our marquee and our tents. So, that was really cool. - Kapohau Matiu-Wharepapa has attended several of these wananga. - It had helped me out a lot through some challenging times dealing with mental health. - From mentee to mentor, Kapohau is hoping these tane can work through the mamae in their lives. - So the paua was like that, and the thinner side's this end. We probably want to come on the thicker side, but I guess essentially, tonight is a reccie, so just going out, checking what it's like. A lot of them don't come out to a place a little isolated. So being just amongst te taiao, having a go at some of these activities. - Diving for paua is a new experience for these boys, a lesson in traditional mahinga kai and foraging for food. - This is essentially another formal classroom ` that, you know, there's kai out here that we can gather. - Exhausted after their outdoor exploits, by dinnertime, they're all starting to feel more relaxed. - I think the stronger ones are the green ones. Which is that one there. See? Yeah. You can try it if you want. I love teaching that kind of stuff because it's just a skill that, you know, not everyone knows. And yeah, it can be handy. And they had a bit of fun out of it. And two boys put back some of the hua, which was fun to watch. - Will this actually give you, like, testosterone, or...? (LAUGHTER) Oh, chur. Solid. - Creamy, eh? - 17-year-old Kaiel Ryder has been to a few Maranga hui. - Ae, kia au nei, he rawe ta whakakotahitanga ki nga tangata hou. Ae, ka rata, ka rata au ki te enei ahuatanga o te puta atu i tei, ki ta ao me te hi ika. You know, me te haere ki nga hikoi, haere runga i nga hikoi. - What does it give you, being on these kinds of camps? - Ki ahau nei te kite i nga tangata hou me nga kanohi hou me te whakakotahitanga i roto i tenei wananga, he rawe te ako i enei ahuatanga hoki. (PERFORMS KARAKIA) - Maranga has helped Kaiel heal past traumas from his turbulent childhood. - I wouldn't say I remember at all because I was so young, but it's definitely been stuff that I've seen that I shouldn't have. - The program is built on a tuakana-teina relationship, and although their issues might not be the same, together, they can offer one another support. - We've created some tight connections and trust with one another. Whether someone's going through some sort of, you know, court case, and maybe just, you know, about to face prison or, you know, someone's struggling with their depression or addictions. We don't know what someone's, you know, facing behind closed doors. - Cam Forbes runs the program with Makoi. - I've been welcomed ever since day one. It's a huge privilege. You know? How many old white guys get to hang out with a bunch of young Maori men and be welcomed and treated like one of them? - I learned stuff on the wananga as well, and bringing in different people with different skills. And some of the boys are, you know, they've got more experience in certain areas than I have. And so, as a collective, it's really a good thing. - Both have day jobs working in men's mental health, but are passionate about this kaupapa Maori-based model they've developed for tane. - Really proud of some of the guys that have come through struggles ` prison, depression and addiction. (PERFORMS MIHI) When they get in touch with their Maori identity, they're a lot more empowered, a lot stronger, a lot more resilient, and it's just like, wow. That's` look at that. As an outsider looking at that, it's like, that's fantastic. - And what it helps them achieve is to open up and share their struggles with the group. - Two weeks ago, I actually got broken up from a, pretty much a three-year relationship. Yeah, that's one of the things that I'm going through at the moment. - And working through issues and learning how to talk through problems and situations that arrive and dealing with things like rage that comes. - Recently, like, let's say a month, I've been struggling with my PTSD and just traumatic experiences from when I was a child. My mood can just change with anything. - Sometimes, some of them come with a whole bunch of bravado and this shield and this external, like this hard, hard shell that they have going on. And then it's cool to just see them feel safe to drop that and, you know, be themselves and recognise it's a safe space. - Many on this camp are regulars like Tuakana Tuira, who leads some of the group session korero. - It's really hard to show that emotion and to kind of take off the mask and put it down and just, you know, just let go of the pride and let go of the ego and just say, 'Hey, I'm not OK, 'I need a hug.' Or, you know, 'I need to talk,' Especially the way, you know, as males in society. It's real emotional times, real fun times, but just really trying to tune in to just what's really going on in here and here. - You guys saw some of it today on the beach where they're just playing like kids, you know, pretending to have machine guns and just the banter and the mucking around, and seeing them kind of be like they would have been in a simpler time. The thing I'm most proud of is seeing them really shine when they're here, and just be themselves without reservation. - Maranga received $100,000 from the Lotteries Commission and through Whanau Ora for their pilot program. But with the government's recent changes to Whanau Ora funding, Maranga's long term future is uncertain. - If we just look at the kind of current environment for funding these sorts of initiatives, just a bit bleak. But, you know, I mean, that's why we have to double down and go harder, really. - How do you feel if they had to stop this program because of money, putea? - Uh, ka pouri, ka pouri. he rawe enei wananga, he rawe ta ako i enei mea. - For tane on this camp, being here has made them feel a little less alone. - It was a good time to, like, get away from reality and just hang around with the great company of boys. Just to get your mind off some things and to reflect. The porowhita we were talking about, you know, what we were going through in our struggles, not many people are able to do that with others, so it's real powerful. So yeah, that was my favourite. I know they got my back. - We're all together. We're in it together. - Toru, wha. (CLAP) (CHEERING) - Me te rearea teitei kahikatea ka taea. I think these boys can strive to get to anywhere that they want to get to, no mater what. - Come visit. Come see it. And you'll see the mauri, the magic. And then you'll know what it's all about. - Mahi tika e tamara ma. Na Ruwani Perera tera purongo. Taihoa ake e nga iwi, kei tua o whakatairanga, he korero torangapu. Green MP, Kahurangi Carter is on the Hui next. - Nau mai ano e nga iwi ki ta tataou Hui. She is the first-term Green Party list MP from Otautahi Christchurch, and her private member's bill seeks an amendment to the Copyright Act to protect comedians, critics and artists who make memes and poke fun at others. We'll discuss that and other issues as well. But joining me now is Te Uri o Maniapoto o Tainui Kahurangi Carter is with us in studio. Kahurangi, tena koe. - Kia ora. Thank you for having me. - Nau mai. Welcome to the Hui. Why are you seeking this amendment? - Well, my bill is the Parody and Satire Amendment Bill, and it's about empowering our artists to do what they do best, which is be cool and funny, make us laugh, especially in these dark times. (BOTH LAUGH) And it protects them from an archaic law which leaves them at risk of being sued. So it's a common sense law. It brings us into line with other like-minded countries like Australia, like the UK, and makes sure that our artists are protected to do what they do best. - Yep. - Make us laugh. - How will it protect, in particular, Maori artists and comedians? - It's really important that any parody and satire is based on fairness. And my bill is in line with the WAI262... - OK. - ...which does protect our Maori artists from being taken advantage of. So it's really important for Maori artists, who have already come out in support of this bill, but to actually have that say on the select committee process, and I encourage anyone who wants to have a say to come. Nau mai, haere mai. - OK. What happens, then, when a Maori artist's work could become the base of parody from, to use an example, a group like Hobson's Pledge. Will Hobson's Pledge be protected from this` in this bill? - So what's really important here is that our artists are protected, and that is what my bill is about. It's about parody and satire. It's not about protecting misinformation. - OK. - And so our artists will be protected. And it does need to be based in fairness and reasonableness. And so there's a big difference between parody and satire and misinformation, which we know is rife out there. So my bill is about protecting artists and empowering them. - OK. All right. How will you get this into law? You are a first-term opposition MP, and you are in opposition against a government that simply has the numbers, with the coalition government. How are you going to make this work? - This is the bit that I've been really enjoying. I'm a natural bridge builder, and that's what members' bills are about. They're about talking to your colleagues across the House about why we need to make sure that our laws in New Zealand reflect the country that we are. We're a modern country, and we need laws that reflect that. And this is a really common sense law. So talking to the other parties, listening to what their concerns are and being able to go through and alleviate those and say, this is about giving our artists an even playing field. You only have to look at our Maori artists on the world stage to see that they are killing it, and they're not on an even playing field, because they're at risk of getting sued for something that artists around the world do every day. So this is about common sense, getting rid of an archaic law. - If you don't mind, I want to talk about a couple of other things while I have you here. - Please. - Speaking of an even playing field or even an equitable playing field... - (CHUCKLES) - ...right, we've seen some changes in pay equity. - Mm. - Now, IRD stats say that wahine Maori earn 21% less than Pakeha men. What do the latest changes to pay equity mean, and what are the impacts of those changes on wahine Maori? - Let's be really clear. This is about taking money out of the back pockets of women and funding things like tax cuts for tobacco companies and rich landlords. And over the weekend, we saw the activations happening around the country. Some people had never even been to a protest before, and they were there standing up for fairness, something that everyday New Zealanders take really seriously. Essentially, last year, Maori and Pacific women worked for free from October the 21st through to New Year's Eve. That is not fair. That is not equitable. And we need to make sure that our country is fair for women and women's pay. - So the Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, says this is what the changes do. They make it more transparent. They focus squarely on sexual discrimination. And she says the pay equity regime, the former regime, 'has become a Trojan horse 'for a multibillion-dollar grievance industry 'driven by public-sector unions.' What's your response to Nicola Willis' statement? - The government underestimated how badly this would go down with the public, and this is them scrambling to make some excuses for what they've done. We need to pay women fairly. One of the things that the government said in their speeches in the House under urgency ` this was all pushed through without due process, without having experts and without having women ` the people that this affects the most ` actually have a say on it. And they said that this is costing the government too much money. OK. Well, maybe a lot more women were being paid unfairly than we thought. This is about fairness. It's a basic value that we all hold in Aotearoa. And that's what's really important here. - You spoken about urgency. Do you mind if I ask you another question? This is about the Regulatory Standards Bill. - Mm. - Now, it's part of the government coalition agreement. Right? This is going to happen. Unlike the Treaty Principles Bill, it wasn't a part of the coalition government agreement ` to pass the bill through all stages. What is going to happen now, Kahurangi? You've been a part of the Justice Select Committee. What happens now with the RSP? - So this is expected to come to Parliament in the next couple of weeks. It has already gone through a process through the Ministry of Regulations, where there was submissions, and 88% of submissions said, 'No, thank you. No, thank you.' So we're waiting for that to come into Parliament. And again, it's going to be really important that our people are coming to select committee, having their record, having their say on record for our future generations. Because even if this does pass, which is likely to, it's the same tired politics that this government is doing, which is giving their rich mates corporate greed over community. And we can do better than that. - Kahurangi Carter, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for being a part of the programme. I really appreciate your time. - It's been wonderful to be here. Thank you. - Kia ora mai ra. That was of course Kahurangi Carter. A ko tata ake nei e hoa ma. He kura whakangungu rangatahi Maori, Puhoro STEMM Academy, and how it's transforming the lives of young Maori, after this. - E tu takotako ana te whare o te Hui iaianei na. Its a unique programme, blending science and matauranga, that's growing the next generation of scientists, dentists and engineers. Maori are massively underrepresented in science, tech, maths and engineering, but Puhoro is shifting the dial. Me nei te purongo ` a Meriana Johnsen. - The big industries of today and tomorrow ` technology, engineering and science. But are Maori being left behind? - Toru, wha! Beautiful. - This is mau rakau ` a Maori martial art, but with a twist. - The goal, if you're on the GoPro, is to make sure that when the person is doing the swing, you can see the entire rakau, OK? - These tauira Maori are getting schooled in physics. - This exercise is trying to analyse the speed that the mau rakau is moving at, so the velocity of it as it hits the pou. - That was great. - Prior to Puhoro, I was not too interested in physics. I feel like learning physics in a classroom is just a lot of paperwork and a lot of book work. - Wananga like these, run by Puhoro STEMM Academy, are changing that by teaching science through matauranga Maori. Along with the mau rakau, maths and coding is taught by weaving tukutuku. Do you like maths? - No. (LAUGHTER) - Is it better to learn maths this way? Do you prefer it? - Yes, very much prefer to learn this way. - The largest indigenous STEM academy in the world, Puhoro has been guiding rangatahi Maori into careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM for short, since 2016. Maori students often fall short in NCEA, achieving 10% below the average, but not these students. They are achieving NCEA levels at rates higher than non-Maori. - Who's playing? Oh, rawe. No. Very good. Well done. Science, STEM, is nothing new to who they are as a Maori. We know and understand that their ancestors were incredible astronomers, navigators, engineers of the highest order. Biochemists, healers. It's in their whakapapa. It's in their DNA. - So why, then, are participation rates for Maori in STEM so low? Only 2%. - We know that the industry is representing at about 2%. In technology, it's about 4.8% overall. So we want to make sure that we're keeping those pathways in education open for our rangatahi further downstream in high school and through that transition period into higher education. - It helps when others have paved the way, like Waikato University's only Maori engineering lecturer. - It's hard to see yourself in a place where there are no other Maori. And so I had a few role models. But not all rangatahi Maori have parents or uncles or aunties that are engineers. - Have you always felt that you can bring your Maori culture into these spaces? - In some places, no, and I think that's the blunt` the honest truth of that. Some engineering industries just aren't ready or interested. - Mahonri Owen is developing brain-controlled prosthetics to help amputees. - When people see the name of my research project, they think Luke Skywalker controlling a hand. In the early days, I figured out maybe a hundred ways not to make a prosthetic hand. LAUGHS: So I'm really good at knowing, like, what not to do. We're working in the space where you control them from biological signals, so there could be from muscles, from the brain, and then to use those signals to bring back some quality of life. And that might just be being able to hold your child's hand again. - And he's bringing the next generation along with him. - I'm more interested to see if it can do the tripod pinch. - He introduced himself to me as a mechanical engineer and I thought, oh, wow, amazing. Another engineer, Maori engineer in the industry. - Luke August is following in Mahonri's footsteps. - He kind of showed me a different path, a more humanitarian side of engineering, which I really enjoyed. - He never dreamed he'd end up doing this kind of mahi. - When I was a kid, my dream job, if I could pick anything, was to be the guy on the back of the rubbish truck who ran around and picked up the rubbish bags. But it wasn't until I found Puhoro through one of the first wananga ` we did this engineering challenge. My team ended up coming first. My kaihautu asked me, he said, 'Have you thought about engineering?' I was like, 'Oh, what's engineering?' And he said, 'This is engineering.' So that kind of set me down the path. - It wasn't easy. He was one of only a handful of Maori studying engineering. - It was a little bit disheartening to start with, cos none of my lecturers through my entire degree were Maori, so it almost felt like they didn't really understand where I was coming from. - Coming through Puhoro at the same time was Kahungunu dental student Alice Boyd. - I think it's so important to have a wide range of people in healthcare, and I think without Maori in healthcare, Maori patients won't be treated with the respect they deserve and won't get the care they need. - From failing her first year of medicine to now in her final year on placement. - Me personally, I'd love to work with children, so they don't have to have these teeth extracted or ruin their smiles at such a young age. And I think, yeah, I'd love to drive a little bus around or something and help the Maori children, specifically. - Luke and Alice both share a desire to make change. - Maori and Pasifika are highly disproportionate in their rates of amputation, particularly diabetic foot amputation. One thing that people don't often consider as engineers is embodiment, so how they feel about the prosthetic. So where it connects to the wrist, you... - Oh! When it clicks in? - Whether it feels a part of them, or whether it feels a bit alien to them, that's a really big focus of, I guess, what my research is looking at. - Matauranga Maori and science together is a catalyst for new ideas. - For a while now, we've been working with a lot of 3D printing. It makes them cheaper, more available, and we can actually start individualising some of our solutions, or our hands, to people. One thing we're looking at now is to have harakeke-based filaments to create these prosthetic hands. - Imagine we harvest harakeke from your whenua, and then we process it, turn it into a hand. Would you feel a lot stronger of a connection to that prosthetic? It's got the mauri of your whenua. It'll help improve the acceptance rate of prosthetics. - Luke is also strong in his conviction... - Ka pai! - ...that matauranga Maori holds value. - Just because our science wasn't written down, it was passed down orally through activity and tikanga. Yeah, 100%. It's science. We're sort of at this nexus where we're trying to make it more recognised within Western academia, instead of it being up here in this mystical space. - And this generation have no problem blending the two knowledge systems, leaving the future in safe hands. - E tipu, e rea ma. Hei te wiki e tu mai nei e hoa ma. Coming up next week on the Hui ` - I'm not used to living in a house, cos I've lived on the streets for so long. - What is it like to be young and homeless? - It's quite dangerous. It's really dangerous. - It doesn't seem like the government understands how much of a risk they are putting these children, these young people's lives, in. - Recent government changes are sidelining our rangatahi. - Young people who are homeless, they are at the bottom of the list. - And the kaupapa Maori housing model applauded internationally. - We want Tama Potaka to come and see that Maori solutions work and to have faith and belief in it. - Kua tairi ake te kete korero a ta tatou hui ki te patu o te whare iaianei. Can't wait to see you at our next Hui next week. Until then, e nga iwi kia mau ki te turanga o Taputapuatea. Haumi e, hui e, taiki e.