- Tu ki runga, tu ki raro, tu ki whea whea, tu ka whakaputaina ki te whaiao, ki te ao marama. Whano, whano, haramai te toki. Haumi e, hui e, taiki e. This week on The Hui ` targeting academics online. Is this appropriate for the Deputy Prime Minister, David Seymour? - If people wanna go out and make, completely incorrect statements, then I'm gonna get a bit playful and have some fun with them. - And we go rock hunting with Ngati Kuia artist and jewellery maker Natalie Kere. - These stones that you walk over can be beautiful taonga that you can pass through to your family. You go into your own world when you're carving. Nothing else sort of matters, and you're just in that moment of creating. - Plus, the new collaboration between a Singaporean gaming company and Ngati Kahungunu Tamaki-nui-a-Rua. - What struck me was not the project, but who was driving the project, cos you don't hear the words 'Maori tribe' and 'VR' in the same sentence very often. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2025 - Aue te hunga kua riro e arohaina nei e ahau. Takutai, ka nunumi ra koe ki te tini ki te mano i te po. Haere. Haere ki a ratou ma te hunga na ratou nei koe i whakahihiri, i whakaihiihi. Nga mate katoa o te motu whanui, haere mai, haere. Huri tu mai ki a tatou kei te ao marama, tihewa mauri ora, and welcome back to The Hui. Cabinet has received official complaints about the Deputy Prime Minister, David Seymour's 'victim of the day' social media posts. But the leader of the ACT Party is defending his actions as a bit of fun. The question is, is it playful or harmful? David Seymour has been loud and clear about the Regulatory Standards Bill. - This bill is a crucial piece of legislation for improving the long-term quality of regulation in our country. - But did he cross the line during the submission process? The Deputy Prime Minister has targeted academics that oppose the bill with his 'victim of the day' social media posts. - If people wanna go out and make completely incorrect statements, then I'm gonna get a bit playful and have some fun with them. - Having fun or not, the leader of the ACT Party has singled out MPs and academics, accusing them of suffering from 'Regulatory Standards Derangement Syndrome'. - The only reason I can think of for all these totally factually incorrect statements about the Regulatory Standards Bill is that there's some sort of sinister syndrome out there. - I spoke to one of those academics that was targeted by the Deputy Prime Minister's social media posts, Dr George Laking, the Associate Professor for Medical Oncology at the University of Auckland. In your role is an associate professor, a public health doctor, a cancer specialist, you've raised concerns about the Regulatory Standards Bill. What are those concerns? - My main concern about it is it puts too narrow a focus in a set of principles about how regulation should be made. It's really trying to make constitutional change for our country sort of through the back door of a majority parliamentary vote. - Do you consider it a part of your job to raise those issues and those concerns publicly and make submissions in this regard? - I think I already make those submissions as a citizen of the country. But the submissions that I make certainly connect with my work, my work in healthcare and my work at the university. And as a university person, of course, it's part of our role to speak out and take part in that side of society. But I would like to think that, foremost, what I say I say as a citizen who's involved in our country. - What, then, do you make of the criticism made by the Deputy Prime Minister, David Seymour, of people like yourself who have made submissions against his Bill? - Well, usually when you start having a go at the person, it means that you've actually run out of a serious response to what they have to say. So I thought it was a real shame, in fact. I remember when I was a kid, we had Muldoon who would come out with that sort of stuff, and I think people got sick of it after a while, but it seems to have come back. - The Deputy Prime Minister, David Seymour, has said that if people want to go out and make completely incorrect statements, that they should be challenged on them. What is your response to that? - Well, challenge me on the statement, in that case. You don't have to, like, make a joke about my mental state, for heaven's sake. We can all have a disagreement about things. And I think one of the curious things about ACT is you will find elements of truth in what they say, but the trick that they do is they leave out so much. And really, that's what I have, in my own submission, tried to say, is that you need to have a broader set of values for your constitution of your country. You can't just do it all with dollars and individualism. You have to be thinking about some other parameters. - What are the impacts ` and let's be really definitive ` on Maori? If something like the Regulatory Standards Bill in its current form was passed, what would happen? - So, heaps of things that are important for Maori just don't feature in that set of principles ` they're always going to take second place to the principles that's put forward in the Regulatory Standards Bill. Te Tiriti o Waitangi is not identified as something to be of value in decision-making and regulation. It's set aside. And, of course, the Bill's proponents say that, oh, no, there will be transparency about any other considerations that people may want to bring into legislation. But if you don't actually have those things that are to be valued as part of the set of principles, as part of the set of things to be valued, really, their fate is to be transparently discarded. - David Seymour also said that if people like yourself are going to make submissions like this, then he's going to get 'playful' and 'have some fun with them'. And I think you mentioned a joke previously. Isn't this just a bit of banter? - So, this is a man who currently is holding the highest office in the land and treating it like a bit of a joke. And I find that quite disturbing, to be honest. - Do you think that academics, public health specialists, people like yourself, should be free to speak without fear of any repudiation at all? - Well, I think that sounds like an argument for free speech, doesn't it, Julian? Which seems to have quite a bit of support from certain quarters in our country. So sure, what we have to say may not always be popular. It may be something that has to be balanced against other concerns, other interests ` that's fine. But it should still be able to be said. And health of people does need to have some people to stand up and defend it and fight its corner. And, you know, that should be welcomed. I appreciate that there's a whole lot of conflicting interests that have gotta be sorted out in society. But to dismiss a whole area of interests out of hand, that's not a recipe for a successful society, in the long term, at all. - Are you concerned by some of the forces that people in high-profile political positions can wield against people like yourself? - Well, you know, I... for a long time, I've felt very fortunate to live in a country where there is the freedom for someone like me to be part of the political process. And I'm very conscious that other parts of the world, that's simply not possible. Those sorts of freedoms are always, in some way, at risk. And one of the main responsibilities of the people in leadership and in power in our country is to protect that type of freedom, to be honest, and not belittle it, and not turn it into a bit of a joke. - Do you feel that it is at risk now ` that that freedom, that privilege that you spoke about before is starting to be restricted? - Well, that's happening right around the world with the rise of populism, the resurgence of extreme right-wing movements around the world. That is a thing that is happening. So, yeah, there's a risk. - We have seen people in high-profile academic positions being called out. I think of the COVID experience, where experts were put in pretty dangerous positions. Lots of social commentary. Is that something that you think will continue in New Zealand, given what is happening with you now? - Well, I think it's always a good thing to kinda take a step back and look at the even bigger picture. You know, how did we get into this situation? How have we managed to end up with some quite big fracture lines in our society? And I think a lot of that goes back to how our country's been run for the past 30 or 40 years in that whole neoliberal way, to be honest. And so to me that says it is desirable that we as a country take a look at ourself constitutionally. And again, I'll come back to the Matike Mai movement, which has taken a very serious look at what our constitution could look like for Aotearoa New Zealand. And I think that that has got the elements for a very positive, constructive, mana-enhancing way forward for all people who live in our country, so that we can feel more of a sense of unity and not be as fractured and divided as we are. We saw those divisions during COVID, but COVID just arrived on top of things that were already happening in our society. So those fracture lines were gonna become apparent sooner or later, no matter what. - And just one final thing on the Bill. If Labour becomes government, it has promised to get rid of the RSB within 100 days. Does that give you any reassurance at all, George? - Yeah, that'll be good. I'd really like to see Labour work on fixing up the fracture lines in our society. Because I do have to say, I've seen those fracture lines get wider and wider under governments of all stripes over the past few decades. So they may repeal the Regulatory Standards Bill, but we still have homeless people sleeping in the streets in our country. And that's happened on Labour's watch as well. And so I really would like to see some healing, especially for the least advantaged people in our country. - Associate Professor George Laking, uri o Te Whakatohea, tena koe and thank you for your time. That was George Larkin talking to us from Germany. Kia u tonu mai ra e nga iwi. He korero ano kei ta tatou Hui. We go on a rock hunt with a talented artist and carver from Ngati Kuia. Nau mai ano e nga iwi. Ko Te Hui tenei e rere arorangi atu nei. Five years ago, a chronic medical condition meant that Natalie Kere could no longer hold down a job. So the multidisciplinary artist turned her obsession with rocks ` or kohatu ` into treasured taonga. The self-taught carver entered the male-dominated space and designed contemporary jewellery with rocks and her iwi stone. Mea nei te purongo a Ruwani Perera. - These stones that you walk over can be beautiful taonga that you pass through to your family. - Natalie Kere has a gift for seeing what others can't. What we see as just a rock, you see something else? From her Whakatu garage, she reveals their hidden beauty. - You go into your own world when you're carving. Nothing else sort of matters, and you're just in that moment of creating. (PEACEFUL ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC) - Making her taonga starts with a trip to the awa, where Natalie and her whanau hunt for kohatu. - Haumi e, hui e... ALL: Taiki e! If someone says to me, 'Do you wanna to go out to the awa now?' I pretty much will drop everything and go out there. I look at it like a spiritual experience as well as something that I absolutely love doing. You can just be in this zone only, and deal with the rest later. So see, it's got that white crust. and that, with water, will go all milky. What if an ancestor had touched the same stone, and then you're gonna pick that up? Almost like I can feel that it's good to take. - Oh, that's beautiful. - Natalie and her cousins have been hunting rocks all their lives. - We all shared that real passion for it. Cos my sister and I have always done it, but I wasn't aware that they were obsessed like we were. And because we've all settled back here now, we can do that together. Because my family's here, it has, like, a special meaning. It's just, all of us have had some really hard times in the last few years. And this has brought us, like, together to support each other. - And it's along this riverbed where Natalie's Ngati Kuia iwi stone, pakohe, or argillite, is found in abundance. Pakohe was once used by Maori as a carving tool. - It gives you an understanding on how solid these stones are. I feel like, for me, I'm carving most of those stones that are hard, and I feel like that is the strength. Like, I would take that as, that gives me strength to deal with things, to carry on. - Natalie suffers from endometriosis. And five years ago her condition got so painful she could no longer hold down full-time work as a make-up artist. Rocks became her rongoa and her purpose. - Definitely a healing thing for me, yeah. I'm a determined person when I wanna succeed at something. So I will just keep going. As hard as it's been, it's actually driven me more to wanna really succeed and to not give up on my carving just because I'm sick. That hasn't stopped me. It's made me way more determined. - Kete Aronui Gallery in Te Hoiere Pelorus Bridge is where some of her latest pieces are on display. - I wanted to make my jewellery very different to every other carver. I like the traditional stuff too, but I wanted to provide a different style to the market, not be doing the same as other carvers. It's a super male-dominant space, and it's quite intimidating. - Have you ever received any criticism, being a wahine carver? - At the very start, I, um, did, with one particular kaumatua. It made me more determined, actually, to keep carving. - Natalie's creativity extends beyond just jewellery. When the Motueka Library looked for local artists to showcase in their new building, they commissioned Natalie. Her resin artwork that imitates pounamu greets visitors at the door. - To have an artist in this building who has her roots here, who is known to us, who can whakapapa to many of us here, is such a beautiful thing. - That piece there was representing the iwi, the mountains, the water running down the rivers, going into the sea. And it was a piece about, like, that's my hometown, that's my environment I've grown up in, but done in a contemporary form. - A photo of the piece she posted on social media got picked up by an international art magazine who wanted a digital copy to showcase on the Times Square billboard in New York. - How many people get to be seen in Times Square? How many of our people get to be seen? So what a proud moment. - And just like her art, Natalie wants pakohe recognised internationally, not just our world-famous pounamu. - A lot of people that want to buy taonga, they think that it's just pounamu from the West Coast that's the only taonga. It's just showing them that it can be different, and it can be carved beautifully and hold the same mana that you get from wearing pounamu. It's just beautiful in a different way. It's my favourite stone to carve, in terms of more solid, easier to shine up, whereas, like, you know, some pounamus are really hard to work. I'm actually getting to hunt it, take it home, cut it, and then make it into some jewellery. - Natalie wants to celebrate all of Aotearoa's kohatu. - Garnet was used as a hammer stone for Maori to make their taonga. And it's not really been recognised for the beauty that it actually is. And I personally think that this is a lot more stunning in the light than, actually, pounamu. And it's kinda good to get that away from people's thinking that there's only pounamu that will be something to gift someone, you know, like, as a taonga. - Time with her sister and parents is spent talking about their finds. - Ta found a really awesome Vulcan jade. - So part of the belt, though, the mineral belt ` where's that come from? - Her dad, Stuart Kere, also a carver in his own right. - I just love that that is my family, and I can do that with them and share knowledge together. - For her to have found that belonging and that connection, I love that. It's that beautiful thing, she can sense the wairua within a kohatu. Yeah, a bit of magic. - I believe, like, any stone that you pick up, you connect with. Whether you're a carver or not, you should pick it up and take it, because it's about what you're feeling from it in here. And if you connect like that, then that's all you need. - Mahi rangatira anei. And our thanks to Mahitahi Colab in Nelson. Kei mua i te aroaro e te iwi, he kaupapa a iwi, a he kaupapa hangarau ano hoki. We look at a partnership between a Singaporean games company and Ngati Kahungunu Tamaki-nui-a-Rua. Nau hoki mai e nga iwi ki Te Hui, e whakahuihui mai ana i nga korero nui o te wa. What happens when a Singaporean games company and Takitimu waka collide? For co-founder and owner of Hidden, Yee-Hung Lim, it transformed his perspective and business. His company signed a partnership with Hayden Hape from Ngati Kahungunu Tamaki-nui-a-Rua almost a year ago. They're building an interactive game exploring Maori history. I korero atu a Meriana Johnsen ki te tokorua nei. - This is a pretty unique collaboration. So how did Ngati Kahungunu Tamaki-nui-a-Rua connect with a games company in Singapore? - It borned out of COVID. Like, we were, um, socialising our awesome project with Te Apiti wind farm in our rohe, painting our atua on the turbines. And the idea was to put our atua up there, people would go up and get their selfies taken, and we were going to set up a VR centre where they'd come down, get the experience, put the headset on, then they would go back to the turbines in virtual reality. Then the atua would step off the turbines, and then they would choose which one they wanted to experience. So if it was Tangaroa, then all of a sudden, they would be on a rock in the ocean, and then the ocean would come alive and then start telling the story of how Tangaroa became one of our atua from the moana. And so, unfortunately, when COVID hit, all that money was redirected to other projects. Post-COVID, Yee-Hung and that were connecting with some of our whanau here in Aotearoa, and they talked to him about this project that we were looking at doing. - What struck you about the project? - What struck me was not the project, but who was driving the project. When I heard of this project, I was like... We know VR, right, but the fact that a Maori tribe was driving it, I was like, 'I need to meet these guys.' - With Singapore being the hub of tech throughout the world, I did a bit of an introduction to the staff. And what I did was I showed them a pepeha on Google Earth. So used the tech and showed them how clever our tupuna were of identifying a maunga ` so I'd put the maunga in, and then on Google Earth, it'd go 'zzzt!' Then the river ` 'zzzt!' Then the marae ` 'zzzt!' And they were, like, blown away. So using the tech, showed our team from Hidden how intelligent our old people are ` were and still are today. - To me, it's the earliest form of GPS. Because GPS works by triangulation, right? You need three points, and then you know exactly where the person is. And when you think about it, the maunga, the awa, the marae, that's the three points. And then from there, you geolocate the person to a place. I thought that was genius. That was, like, science. - I think in the Asian world too, like, businesses comes second. You know, kai and manaakitanga comes first. So we just do it naturally. So it was really just embracing him and teaching him about who we are, for talking business. - So you had this vision for VR? Obviously Hidden is a bit different from VR. So what potential did you see? - I guess when we had those initial conversations, they said, 'Hey, look, this is what we do.' And they showed us some footage of young students running around excited, playing this game of solving clues and learning their own history here. And we love that stuff at home. We love telling stories and connecting people to our history. So this technology is something that I thought, wow, this will be cool at home, and it will be a great thing to invest in, to be part of a company that has the ability to go global. The educational side of things is huge. Like, I think one of the largest users of it here in Singapore is the Ministry of Education, right? Yee-Hung? - Yeah. For us, when we first met Hayden and showed him our game, to me, at the time, it was two-dimensional. But our game was very much factual. It was an education. You come here, you solve a puzzle. OK, here's the facts. Go there. Solve a puzzle. OK, here's the facts. And since then, and learning from the tribe, we've learned that there's a third dimension, which is the story. The story of the place. - So then how do you build games which balance those differing histories and perspectives and also protect the matauranga itself? - I think the safe space, also, is not to go too deep, to sort of guide people on stuff that's actually already out there. It's just about being able to put them on another platform, for people to be able to engage with them. It's not about getting too deep into iwi's stories. I mean, that's for them. - You put all of these pieces together ` the story, the content, the puzzles, the human interaction, the coffees, and you just get that awesome experience that you remember. Because your eyes, your nose, your brain, your ears, your tongue, they've all been engaged. - We have always thought that the Asian side of things is a big machine, and be very careful of it. But as Maori, we need to open our minds up to our cousins and engage with them, because they have a lot of knowledge, a lot of deep history that goes thousands and thousands of years back that they've brought forward in today's world and are leaders in the global economy around tech and business. So we need to rub shoulders with them. - Ka pai e hono tahi ana i te ao marama. That is us and our Hui for this week. You can find this week's story on our YouTube channel. We leave you tonight as we remember Takutai Moana Tarsh Kemp. Kia mau ki te turanga o Taputapuatea. Haumi e, hui e, taiki e! - # Kua rere atu ra koe # ki nga rangi i runga, # ki o rahi, # ki o nui i te po, # waiho mai au # mokemoke ai # i te po. # I te po. # Captions by James Brown. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2025 - Ko te reo te take. - Na Te Puna Whakatongarewa Te Hui i tautoko.