Sometimes the passage of legislation finds political parties on the same page, yet quite at odds with each other.
One current example is Te Kāhui Matariki Public Holiday Bill which establishes an annual public holiday to acknowledge Matariki, the beginning of the new year in the Māori lunar calendar, or Maramataka, and which today passed its Third Reading.
Matariki star cluster from southern hemisphere Photo: NASA
As Debbie Ngarewa-Packer of Te Paati Māori pointed out, many people have already been celebrating Matariki.
“It is long overdue. And it is long overdue that the Crown officially recognises our indigenous new year traditions in Aotearoa. It is long overdue that we have, in fact, an indigenous public holiday,” she said during debate on the Bill.
“This should be only the first step. We should see this moment in time as an opportunity to re-indigenise the way we live in Aotearoa. We have seen a recent widespread restoration in the use and understanding of maramataka. Now we should affirm our maramataka as the foundation for the way we do things: holidays, calendars, ways of working, ways of how we look after each other.
“We know that the maramataka is intrinsically derived from this whenua, from this climate, from these ecosystems here in the Pacific. The Gregorian calendar has no such relevance for all of us at all. Shifting away from that just makes sense.”
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer participates in parliament remotely. Photo: VNP / Johnny Blades
While the opposition National and ACT parties have in essence agreed that there should be a holiday to mark Matariki, they are against imposing what National’s Joseph Mooney described as a potentially $450 million cost burden on businesses, and particularly on small businesses, from creating a new public holiday.
“So we need to note there are 11 existing public holidays, placing costs already on our small businesses in particular. Quite simply, the proposal to create a new holiday will add more stress and strain to small businesses who are already dealing with inflation that's at three-decade-highs before we're even headed into a period with Ukraine and Russia added to our inflationary impact. I cannot commend this bill to the House.”
However, government minister Kiritapu Allan, whose Bill this is, has noted various ways that the Matariki holiday would be good for the economy - for instance, she said tourism businesses believe having a long weekend would be beneficial to their sector because there would be more tourists coming into their regions.
Allan’s eloquent speeches on this Bill have been in Te Reo Māori, underlining that this holiday will be one that is uniquely of this country, and that recognising Te Ao Māori in this way is linked to the wellbeing of the people.
Labour MP Kiri Allan during the General Debate Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
But National and ACT want another public holiday removed to make way for this new one; and National remains uneasy with calling the holiday Matariki - in the purported interests of “cultural diversity”, they argue that since there are various names in Māoridom for Matariki, a more neutral name should be chosen for the holiday. As National’s Paul Goldsmith reflected, there is a lot in a name.
“Now, of course, everybody wants more holidays. I can understand that, and I can understand why all the submitters think it's a good idea,” Goldsmith said.
“And, like I say, the principle of having a Matariki holiday we agree with, and we're very happy about that, but what we would have liked to have seen is just some recognition—just a moment's recognition from this Government—of the difficulties of staying in business and staying afloat, and recognising that now maybe—maybe—this is just not the time for yet more entitlements in this country.
“And maybe they could have considered Labour Weekend as a good alternative to remove. I don't know why we don't have a "National Weekend" that I'm aware of. We don't have an "ACT Weekend", but we have a Labour Weekend, and maybe it's time in history that it's moved on, and we replace Labour Weekend with Matariki, and that would be fine. Then we would have been able to support this piece of legislation.
National Party MP Joseph Mooney Photo: ©VNP / Phil Smith
But even when divided, MPs are coming together in a journey of learning, as Labour’s Tamati Coffey subsequently put it while acknowledging Goldsmith’s korero.
“He understood about the maramataka Māori. He understood that it had to be taken on a certain date over our Matariki period. That there, in its essence, is part of the evolution of this public holiday: getting our people all around Aotearoa that don't know about the maramataka, that don't know how the traditional Māori new year was celebrated—to be able to actually dig into our roots here, in Aotearoa, and realise that we've got mātauranga Māori that should be uplifted.
“I commend him on his knowledge and I encourage him to keep learning. This is a learning journey for everybody, not least for us as the Māori Affairs Committee.”
The Bill is set to become law with the first official Matariki public holiday in little over two months time, something MPs from both sides of the House should also be able to enjoy, even if for different reasons.
