Dame Tariana Turia (née Woon; 8 April 1944 – 3 January 2025) was a New Zealand Māori rights activist and politician. She was first elected to Parliament in 1996 as a representative of the Labour Party. She won the Te Tai Hauāuru electorate in 2002 and broke from Labour in 2004, resigning from Parliament during the foreshore and seabed controversy. Turia returned to Parliament in the resulting by-election as the first representative of the newly formed Māori Party, which she led for the next decade.
Turia held ministerial offices across two governments. From 1999 to 2004 she was a junior minister in the health, housing and social development portfolios and the Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector in the Fifth Labour Government. In the Fifth National Government, she was Minister for Whānau Ora, a health programme she initiated under a confidence and supply agreement between the National and Māori parties, and Minister for Disability Issues. Turia retired as Māori Party co-leader and a member of Parliament at the general election in September 2014.
Early life Born Tariana Woon on 8 April 1944 to an American (probably Native American) father and Māori mother, Turia had iwi affiliations to Ngāti Apa, Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Whanganui. She grew up in the small village of Pūtiki, on the Whanganui River, and was raised by a grandmother, whāngai parents and aunties. She was educated at Wanganui Girls' College, and trained as a nurse.
She married George Turia at Rātana Pā on 10 November 1962. They remained married until he died in 2019, and had four children and two whāngai, as well as numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Before entering politics, she had considerable involvement with a number of Māori organisations, working with Te Puni Kōkiri (the Ministry of Māori Development) and a number of Māori health providers, including Te Oranganui Iwi Health Authority where she was chief executive. While Turia herself never learned to speak te reo Māori, she promoted language revitalisation through the kura kaupapa and kohanga reo movements. With her husband, she led a marae-based skills and employment training programme. In 1995, she was a leader of the 79-day iwi occupation of Moutoa Gardens in Whanganui, which protested unresolved issues from the European colonisation of the area. One of her sons was jailed during the protest for beheading a statue of John Ballance. Later that year, she unsuccessfully contested election to the Whanganui District Council.
Labour Party Turia was a member of Parliament for the Labour Party from 12 October 1996 until her resignation on 17 May 2005. She was first elected as a list MP in the 1996 general election, ranked 20th on the party list. Her selection as a Labour candidate was controversial. She had only joined the party shortly before her selection as a candidate, although she had been asked to stand in the past. Her personal politics were decried by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who described her as a "Māori separatist". The Evening Post described her as a "young radical" (Turia was then 52 years old) and as seeing herself accountable to Māori ahead of the party. Labour's policies on Māori advancement at that election revolved around delivering targeted social services funding to Māori through the mainstream system. Turia later described Labour leader Helen Clark's campaign opening speech as "not too much out of kilter" with her own views.
In her first term, Turia was appointed Labour's spokesperson on Māori health and youth issues and sat on the Māori affairs committee. When swearing her oath of allegiance in Parliament, Turia swore allegiance to the Treaty of Waitangi rather than the Queen. In her maiden statement on 26 February 1997, she acknowledged Labour's defeated Māori electorate candidates Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan, Peter Tapsell, Koro Wētere and Matiu Rata and asserted the following statement on tino rangatiratanga (Māori self-determination):
She also described non-Māori New Zealanders as "tauiwi" (foreigners). Of that speech, the Dominion newspaper wrote "Parliament's real radical stands up... and declined to tiptoe around Pakeha sensitivities." United New Zealand party leader Peter Dunne (also a former Labour MP) responded in The Evening Post the following month by saying Turia's "backward-looking negativism is driving a wedge between New Zealanders, regardless of their ethnic origin, and it is time it ceased." He complained to the Race Relations Conciliator. Turia received more criticism for her views when she said in 1997 that the Treaty of Waitangi was more important than the Ten Commandments. She also clashed with some long-serving MPs in her party, including Mike Moore, over their different approaches to Māori development. Turia's outspokenness, the Dominion wrote, was a hindrance to Labour's bid to reclaim office at the next election because her actions "fed suspicions that an unacceptable radicalism persists in the party." New parties centring on Māori interests formed after the breakup of the National–New Zealand First coalition government, but Turia remained with Labour.
After losing selection in the Te Tai Hauāuru electorate to her colleague Nanaia Mahuta, Turia was re-elected as a Labour list MP in the 1999 election (ranked 16th). Mahuta changed electorates for the 2002 election; Turia won selection in Te Tai Hauāuru and the seat as an electorate-only candidate. From December 1999, she was a minister outside of Cabinet in the Fifth Labour Government. In the government's first term, she was a Minister of State and an associate minister in the health, housing, Māori affairs, and social services portfolios. Early in her time as a minister, Turia was warned by prime minister Helen Clark about opinions she voiced on the "holocaust" caused to Māori by colonisation and apologised in Parliament for her statements. While she did not lose her ministerial positions, The New Zealand Herald reported that Turia offered her resignation over the scandal. In a subsequent speech, she set out her view that "self-governance, as being the choice of self-determination, for me means the right to participate in and control the processes through which decisions that affect our lives are made." Turia championed partnership with and devolution to mana whenua in the delivery of State health and education services, but was not always successful.
In November 2000, Turia was additionally appointed as an associate minister in the corrections portfolio. The following year she attracted controversy when she advocated for prisoners known to her to have special treatment including the cancellation of a transfer, other transfers to be closer to family, a review of an inmate's security rating, and for charges to be downgraded. She was also scrutinised for a telephone call she made to the chief judge of the Māori Land Court about a case involving one of her iwi. A twelfth case of alleged interference in prison operations was reported in early 2002. After the July 2002 general election, Turia was not reappointed in the corrections portfolio (she retained her responsibilities in health, housing, social services and Māori affairs); her spokesperson said she had offered to "give up" the corrections role in order to continue to advocate on behalf of her constituents. Instead, she became Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector. She launched the Office for the Community and Voluntary Sector in September 2003.
When debate about ownership of New Zealand's foreshore and seabed broke out in 2003, and the Labour Party proposed vesting ownership in the state, Turia voiced dissatisfaction. Along with many of her supporters in Te Tai Hauāuru, she claimed that Labour's proposal amounted to an outright confiscation of Māori land. When it became publicly known that Turia might vote against Labour's bill in parliament, tensions between Turia and the Labour Party's leadership increased. The hierarchy strongly implied that if Turia did not support Labour policy, she could not retain her ministerial roles. On 30 April 2004, after a considerable period of confusion about Turia's intentions, she announced in a speech at Rātana Pā that she would resign from the Labour Party and from parliament on 17 May. Clark removed her from her ministerial roles the same day.
Māori Party
Turia's resignation from Parliament precipitated a by-election being called in Te Tai Hauāuru, which Turia contested as a member of the new Māori Party that formed around her. Her supporters saw Turia as having bravely defied her party in order to stand up for her principles. The Labour Party criticised Turia for putting the foreshore and seabed issue before the party's wider policies for Māori development, and said that she unreasonably focused on a single issue. Helen Clark said that Turia showed "an astonishing lack of perspective". Turia described the Te Tai Hauāuru by-election of 10 July 2004 as a chance to test her mandate, and to ensure that she had the support of her voters, but doubts remained about the significance of the by-election, since none of the major parties put forward candidates. Labour called the event "a waste of time and money", although the by-election was required because electoral integrity legislation of the time prevented her resigning from Labour and remaining in Parliament as an independent. Turia received 92.74% of the vote in the by-election, and resumed her seat in Parliament on 27 July 2004. She voted against the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004, which passed with Labour and New Zealand First's support in November 2004.
For her efforts in splitting from Labour to establish the Māori Party, she was named political journalist John Armstrong's 2004 politician of the year. Turia sat on the primary production committee from 13 August 2004 for the remainder of the term. Much of her political effort went into building up her new party, which she co-led alongside Pita Sharples. She also opposed the government's campaign to immunise children against meningococcal disease. At the 2005 general election, held on 17 September, Turia was re-elected in Te Tai Hauāuru and three more Māori Party candidates won parliamentary seats: co-leader Sharples in Tāmaki Makaurau, Hone Harawira in Te Tai Tokerau and Te Ururoa Flavell in Waiariki. She pledged to repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Act if her party was able to form a government but expressed a desire not to enter a coalition agreement with Labour. The Māori Party was in opposition for the term. Turia was her party's representative on the health committee. At the end of 2005, the New Zealand Listener named her as the twentieth most influential New Zealander. She delivered a keynote address at the ACT New Zealand party conference in March 2006. Later that year she drafted legislation to repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Act, although it was never debated in Parliament.
Supporting the Fifth National Government