Corey Hebberd, the 26-year-old general manager of Rangitāne o Wairau

Monday, 5 July 2021

Ten years ago, Corey Hebberd was 16-years-old.

He liked creative writing and thought he might become a GP, if he could just get over his fear of blood.

This year, Hebberd became the general manager of Rangitāne o Wairau, one of Marlborough’s oldest and most prominent iwi.

The pathway may not have been deliberate, but it does follow in the footsteps of his great-grandfather Manaia “Nugget” MacDonald, who helped establish the rūnanga decades earlier.

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Hebberd was excited and a bit awestruck by his new appointment, he said.

“In December, it was 10 years since Rangitāne settled with the Crown, and I remember quite clearly attending the settlement signing. So to think of this as that 16-year-old, I would have said ‘you’re dreaming’.”

Born and raised in Blenheim, with a big extended family connected to Te Ātiawa, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Apa, and Ngāti Kuia, as well as Rangitāne, Hebberd grew up thinking he would do something caring in the community, and healthcare seemed a good fit.

“But that idea very quickly ran away on me, because I could never get away from my fear of blood – I’m very squeamish, I’ll turn the TV off or look away. So it’s not for me. And I'd had that aspiration for probably a decade … I had to rethink,” Hebberd said.

During Year 12, he spent every Tuesday at Marlborough Lines through the Gateway Programme, doing “whatever job they could slot me into”, he said.

When a job came up in the customer services team, at the start of Hebberd's last year at Marlborough Boys’ College, he decided to apply, and got the job.

“I already had the University Entrance credits, I really just came back [for Year 13] because I was a prefect. And it was quite a big move for me, to leave school at that point … certainly a few teachers were a bit surprised.”

After a couple of years Hebberd moved into the property, fleet and procurement department, getting a good taste for business and the commercial side of the company. He decided to do a Bachelor of Business by distance from Massey University, with a double major in Human Resources and Management.

“I did start thinking I wanted to major in finance, because I really like spreadsheets and numbers, but management is about understanding more than just spreadsheets, and that’s quite relevant to what I’m doing now.”

After a solo three-week holiday in Thailand, a rare break from his busy lifestyle he spent bartering in markets and sightseeing, Hebberd joined Rangitāne’s commercial management team in 2019, which he “absolutely loved”.

He said he felt lucky to be coming on board at a time when the iwi had already received its $25 million settlement from the Crown, and had set up the financial structures to hold and manage the funds.

“When I came along it was only at that point we were starting to realise opportunities … we’re now starting to see development on Horton St, where there’s the new Marine & Outdoors.”

But any investment decisions had to be tempered with the responsibility to provide for iwi members into the future.

“In many respects, the hard work is done, and now the expectations of our people need to be fulfilled … The settlement sounds like a lot, but when you need to maintain the value of it, to make sure it’s there to pay for the ongoing needs of our people moving forward, you can’t just go out and spend it.”

The Covid-19 pandemic was a test of that responsibility, he said.

“We had to pivot our focus very quickly, from language and culture to supporting our kaumātua, with financial support but also touching base by phone so they’re not feeling isolated, and I think the eight iwi of Te Tauihu came together really well to respond to those needs,” Hebberd said, referring to Te Kotahi o Te Tauihu Charitable Trust, established as a joint response to support whānau in Marlborough and Nelson.

When Hebberd’s predecessor Nick Chin took a job in the Tasman district earlier this year, Hebberd “slotted right in” to replace him, he said.

“It is different [to the commercial department], there is an element of managing budgets and the numbers side of the business, but there is a real focus on the people, and the question of outcomes for people and the environment. So it's been quite a big shift. I’m not saying the numbers aren’t important, but there’s a bigger focus,” Hebberd said.

With the popular whakataukī about the importance of tangata, the people, as Hebberd’s guiding philosophy, perhaps it helped explain the rather long list of extracurriculars he filled his weeks with.

That included the Marlborough Sustainable Housing Trust, the Kaikōura Labour Party, the Lottery West Coast Nelson Marlborough Community Committee, chairing the Marlborough's Cancer Society board, and co-chairing the Marlborough Regional Skills Leadership Group.

“And that's probably why I align more with Labour than National, it's people versus profit. Protect people first, and the economy will follow.”

One regret he carried into his role as general manager was not learning te reo Māori at school. So learning the reo would be a focus for him moving forward, as it was for the iwi, supporting members’ learning whatever stage they were at, Hebberd said.

“No day is the same here, there’s always something new I can do to support my team. Also just being available to whānau, my door is always open,” Hebberd said.

There was also a lot of travel involved, between his many positions. At one stage he was out of the region 10 days out of 14, he said.

“So I really love the periods I get to spend at home. Lockdown was great, we should do it every year. I spent it at home with Mum and Dad, my sister and her daughter, who was just approaching 2, so she was the light of our lives during lockdown,” Hebberd said.

Family time made up most of his favourite memories, he said.

And knowing he was carrying on the work of his ancestors made his new job all the more significant, he said.

His great-grandfather Manaia MacDonald, known to Hebberd as “Papa”, was inspirational to Hebberd as a major driver in Rangitāne’s work towards settlement with the Crown in 2010.

Growing up on a Wairau Pa farm, and breaking in some of the 200-odd wild horses that roamed the nearby swamps, MacDonald enlisted in 1939 and joined the Māori Battalion to serve during World War II.

He was captured by the Germans during a bombing on the beach at Kalamata in Greece, one of 182 New Zealanders captured during the Greek campaign. MacDonald was marched 300 kilometres barefoot in the snow to an Austrian prison camp.

He told the Marlborough Express in 1992 of the many examples of Nazi cruelty he witnessed, experiencing starvation and forced labour himself, before escaping near the end of the war and joining an American patrol, arriving home in time for Christmas in 1946, and being quite unable to cope with the generous dinner after years of starvation.

MacDonald became a husband and father, as well as an active proponent for his iwi, recorded objecting to excavations at “the birthplace of Aotearoa” at the Wairau Bar as a member of the Wairau Tribal Committee in 1955.

“He spent a lot of time really advocating for the protection of the Bar,” Hebberd said.

“And he was also heavily involved in the establishment of the rūnanga, set up legally to progress the Rangitāne claim. There’s a story about him chipping in the first $5 to buy milk for the first hui, to start the process off.

“It’s a struggle our people had for decades, an emotional fight to right the wrongs … and in some respects, that makes my generation the lucky generation, coming in with the hard work already done. But picking up that burden and carrying it forwards, you do carry that quite heavily.

“I do feel an obligation to carry on that work, for however long I’m here.”