Obituary: Ta Wira Gardiner, a man who personfied calm under fire

Thursday, 24 March 2022

Oranga Tamariki chief executive Sir Wira Gardiner and pou tikanga (cultural leader) Doug Hauraki announce the closure of Te Oranga in Christchurch. (Video first published in July 2021)

Sir Wira Gardiner: soldier/public servant; b September 4, 1943; d March 17, 2022

You always knew the government was in hot water with Māori if Wira Gardiner popped up in the news. He seemed to be a bipartisan Mr Fixit. If he couldn’t fix it – and sometimes the government’s mess was so bad that no-one could – he could at least take the heat out of it. The former soldier became a political peacekeeper and solution-finder.

Sir Wira Gardiner died last week from a brain tumour. He was 78.

He had whakapapa to Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Awa, Whakatōohea and Te Whānau-ā-Apanui and was whāngai-adopted and brought up by his grandparents.

Although he was personally aligned with National, he was called on by National and Labour alike when things flared up between Mori and the government of the day.

Sir Wira Gardiner in March last year, shortly after taking over as acting chief executive of Oranga Tamariki. He had to step down only five months later because of ill health.

Sir Wira Gardiner, left, in July last year with Oranga Tamariki pou tikanga (cultural leader) Doug Hauraki.

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Wira Gardiner in 2003 at a foreshore and seabed hui with Labour MP Parekura Horomia.

His career started in the army, where he saw active service in Vietnam. By the time he left after 20 years of military service, he’d risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the highest-ranked Māori soldier at that time. That background served him well in his career in the public service, as he often found himself in the middle of political conflicts between Māori and the Crown.

In his varied career in civilian life, Gardiner was deeply involved in some of the most consequential changes in the relationship between Māori and the Crown, bringing organisational skills and a pragmatic outlook to a number of positions. He was the first director of the Waitangi Tribunal and shepherded through the changes that saw the establishment of Te Puni Kōkiri. He was chair of Te Māngai Pāho, the funding agency for Māori broadcasting, and the deputy chair of Te Ohu Kaimoana, the entity that managed Māori fishing assets from a Treaty settlement. He also worked tirelessly for his own iwi.

He wasn’t afraid of entering the fray when asked, and was always calm under fire. The most high-profile of these decisions was the National government’s decision to cap Treaty settlements at $1 billion, dubbed the Fiscal Envelope.

Gardiner with National finance minister Bill English in 2012.

The backlash from Māori was ferocious. Gardiner was asked to carry out the consultation, although it was perceived as a done deal. While he was the messenger, he became the focus of Māori hostility and was personally – and physically – attacked, but fronted up nonetheless.

Sir Eddie Durie, who worked with Gardiner on the Waitangi Tribunal, said he was not afraid to take on tasks where there was conflict between the Crown and Māori.

“He was unafraid of undertaking unpopular tasks, but he was direct and honest in the way he undertook them. I’m thinking especially of the Fiscal Envelope.

“He was a very frank and honest messenger. There are some people who would disagree with that, they would say he held back information. That’s correct, but what he said and said very clearly was, ‘I will tell you everything I am allowed to say.’ He was straight up and down. He got hell for all sorts, but what I could see was the sheer honesty in the way he did it.”

Durie says Gardiner also delivered hard messages to the government, sometimes calming down ministers after the tribunal had delivered a critical report.

The Māori Battalion in Italy during World War II. Wira Gardiner’s book on the 28th battalion is regarded as its most complete history.

“I thought that major change was required in the way the government went about things and said so in our reports,” Durie said. “But Wira had the capacity I felt to go in and talk to government, to calm them down a bit, and to tell them to take the matter seriously. I was very grateful to Wira. He was our messenger who could mollify the government.”

Jim Bolger was prime minister at the time when Treaty settlements began in earnest during the 1990s, and described Gardiner as a “great bloke”. He made major contributions to what were at times heated discussions.

“He was a senior Māori leader with considerable mana and ability, and Doug Graham and myself invited him (to be involved). We were seeking to explain the intent of the settlement programme as we saw it. I think he did an excellent job.

“Yes, of course he suffered some abuse, but we all did that at that stage. There were those who thought we were far too generous, and those who thought we weren’t generous enough.

Sir Wira Gardiner’s military background prepared him to negotiate political conflict too.

“I think he just had a natural instinct to find solutions in a calm way under pressure. Sometimes the discussions got really heated. You have to be calm under pressure. Wira was excellent at it. So he’s a big loss, a big loss.”

But Gardiner did not simply follow a party or political line, and took a stand when he felt strongly about something. When Don Brash made mileage out of race-based political attacks, Gardiner and wife Hekia Parata quietly disagreed, and stepped back from the National Party.

Gardiner was also an accomplished writer, with his history of the 28th Māori Battalion still the most complete book on the whole battalion.

Historian Dr Monty Soutar (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa) says the book gave the battalion’s story back to its descendents, and was the model for histories on the battalion’s individual companies that followed.

“I think he took the official history of the battalion and made it so the ordinary person could understand the battalion. The official histories, there’s a lot of military jargon. He used language that we could appreciate and understand. It was that book that really prompted myself and others to do the C Company history, because we could see in it a style that could reach the descendents of the Māori Battalion.”

Gardiner and Parata in 2002 with daughters Rakaitemania, then 8, and Mihimaraea, 6.

Gardiner went on to write the history of B Company, the unit that included Te Arawa and Ngāti Awa, and a biography of MP Parekura Horomia.

“Being that ex-army officer, he applied that discipline to everything he did, that’s what I could see. He was reliable as officers are. When he says he’s going to do something he does it,” says Soutar.

“Being an ex-Vietnam serviceman too, he had a better understanding of combat and what those Māori Battalion guys went through. He brought that perspective to it as well.”

Soutar believes that experience of conflict meant he was able to negotiate political conflicts in a calm and measured way.

“He’d been in the frame in Vietnam, and I’m sure he faced it as an officer even in peacetime, so he knew how to deal with tense situations. He applied his training. At the end of the day you want to get the job done, and he had a reputation for doing that.”

Broadcaster and journalist Derek Fox says Gardiner had an unrivalled ability to work across various divides, whether political or philosophical.

“One of his great things was his ability to work across the aisle with whatever it was, whether it was the political aisle or a debate on this or that.”

His selflessness extended even beyond his passing, in that he declined a public tangi out of respect for people’s health and that of hospital staff.

“The measure of the man is that it was likely that thousands of people would have wanted to go to his tangi, but he said, ‘No, think about the health workers.’ ”

Relation Rauru Kirikiri says he had an uncanny ability to be able to read situations and how to respond to them.

“One of the things with Wira is he had the smarts. He had the political smarts. He knew when to jump in, when to sit back, he knew what to say when he jumped in. That’s a skill. Wira was one of the few people in my experience who never just jumped in on a whim, he knew what he was doing.”

Durie says Gardiner’s life and career was characterised by his integrity as a person who could always be relied on.

“He was good to his word. What he said he would do, he did. He was always ready to step in when needed. He put aside the fact it might not be popular. He was not out there to seek popularity, he was out there to get a just result.

“He would talk to all persons at their level. He treated with equal respect the most senior politician and the most humble of his people.

“He’s a great man, and I’m going to miss him terribly.”

Gardiner’s public service continued right to the end. When the ugly behaviour of Oranga Tamariki was exposed in the media, the reaction from Māori was swift and angry. When the Labour-led Government ran out of PR defences, Gardiner was called on to step in. He took on the position of acting chief executive until illness meant he couldn’t continue late last year.

Gardiner was previously married to former MP Pauline Gardiner. His second wife was former National MP Hekia Parata. He was a father of seven children, Jeremy, Amy, Ainsley, James, Rakaitemania, Shannon, and Mihimaraea, and koro to eight mokopuna.