MPs have joined Parliament's Speaker in visiting regional New Zealand for five years, but for the first time a Speaker's outreach has gone all-in on Te Reo Māori at an immersion Kura.
Ōtaki, north of Wellington, just off State Highway 1, is a town where you're likely to hear Te Reo Māori spoken in the supermarket aisles. It's home to the first Maori tertiary institution, Te Wananga o Raukawa and is on track to become New Zealand's first bilingual town.
At the end of last month, a trio of MPs made their way to the Kapiti Coast town for the Speaker's Outreach Programme.
The previous Speaker, Hon Trevor Mallard established the programme in 2018, as a way of bringing Parliament to the people. It aims to challenge perceptions some may hold of Parliament and the politicians walking its halls, as being perhaps, remote or elitist. Speaker Adrian Rurawhe was joined by the MP for Otaki, Labour's Terisa Ngobi and the Greens' Teanau Tuiono. A National Party MP was unable to attend on the day.
The host of the outreach, Te Kura a Iwi o Whakatupuranga Rua Mano, is a total immersion Te Reo Māori school - which of course means Te Reo Māori is spoken almost exclusively within the school grounds.
This was not the first Speaker's Outreach to visit a kura, but it was the first outreach to be conducted in Te Reo.
Following a full powhiri, and some chin-wags in the staff room over tea, coffee, and savouries, the delegation made its way across the road to the gymnasium at the Wananga O Raukawa. This was to be the venue for a mock debate, a staple for Outreach visits.
As the students made their way into the gymnasium, the parliamentary team pulled two objects from a suitcase. One was a replica mace and the other a collapsible backdrop of Parliament's debating chamber, to set the scene for the immersive mock debate. For the next half hour, the students from the kura filled up either side of the gym, to make up the Opposition and Government sides of the chamber.
It may have seemed some students missed the memo about appropriate dress code for the 'debating chamber' but the crocs and sunglasses were donned for good reason. The kura rangatahi were arguing for and against that classic college debating topic - should our school wear uniforms?
Although the students may have felt a little nervy early on in the presence of the politicians, soon enough, debate began to flow easily.
Korero was fierce, compelling and at times, very funny.
After a decisive victory by the Opposition, (or Ngati Crocs as coined by their government counterparts), it was pretty obvious the rangatahi were already more than capable in the art of persuasion.
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