Matiu Waitai Rata was a Maori politician who was a member of the New Zealand Parliament for the Labour Party from 1963 to 1980, and a cabinet minister from 1972 to 1975.
16 Facts About Matiu Rata
1.
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Matiu Rata was born at Te Hapua to Te Ata Waitai Matiu Rata and Mereana Harowe.
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Matiu Rata moved to Te Wharau, near Dargaville, with his family in 1942.
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Matiu Rata's father died in a logging accident when he was 10, in December 1944; his mother Mereana moved to Freemans Bay in Auckland with her four children to find work as a cleaner.
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Matiu Rata joined the Labour Party in his teens, in 1951 during the waterfront dispute.
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Matiu Rata became a merchant seaman in 1950, at the age of sixteen.
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In 1960, Matiu Rata started work as a spray painter at the Otahuhu Railway Workshops, where he became a union organiser, rising to join the Otahuhu executive of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants.
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Matiu Rata became chairperson of his local Labour Party branch, and Auckland Labour area organiser for Tapihana Paikea, the Northern Maori member of parliament.
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Paikea died in January 1963, and Matiu Rata won the resulting by-election, becoming a Member of Parliament in March 1963 at the age of 28.
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Matiu Rata was a Member of Parliament for Northern Maori from a 1963 by-election to 1980.
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Matiu Rata was the Minister of Lands and Minister of Maori Affairs in the Third Labour Government of New Zealand between 1972 and 1975.
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Matiu Rata was the architect of both the Maori Affairs Amendment Act of 1974, which gave Maori greater control over their land, and the 1975 creation of the Waitangi Tribunal.
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Matiu Rata was defeated by Bruce Gregory, coming second with 991 fewer votes than Gregory.
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Matiu Rata contested Northern Maori at every election from 1981 to 1990 for Mana Motuhake and in 1993 for the Alliance.
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Matiu Rata died on 25 July 1997 from injuries received eight days earlier when his car was hit head on by a vehicle driven by a foreign tourist who reportedly fell asleep at the wheel.
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Matiu Rata received 280 votes, to finish in seventh place in the 13-candidate race.