Te Pāti Māori announces $200m fund to create Takatāpui commission

Te Pāti Māori is promising to invest $200 million to establish a Takatāpui commission and improve access to gender-affirming healthcare if elected.

The policy would also allocate funding to improve housing options and increase protections for Takatāpui against violence and hate, with the party’s co-leader Rawiri Waititi specifically referring throughout his press conference to former MP Benjamin Doyle’s experiences at Parliament.

Takatāpui, a Māori term that literally means “intimate companion of the same”, can be used as an identity reference by people who are gay, bisexual, queer, intersex or as part of the rainbow community.

Waititi said the passing of the first reading of a New Zealand First member’s bill that would legally define a man and a woman by referring to biology, as opposed to the gender the person actually identifies as, was an “attack” on the Takatāpui community.

“Somewhere tonight, a young person will read about that vote and wonder if there is still room for them here in Aotearoa.

“A bill [in which] Takatāpui and trans whānau, that their own understanding of themselves, is up for a vote, that is homophobia, that is transphobia.”

The $200m would be reprioritised funding from health ($100m), social development ($50m), housing ($40m) and Māori development ($10m). According to the document, the commission’s role would be to hold other agencies accountable for implementing the wider policy.

The broader initiatives include:

• Update the Human Rights Act to identify specific provisions for people with diverse genders, sexualities and innate variations of sex characteristics;
• Fund and deliver gender-affirming healthcare within the public system, including hormone therapy, primary care and gender-affirming surgery where clinically indicated;
• Support Takatāpui pathways to te reo Māori and tikanga fluency;
• Support whānau, hapū, iwi and Māori community-led wānanga;
• Fund Takatāpui-led creative and cultural expression as an investment in Māori cultural continuity;
• Strengthen takatāpui mental Health and suicide prevention.

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi and MP Oriini Kaipara announcing the party's Takatāpui policy. Photo / Julia Gabel

Māori public health researcher Dr Clive Aspin said he was excited by the policy because it would improve the experiences of young people in New Zealand who are Takatāpui.

“People ask me if I am gay, and I say no, I am Takatāpui. And now I won’t have to explain what I really mean because Takatāpui is becoming part of our lexicon. I have grown up in an era where we have been vilified, persecuted, executed and murdered.

“I can remember being described as being a person that came from the gutter, and I belonged to a community that should be expelled to an isolated somewhere in the Pacific where nobody could have access to us. Those memories never go away.”

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.