User:HenryCrun15/Debbie Ngarewa-Packer

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer is the co-leader of the Māori Party and chief executive of the Ngāti Ruanui iwi.

Taranaki iwi are worried going into alert level 3 could be devastating for local Māori and say they are going to set up checkpoints around the region. ...said

Politics
Ngarewa-Packer is a former deputy mayor of South Taranaki.

Ngarewa-Packer was selected to be the Māori Party's candidate for the Te Tai Hauāuru electorate for the 2020 election in October 2019. She was the first electoral candidate announced by the party for that election. She was then selected a co-leader of the Māori Party in April 2020, along with John Tamihere. Stuff understood that both were elected uncontested.

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Ngarewa-Packer is kaiarataki of Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Ruanui, which runs healthcare centres in Hāwera and Pātea.

In 2011, she joined a 10-member independent panel set up by the Government to identify ways to raise the rate of return on Maori-owned assets, and grow Maori contribution to New Zealand's economy.

Ngarewa-Packer campaigned for four years against iron sands mining off the Taranaki coast. In April 2020, ​the Court of Appeal found that the Environmental Protection Authority's decision in 2017 to grant a marine discharge consent to a mining company was not consistent with the law to protect the environment from harmful substances.

In 2004 she rallied more than 250 Taranaki people to join with the the foreshore and seabed hikoi on its way to Wellington.

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Ngarewa-Packer was a nominee for the Taranaki Daily News person of the year in 2018.

She is a descendant of Tutange Waionui of Ngati Ruanui, who fought alongside Titokowaru during the New Zealand Land Wars and claimed credit for killing Austrian mercenary Gustav Von Tempsky.

One of his descendants, the South Taranaki Deputy Mayor Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, says a memorial will be unveiled in October at Pariroa Pa at Kakaramea near Patea, which Waionui and his wife Ngaati established 115 years ago.

She says Tutange Waionui was the model for the warrior which featured on the old shilling coin.