A scene examination is continuing at a construction site in central Auckland after a fatal shooting there shocked the city yesterday morning.

The gunman, 24-year-old Matu Tangi Matua Reid, was on home detention but allowed to work at the construction site.

He died at the scene in a shoot-out with police after killing two civilians with a pump-action shotgun. Six others were wounded, including two police officers.

The horror unfolded on the opening day of the FIFA Women’s Football World Cup in Auckland and a minute’s silence for the shooting victims was held at the first game at Eden Park last night when New Zealand defeated Norway 1-0.

Police officers in high-vis vests have today re-entered the high-rise building on the corner of Queen and Quay streets and at least seven police cars are at the cordoned off site.

A man working on the repairs at nearby Queen’s Wharf told RNZ the rules had been tightened at their site and people entering were being checked.

A commuter said there appeared to be extra security at Britomart Station transit hub this morning but he felt safe.

“It was every emotion yesterday,” he said, but he thought the city had coped well in the aftermath of the ‘shock and horror’ of the morning’s events.”

Brown said he supported Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei’s decision to call for a rahui in the CBD area, and the FIFA fan zone on Quay Street had been closed.

Ngāti Whātua has said this morning that no rahui is in place.

“[The] fan zone was right hard up against the dreadful event and it just didn’t seem to be right to be having a night of celebration right next door to something that had been so horrible,” he said.

“Ngāti Whātua called for, and I supported, a rahui on the area down there so we shut the fan zone and people, with a sad tinge, did go to the game at Eden Park, but with respect.

“They had the one minute’s silence, which was part of our culture and the correct thing to do, and then there was a wonderful game afterwards so, I think … the city took it well.”

‘Good end to dreadful day’
Brown said he had spoken to Prime Minister Chris Hipkins after last night’s match between New Zealand and Norway and they had agreed it was “a very good end to a dreadful day”.

He said FIFA officials had been “very sympathetic” about the shooting.

“They were very understanding, they were very concerned about the impact on the tournament, but also deeply respectful of the losses of — almost innocence — of the people here in Auckland CBD, plus of course the dreadful loss of life from this shocking experience.”

While he had been one of the people raising concerns about ongoing crime issues such as ram raids in Auckland, Brown said he was not thinking about anything on the scale of what occurred yesterday.

“It’s something out of the ordinary and I think this is one random person … and we shouldn’t possibly extrapolate that across the district, but crime on the streets with the ram raids is something which has got to be dealt with.”

Brown had praise for both the police and members of the public regarding how they responded to the unfolding crisis on Thursday morning.

“The police were wonderful, they responded bravely and promptly,” he said.

“People behaved very well considering what an appalling thing had happened.”

Violence like this has no place in city, says Swarbrick
There would be a time for political debate and discussions about how to prevent incidents like yesterday’s shooting, Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick told Morning Report, but that time was not right now.

“I very, very strongly want the message to be here that this violence has absolutely no place in our city or in our country, and we utterly reject it,” she said.

Swarbrick said her thoughts were with the whānau and friends of those who had died as well as those who had been injured, emergency service staff, and the workers who had experienced the traumatic event.

She said questions had been put to police officials at a briefing she attended yesterday, including about how the shooter had obtained a gun without a licence and while he was on home detention.

Swarbrick expected those questions would be answered “in due course” but said it was important the facts were “crystal clear” first.

“I don’t think that anyone benefits from politicians speculating in a vacuum of facts.”

The briefing had made it “very clear that this was a tragic but isolated incident connected to the workplace and that there is no outstanding associated risk”, she said.

Asked whether she believed a broader inquiry was needed to look into the use of home detention, Swarbrick said a number of reports commissioned by successive governments had identified evidence-based policies to address what was a complex issue, but that evidence was often “politically unpalatable”.

The rhetoric and debate around law and order was often reduced to “soundbyte-solutions”, she said, “things that politicians know will not work and oftentimes are contrary to evidence”.

She said New Zealanders deserved evidence-based interventions when it came to tackling crime.

“It is really clear what we have to resource in terms of evidence-based policy but it is the crunchy and the hard stuff which looks meaningfully at prevention, it’s not this knee-jerk ‘tough-on-crime’ nonsense.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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Joe Hawke — the prominent kaumātua and activist who led the long-running Takaparawhau occupation at Auckland’s Bastion Point in the late 1970s — has died, aged 82.

Born in Tāmaki Makaurau in 1940, Joseph Parata Hohepa Hawke of Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei, led his people in their efforts to reclaim their land and became a Member of Parliament.

He had been involved in land issues in his role as secretary of Te Matakite o Aotearoa, in the land march led by Dame Whina Cooper in 1975, before Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei walked onto their ancestral land on the Auckland waterfront in January 1977 and began an occupation that lasted 506 days.

He was among the 222 people arrested in May 1978 when police, backed by army personnel, ejected the protesters off their whenua.

In archival audio recorded during the protest, he exhibited his relentless commitment to the reclamation and return of whenua Māori — his people’s land — and for equality.

“We are landless in our own land, Takaparawha means a tremendous amount to our people. The struggle for the retention of this land is the most important struggle which our people have faced for many years. To lose this last bit of ground would be a death blow to the mana, to the honour and to the dignity of the Ngāti Whātua people,” Hawke said1977.

“We are prepared to go the whole way because legally we have the legal right to do it.”

In 1987, he took the Bastion Point claim to the Waitangi Tribunal and had the satisfaction of seeing the Tribunal rule in Ngāti Whātua’s favour] and the whenua being returned.

He was a pou for protests and demonstrations thereafter — a prominent pillar in Māori movements.

In the 1990s Hawke became a director of companies involved in Māori development, and in 1996 he entered Parliament as a Labour Party list MP, before retiring from politics in 2002.

In 2008, he became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to Māori and the community.

Hawke’s tangi will be held at Ōrākei Marae this week. Wednesday marks the 44th anniversary of the Bastion Point eviction. His nehu will be on Thursday.

E te rangatira, moe mai rā.

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Ngāti Whātua kaitiaki remain in bolstered numbers at the border between Tāmaki Makaurau and Te Tai Tokerau to stop protesters getting through.

Together with Navy and police staff at Te Hana, Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Whātua has turned around about 50 people from anti-vax and anti-lockdown groups throughout this morning.

Chief operating officer Antony Thompson (Ngāti Whātua) told RNZ protesters had come from both sides of the border to meet up, but none got through.

“About 20 to 25 who got started protesting … after probably about 10 minutes they were moved on.”

His team respected the right to protest but it was the wrong place and wrong time, with a growing covid-19 cluster in the Far North, he said.

“The majority of them [protesters] have dispersed, or gone home. And there’s maybe a handful of, I guess ‘hold outs’, that are hoping that more cars turn up and they can go through together.”

The rūnanga would much rather be vaccinating whānau than having to protect them from rule-breakers, Thompson said.

“Recently our whaea Dame Naida Glavish quoted ‘this hoo-ha, this hōhā’ and it really is.”

‘Incredibly disappointed’
Police said they were “incredibly disappointed” by those rallying.

In a statement this afternoon, police said more officers had been deployed to monitor “hīkoi” activity.

“Police have additional staff deployed, including our Iwi Liaison Officers, to both monitor the hīkoi travelling north as well as additional staff in Waitangi,” the statement said.

“Our focus is to ensure the current restrictions set out in the Health Order are adhered to by those involved as well as working to support our Iwi partners in Northland.

“We are working closely with our partners, including leadership of Te Tii Marae, who have indicated that the protesters are not welcome this year due to the risk posed by the delta strain of covid-19.”

Another group of protesters attempted to make it through Auckland’s southern border late on Tuesday evening, and some remained there today, blocking State Highway 1.

The chair of Te Rūnanga-Ā-Iwi-O-Ngāpuhi Wane Wharerau (Ngāpuhi, Te Māhurehure, Uri Kaiwhare, Ngāitawake ki te Waoku / Ngāitawake ki te Tūawhenua / Ngāitawake ki te Tairāwhiti, Ngāti Hine-Mutu) also put out a statement this morning.

The protesters were “particularly dangerous” attempting to get to Waitangi, he said.

Recognising ‘real Māori freedom fighters’
“It is disappointing that organisers are using He Whakaputanga, or the Declaration of Independence, as a means to bring attention to their cause.

“Ngāpuhi recognise and honour the real Māori freedom fighters whose lifelong activism and personal sacrifice meant something and moved our people forward; freedom fighters such as Eva Rickard, Dame Whina Cooper, Titewhai Harawira, Dr Matire Harwood, Rima Edwards, Matiu Rata, Sir James Henare, and Dame Cindy Kiro just to name a few.

“Almost every Ngāpuhi urupā has evidence of the thousands of whānau, some in unmarked graves,” he said, referring to those who died in the 1918 flu pandemic.

“Now, little more than 100 years after that pandemic, Te Tai Tokerau is at the point of a similar threat, but this time we have a vaccine at our disposal.

“We have not fought this virus for 20 months and tolerated the harsh restrictions around tangihanga, gathering at marae and visiting whānau, to abandon this plan now.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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