Adrian Rurawhe

Adrian Paki Rurawhe was a New Zealand Labour Party politician who served as an MP from 2014 to 2026 and as the 31st Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives from 2022 to 2023. Born in 1961 into a family steeped in Rātana and parliamentary tradition, he was a grandson of Matiu and Iriaka Rātana, both former MPs for Western Maori, and a great-grandson of Rātana Church founder T. W. Ratana. He learned relatively late that his grandmother had been an MP, a detail that later framed how colleagues spoke about the quiet depth of his political inheritance.

Before Parliament he worked in health and education, chaired Ngāti Apa for a decade, and helped negotiate the iwi's 2011 treaty settlement with the Crown through the Waitangi Tribunal. Former Eastern Maori MP Koro Wētere mentored his early interest in public life. After a period with the Māori Party between 2004 and 2008, and years working alongside relative Tariana Turia, Rurawhe won Te Tai Hauāuru for Labour in 2014 when Turia retired, defeating Māori Party candidate Chris McKenzie.

In Opposition he spoke for civil defence and emergency management, internal affairs, and Treaty of Waitangi negotiations, and he served as a junior whip after Jacinda Ardern became Labour leader. When Labour entered government in 2017 he became an assistant speaker, then deputy speaker after the 2020 election. On 24 August 2022 he was elected Speaker with cross-party support, becoming only the second Māori to hold the role after Sir Peter Tapsell. As Speaker he promised fairer questioning opportunities if ministers' answers stayed long, and he was widely described as calm, firm, and dignified in the chair.

Citing the demands of the speakership, he did not recontest Te Tai Hauāuru in 2023 and returned as a list MP at number 11. In Opposition under Chris Hipkins he held the Whānau Ora portfolio before retiring from Parliament on Waitangi Day, 6 February 2026. Rurawhe died on the morning of 29 September 2026 at Rātana Pā after a recent illness, his family announced. He was about 64 or 65. Tributes from Hipkins and Māori caucus colleagues stressed his humility, his service to iwi and church, and the mana he brought to the Speaker's Chair.