National Portrait: Meng Foon, te reo Māori speaker, race relations commissioner

When Meng Foon told his Chinese mother he was going to study Māori at Gisborne Boys' High school, she told him it was "Sai jor hi" – a waste of breath.

This was still a decade before the first kōhanga reo opened in 1982, beginning the stuttering resurgence of the language Māori children were once beaten for speaking at school. But Foon stubbornly refused to change his mind. After all, he was born in the Year of the Pig. 

For Foon, the language was more breath of life than waste of breath. Growing up in – and eventually becoming mayor of – a region that is 45 per cent Māori, it bought him acceptance at tangihanga and hui, at marae weddings, at unveilings at the urupa.

Now, 59-year-old Foon hopes to use that ability to immerse himself in other cultures in his new role of Race Relations Commissioner.

Where better to start, you might think, than making te reo compulsory in schools. Foon reckons all primary school children should learn Māori, but beyond that, he's not sure forcing language lessons on the unwilling would be useful.

He began learning Māori at tiny Makaraka primary school. Real-world practice came from the "aunties and uncles" who visited the family vege shop, and the workers in his father's market garden, where he toiled after school and during holidays, weeding pumpkins and driving the tractor from the age of about eight.

At intermediate the language was non-existent, but he picked it up again at secondary school.

Rather than forcing all teens to learn Māori, Foon would prefer to see more focus on New Zealand stories, in place of the tales of Shakespeare and Napoleon of his childhood. From the wars, land confiscations and cultural suppression endured by Māori to the poll tax and discrimination suffered by the Chinese immigrants who came before him.

"I'm sure that will help our community in understanding where each person actually came from, and the struggles and tribulations of them ... Language and stories go together. I think you'll get more children taking up Māori if they have a feeling for the stories – good, bad and ugly. The stories need to be told."

​Foon is casual in jeans, boots and jacket. After 24 years on Gisborne District Council, including almost 18 as mayor, he still speaks like a politician, hedging answers, side-stepping difficult questions. To be an effective commissioner, he will have to be less afraid to speak his mind.

Taking over in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque massacre, in the midst of Māori land protests at Ihumātao and with the looming commemoration of 250 years since Captain Cook's arrival in New Zealand, it's either a golden opportunity to talk race relations, or a year where divisive views could flare into conflict.

Foon prefers to see it as an opportunity. Christchurch taught us that there were ethnic communities whose concerns were falling on deaf ears. It's his job to fight for the Muslim community, but also to listen to other ethnicities who feel they're not being heard, such as the Māori and Pacific communities who feel unfairly treated by the justice, health and education systems.

Foon is cagey about just how racist New Zealand is, and whether institutionalised racism exists. There are vocal phobics, but on the whole he thinks New Zealanders are pretty good. So why take the job?

"There needs to be continuous advocacy, lobbying, education – inspiring our communities to be better."

Neither will he commit support to introducing laws outlawing so-called hate speech. He doesn't agree with Israel Folau's social media posts that gay people (and others) are going to hell, and it would "be nice for him not to continue".

"If it's hurtful to a particular party and degrades their dignity, I'm against that type of speech. If speeches create violence – hate speech that incites public violence, that needs to be nipped in the bud."

But he'll wait for the Human Rights Commission investigations before deciding if legislation is the answer.

And when it comes to the Tuia 250 commemorations of Cook's arrival, which will centre on Gisborne, Foon believes it's a chance to both educate and build unity.

"Let's not hide from our history. Let's have a good conversation about the things that have happened in the past. It wasn't the best beginning when Cook came to New Zealand and shot Māori in the Tūranga (Gisborne) area. Let's have those debates. At the same time, let's unite together for the future of our nation as well."

If there's a typical Chinese immigrant story, Foon's might be it. His father, Liu Sui Kai, fled China to Hong Kong with his family during the Japanese invasion. In 1947, he came to Gisborne as a young man, got into market gardening and later married Foon's mother, Ng Heng Kiu, in an arranged marriage in Hong Kong.

The couple worked hard, the kids worked hard, the business grew and the Foons slowly built an empire, buying a mall and building a police station. Foon's latest venture is buying a commercial campground at Tatapouri, which his son Nathan is returning from Auckland to transform into a camping retreat.

Foon's family missed the persecution of early Chinese goldfield immigrants, who were saddled with the poll tax and forced into mixed marriages because so few Chinese women were allowed to migrate. While he remembers the odd "Ching, Chong, Chinaman" chant growing up, he hasn't experienced much racist abuse. But he argues discrimination against Chinese people in general has never stopped since those goldfield days.

"People say, oh yes, – there you go  Chinese people buying up land and making no contribution. That's flippant. Even a blind person can see what Chinese or Asian people have contributed to the country, in terms of employment, economic contribution, cultural wellbeing."

​Foon grew up speaking Cantonese and Seyip at home and his 39-year marriage to Ying was also arranged in the Chinese tradition. But his three children have forged their own paths. Now the family bloodlines have diversified, with United States, Iranian, Croatian, Jewish, Nordic, Irish and English contributions.

"My children, we encouraged them to marry Chinese people, and none of them listened, so their hearts went to other people."

Perhaps that's good news for Foon's job, which is to listen to – and give voice to – all races, not just the Chinese communities whose interests he championed as a former head of the New Zealand Chinese Association.

Foon is mulling a mantra of "educate, expose and eradicate", with regard to racism. But when it comes to his own unlikely success, as a te reo-speaking Chinese mayor in a region with one of the country's highest Māori populations, Foon likes to quote former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping:

"He said, 'It doesn't really matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it can catch mice'."