Unveiling of the statue of Sir George Grey

Uuia kia Ranginui e tuu iho nei - ia Papatuanuku e takoto ake nei - tohia nga hua o te tau - hue haa!

E weehi ano to te rangi - e weehi ano to te whenua - e weehi ano to te takiwa - tihei mouri ora!

Tuu mai e te maunga tapu Tararua - tuu mai! Tuu mai! E rere nga wai tuku-kiri oo Ruamahanga - e rere i too rere - pera i te hunga kua wehe atu ki te reo karanga o aitua - haere, haere, haere oti atu raa - ratou kia ratou!

E nga mana whenua o papawai - ki te Wairarapa e tau nei - me nga iwi katoa - tenei te mihi atu - tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

Your Worship Mr Read and Mrs Read, Honourable Wyatt Creech and Mrs Creech, Chairman and member of the Greytown Heritage Trust Board and of the Greytown Community Board, Trustees of Papawai Marae, Mr Harry Watson, people of Greytown, ladies and gentlemen.

I have acknowledged the wairua and all the ancestral presences in this place - the sacred mountain Tararua, the flowing waters of Ruamahanga. I have acknowledged too, the mana whenua of Greytown, and everyone gathered here today. I greet you one and all.

The erection of this statue of Sir George Grey, to be unveiled 100 years to the day after his death, has certainly been controversial. The papers reported that not all here were applauding the memory of this man; feeling, perhaps, that the monument would signal a kind of endorsement of everything that Sir George Grey did in these parts, everything that followed the land sales he brought about, even, perhaps, all that he did elsewhere in New Zealand too and the effects of that. The controversy was no bad thing. We need to be aware of our history, of the negative as well as the positive, just as we need to remember that history is as much a matter of perception, or the perception of those who lived at the time, or of us as we look back, as much of perception, then and now, as of clear, undisputed fact.

There is a line from Shakespeare's play "Julius Caesar," that may, perhaps, be particularly appropriate for this occasion. It's from the "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech - Mark Antony promises his audience that he has come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. Well, I have come today to unveil a likeness of Sir George, without any intent of asserting that his record was perfect, or that everything that he did and accomplished in the Wairarapa was entirely ethical, because, plainly, neither claim is likely to be true.

Immediately following the claim that he does not want to praise Caesar, Shakespeare also has Mark Antony say that the criticism of Caesar was that he was an ambitious man, and that, while any evil that he did would live after him, any good was in danger of being interred with his bones. That he was ambitious would indeed seem to be true of Sir George. Yet to cast him as an unmitigated villain, unworthy of any place whatsoever in our historical memory, is surely to go too far. He was a man of very considerable ability and vision. His behaviour was like yours and mine, a mixture of the good and the bad, the praiseworthy and the blameworthy. What sets him apart from you and me however, is the power of his personality and the fact that his actions took place in a context where, and at a time when, they were to have much more far-reaching consequences than most decisions we are ever likely to take. And to judge them fairly, we must judge him by the standards and the context of his time.

It used to be - forty, fifty and more years ago - that Grey was regarded quite uncritically. The Pakeha New Zealand picture was that he was something of a colonial-era hero, which, of course, is how some of his contemporaries saw him. Then, tardily, we began to take a more genuine interest in our nation's history, evidence for that being our increased willingness to see noteworthy figures in our past in more than the one dimension, perhaps going too far in the other, the highly critical direction.

So by unveiling a statue of the man whose name this town bears, and who had much to do with its establishment, we are not committing ourselves to applauding everything that he might have done, or that he did not do. Instead, we simply acknowledge that he was immensely influential in the life of this country, in setting its course, and that the outcome of many of his actions is still becoming apparent. This is reminiscent of Chairman Deng's reply, when he was invited to compare the Chinese Revolution of 1949 with the French Revolution of 1789. What did he think of the French Revolution, Chairman Deng was asked. It was really too soon to tell, he responded.

From all historical reports, George Grey appears to have been a remarkable man; a great all-rounder, but very much the autocrat; very much the man of action; a wheeler-dealer to use an American term; a 'take-charge' sort. If he thought a goal desirable - a goal such as the purchase of large tracts of land and their immediate agricultural settlement, for example - he drove his officials to reach that goal, and if it were not, would set to work himself to achieve it, by cajolery, with veiled ultimatums, or not wholly-honest guarantees of the benefits which could be reaped in exchange. Yet at the same time, he was also one of those genuine Victorian gentleman scholars, possessed by an omnivorous curiosity, fluent in te reo Maori after a few years, and genuinely interested in tikanga Maori, publishing a classic collection of Maori legends.

I said that history can be very much a matter of perception, and while on the one hand there are those who see ample reason not to honour his memory, others had a different view. On his death, Maori sent a message: Ka nui matou aroha ki a koe - Great was our love for you.

So even though the consensus probably is that, as the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand used to put it, Grey "fell short of greatness", he remains one of the key figures in a hugely important time in our nation's recent history. For that reason alone, to remind us of the events of that period - and the promises made, the expectations raised, the understandings reached - that there is a statue of Sir George Grey in the town named after him, should not be seen to be a bad thing.

Rather, it is intended to "promote awareness of historical issues" in Greytown: hopefully, it will encourage local historical research - a goal already part-reached, perhaps - and it will encourage the preservation of the historical fabric of the town. And because history is of little value unless it teaches us lessons for the present and the future, this statue will, I hope, be a constant reminder of the human frailty of us all, and of the need for us all to strive together for justice, for harmony and for unity in our communities.

Confident that the statue should so serve, my congratulations to all those who have contributed to this event, particularly the members of the Greytown Heritage Trust, to members of South Wairarapa District Council, and to the sculptor, Mr Harry Watson.

Without further ado, I shall now unveil the statue of New Zealand's fourth, and sixth, and longest-serving Governor, and then Premier, Sir George Grey. May this likeness of him indeed encourage, as intended, not Sir George Grey's glorification, but an on-going commitment to understand the history of this community in which he played such a prominent early part.