“E tū ki te kei o te waka kia pakia koe e ngā ngaru o te wā.” Stand at the stern of the canoe and feel the spray of the future biting at your face. Api Mahuika’s famous saying is a fitting image for Joe Williams and his life of service to our law.
The Honourable Justice Sir Joe Williams hails from an iwi called Ngāti Pūkenga from Manaia in the Coromandel. It was once described, he says with a smile, as a ‘’small but pugnacious tribe’’, by a native land court judge in the 1870s. He is proud of his Te Arawa heritage. Joe was the first in his family to gain School Certificate. With a Bachelor of Laws from Victoria University and a Master of Laws from the University of British Columbia, Sir Joe worked as a specialist in Māori issues law. He went on to be appointed Chief Judge of the Māori Land Court in 1999, the Chairperson of the Waitangi Tribunal in 2004, a High Court Judge in 2008, and in 2018 and 2019 respectively a Court of Appeal and then Supreme Court Judge.
JANZ: Joe, you were raised by your great uncle and great aunt who moved to Hastings for work before you were born. Tell us about growing up there.
Sir Joe Williams: I was raised by my kuia and koroua who brought up a whole generation of us cousins as if we were brothers and sisters. This was common at the time, and still is in Māori whānau.
It was very obvious to me, from a young age, that being brown was not a good thing from the perspective of the wider community. I was very aware of the fact we were not treated the same as my Pākehā peers.
There were small things. You walk into a shop – they watch you. We would go to a place to buy something significant, like a piece of furniture, not just the dairy. I was just a little kid, 10 or 11, but I was painfully aware of the way people who worked in the shop treated us, compared with others.
So, what about home and school life?
My home was a very Māori, poor home. My kuia and koroua were pensioners by the time I was 10, so almost no money. All of us kids had jobs — paper rounds, milk rounds, fruit picking to help out. The freezing works, where the koroua had worked, in the summer holidays. Home was a railway station of relations who came sometimes for extended stays, and eventually went again. The whānau network was a living web of obligations.
Because I was a bright kid, my peers were kind of lower-middle-class white kids. This reflected the structural biases of New Zealand’s education system back then. And it still does. So, my Pākehā mates smelt like success — and we [my whānau] didn’t.
To a kid growing up in Hastings, it was as obvious as hell. And so I kind of tried to fit, but I couldn’t. That was very difficult.
I got a scholarship to go to Lindisfarne College in Hastings — a private Presbyterian school. That was harder still because my peers were the doctors’, dentists’, lawyers’, and farmers’ sons of Hawke’s Bay. But the education I received was excellent, not least because the teachers had high expectations of all of us, including me. The gift of high expectation is not to be underestimated.
How did you come to study law?
I wasn't planning on studying law when I entered Victoria University until I bumped into some young Māori law students, including Annette Sykes and Shane Jones.
I listened to them arguing over a statutory interpretation problem. I thought, 'Boy this law thing sounds pretty cool.' I had no idea what a lawyer was but I loved to argue!
When I told my big brother I was going to law school, he said to me, in language more colourful than this, “Are you going to join the police?” He had no idea what a law course was either. Once I started at law school and realised the power of law, there was no looking back.
We asked around and uncovered your hidden musical talents. Te Taura Whiri Chief Executive Ngahiwi Apanui met you as a student at Victoria University of Wellington, and together in the 1980s you were part of the ground-breaking band Aotearoa. A former bandmate says he was proud and overjoyed when you were appointed to the Supreme Court. He says you had charisma and an X factor, whether you were leading fellow students on the marae or on the bandstand, or arguing the case for Māori in wider forums.
Music remains a big part of my life. I currently listen to Teeks, but I don’t plan on taking the musical stage anytime soon … well unless someone asks me nicely.
Tell us about your judicial life. How did that start for you?
Judging has been my passion for the last 20 years. I’ve had several careers now on the bench (at least that is how it feels). I started off as Chief Judge of the Māori Land Court and later Chairperson of the Waitangi Tribunal as well. In these jobs, I worked in Te Ao Māori on the reconstruction of the Māori political economy that started in the 1990s and continues still.
Then you made a move into the High Court. How different was that for you?
It was a big change to shift from there (an area in which I was very comfortable) to becoming a generalist in the High Court, and I found the transition pretty difficult, to be honest. But my colleagues on the bench were very supportive and patient with me and I eventually found my feet. I loved the variety of High Court work, and it always felt like a privilege to be in a position to make decisions in relation to litigants that appeared before me — usually the most important decisions any public official is likely to make in the lives of those who came to court.
You then moved into the Court of Appeal. How was that appointment different to your work in the High Court?
I enjoyed doing divisional, criminal, and civil appellate work in the High Court so was really pleased when I was offered a job in the Court of Appeal. That court is the busiest court in the country, and the variety of work is truly amazing. Also, I got to work alongside some of the cleverest people I’ve ever met, and so learnt a great deal in my short time there before walking down the road to the court I now sit in as the Junior Judge. The work in the Supreme Court is similar yet very different. Far fewer cases and the chance to deep dive into them in a way that is just impossible in the Court of Appeal. The work is magnificent and so is the collegiality.
So apart from music what are your other interests?
Outside work I am also a keen waka ama paddler, fisherman, and petrol head of the rigidly Ford variety. I own a 1972 Ford Fairlane and a 1984 Ford Falcon, both of which I tinker with, without ever having the time to finish the do-up job that, 20 years ago, I promised myself (and the cars) I would do. So there’s a couple of retirement projects for me as long as fossil-fuelled cars are still legal when I turn 70.
Where is your favourite place to go and where would you like to visit overseas?
I’m originally from Manaia in the Coromandel in the sense that that’s where my section of Ngati Pukenga is from, and that is my favourite place to go. The fishing is great and the village life is nice and slow. But when this COVID thing ends, my partner Gillian and I plan to take an extended trip to Ireland to chase down my Pākehā relations, so I’m also looking forward to discovering my other turangawaewae.
We hear you are a passionate cook. What's your best dish?
My favourite dish is creamed pāua done to my secret recipe. Everyone who tries it comes back for more!
Joe, why is it important that our judges stay connected?
Judging can be a very lonely job. Partly that’s because the decisions we must make are difficult ones and so we live inside our own heads a lot of the time, thinking… thinking… Ours is not a naturally socially connected job. But solitude is also part of the job because we must be both apparently and actually independent. We are required to maintain a measure of distance from the community we serve while still being a part of that community. It's complicated. Only judges really know what that tension is like. So, it is really important that we reach out to and support one another, particularly when the going gets tough, as it always does. In fact, if the going doesn’t get tough on a relatively regular basis, we’re probably not doing our job properly.
We introduced this interview with a proverb. Do you have a treasured whakataukī?
My favourite whakataukī reflects the burden of the job. Though very much a rebel to begin with, in his later years Te Kooti became a great supporter of the law. One of the many waiata he composed (he was a prolific composer) contains the following line:
Ka kuhu au ki te ture, hei mātua mo te pani.
I seek refuge in the law, for it is a parent to the oppressed.
For all of law’s faults and problems, I believe that Te Kooti was fundamentally right.