Giving back for generations to come

When it comes to seeking opportunities to invest for the benefit of future generations, Tama Potaka is on the ground looking for action.

As Senior Advisor for the NZ Super Fund’s Direct Investment team, Tama sources and creates opportunities that will help deliver on the Fund’s purpose to help pay the future cost of superannuation. Since being established in 2001, the Fund now stands at around $42 billion, with the Direct Investment team responsible for approximately 15 percent of its assets comprising investments in forestry, dairy farms, horticulture, KiwiBank, retirement villages, property developments, infrastructure and other sectors.

“We operate at a scale no other domestic investor can, which gives us a real advantage when it comes to identifying and creating investment opportunities,” says Tama. “We also hold the home town advantage, and do not have the overseas investment challenges that other scale investors have.”

His role is to engage and connect, fostering ideas and opportunities and developing investment opportunities to bring people together to secure economically-viable returns in a socially (and culturally) responsible way.

“The fund aligns particularly well with the distinct world view Māori hold as we work along the same timeframes— taking an inter-generational approach rather than a desire for shorter-term returns,” he says. “We also have the patience and understanding to work with Iwi/Māori and realise the inherent potential of Māori organisations.”

One example of his contribution to Iwi/Māori was supporting the development of the Te Pūia Tāpapa Fund, a direct investment fund made up of 26 Māori entities from across Aotearoa committing $115.5 million to the Fund, including entities such as Parininhi ki Waitōtara Incorporation (PKW) which has put $2 million toward the venture.

Te Pūia Tāpapa recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the NZ Super Fund setting out a preferred partnership arrangement that facilitates engagement when identifying large scale investment prospects.

Tama served as PKW’s first associate director and later a full Committee member (2005-2010). His whakapapa connections to Taranaki are through grandmother Sina James from Ngāruahine and Taranaki Tūturu. Tama is also linked to Ngāti Hauiti, Whanganui and has strong connections to Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Raukawa and Ngāti Toarangatira.

During the late 1990s, Tama was a recipient of the Charles Bailey scholarship which supported him attaining a Bachelor of Laws (First Class Honours) and Bachelor of Arts (Political Science, Māori Studies) from Victoria University of Wellington, before going on to gain a Masters of Law at Columbia University, New York.

Above: Whānau is important to Tama Potaka.

Tama is married to Ariana and they have a daughter, Tiaria Te Ikaroa, and two sons - Te Awarua Tamatereka and Aorangi Te Āionuku. During his time with PKW he also served as Chair for both PKW Farms Ltd and the PKW Trust. He has held a variety of governance, consultancy, research and legal roles in New Zealand, working to improve Māori access to education, establish Māori values and tikanga, ensure stakeholder engagement and opportunities for employment, and promote mahi tahi - Māori working together and collaborating for the benefit of all.

“It’s always been part of my life, always to seek out and identify opportunities that help Māori,” he says. “It is also a way to acknowledge my whānau and iwi, which includes PKW, who have helped me to get where I am today.”

He is currently working on an opportunity that seeks to bring the NZ Super Fund and several Māori organisations together to create community-based aged care and retirement facilities that hold the elderly at their heart. PKW are very much involved in the discussion as the Incorporation owns land in New Plymouth that would be ideal for this type of development.

Above: The section of PKW-owned whenua in Bell Block that could be the site of a vibrant aged-care and retirement facility.

“It’s going full circle really,” says Tama. “PKW bought the leasehold on that land in Pohutukawa Place when I was involved many years ago. Now Warwick (CEO) and Joe (General Manager Finance and Investments) are at the forefront of this mahi tahi to create this provincial commercial opportunity and have been leading the kōrero as we work through the feasibility.”

There are very few developments of this kind on Māori land on a nationwide scale, and it has taken two years to get to a point Tama calls ‘near the end of the beginning’.

“Good things take time,” he says, “especially for Māori. We are all on a journey together, supporting each other to reach our personal potential for the collective benefit of the whānau as a whole. “It’s what I set out to achieve every day.”