Oranga Tamariki Chairman Matthew Tukaki at a MATES GAT

Matthew Tukaki joins the MATES crew at a General Awareness Training

This morning we were thrilled that Matthew Tukaki joined us to participate in a MATES General Awareness Training on-site at Icons Voco Hie, Field Officers Richard Hepi and Raman Lee led the Korero with the team on site.

Mathew is Chairman – Ministerial Advisory Board at Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children, he is also Executive Director of the Māori Council and chair of the National Māori Authority. Mathew was also the chair of the Suicide Prevention Office in Australia until his return to New Zealand last year. 

Matthew is a strong advocate for evidence based suicide prevention programmes. It was great to have Matt sitting amongst the guys and girls in the smoko room, joining in with the GAT.

Towards the end, he spoke to the guys in the room about the impact of suicide in our industry and what MATES is doing to prevent it, watch the full clip down below.