Tāmati Coffey

Conquering crippling shyness and first degree burns to become multi-faceted national identity - the Tāmati Coffey story

Tāmati Coffey a fish of small proportions? 

Surely not?  

Yet the phrase “small fish, big pond” is the refrain stuck on repeat play as he talks In Profile through his life’s timeline.

His insistence in branding himself as small fish is a baffling concept to wrestle with considering he’s someone who’s spent the past 17 of his 42 years in the public eye.

That span has carried him from television personality to politician. Should anyone need reminding, he’s now into his second term as a Labour MP so he’s hardly a tiddler in either pond. 

But downplaying himself is what comes naturally to him.   

It’s a trait he’s inherited from his staunchly working class parents, coupled with the painful shyness that bedevilled him as a child. 

His parents, Gerald and Rangi Coffey, were Hutt Valley factory workers who’ve never deviated from the assertion they’re “very ordinary people”.

Their son reasons he’s no different, nor does he ever intend to be. 

However, the years he’s spent in such high profile occupations means he’s become regular media fodder.

Tāmati’s been on the cover of the Woman’s Weekly at least half a dozen times, maybe more, he’s unsure of the exact tally. Several of the framed covers hang on the walls of the Hinemoa Point home he shares with husband Tim Smith and son Tutanekai. 

Despite so much national exposure there are still rich pickings for In Profile to delve into. It comes with having the home town advantage, so let’s land this self-styled “small fish” and fillet it down to its backbone.

Childhood scaring

We choose that anatomical part because it’s not widely known Tāmati’s back isn’t as camera lens-friendly as his face. 

The reason is that as a kid of seven or eight his back was badly scalded.

He shares how this came to be.

“As a working class family we didn’t have much money when I was growing up which meant my parents couldn’t afford a heater. On cold winter’s mornings we’d turn on the oven, open the door and sit in front of it. One particularly cold day I sat on the door and and my weight sent a pot of boiling water on the stove top  down onto my back causing first degree burns. I was in and out of hospital for a long time as surgeons repaired the damage.

“It was pretty traumatic and the reason I couldn’t swim until I was an adult because I didn’t want to take my shirt off and let people see my scars. I love swimming now.”

There’s something else unrecorded we’ve been dying to know about Tāmati Coffey for years. For someone so proudly Maori where did  such an un-Maori surname come from?

It’s inherited from his father Gerald’s Pakeha whakapapa. 

Tāmati says the Coffey name’s a dime a dozen in Cork, Southern Ireland, and Taranaki.

Its appearance there dates back to about 1863 when an ancestor of his pitched up there.

“The story is he arrived in New Plymouth on a sailing ship, fell in love with a beautiful local Maori maiden and married her. The name is very common among whanau and iwi in Taranaki to which I’m closely connected.”

Discovering being different

That established, we change tack and ask that hoary old “when did you discover you were gay?” question that’s inevitably posed to those who prefer to be with people of a similar gender.

In Tāmati’s case it was when he was on the cusp of adolescence, bemused that he found himself attracted to TV’s Beverly Hillbillies character, Jethro.

“It was at a time when schoolmates of a similar age began to pair up as boyfriend and girlfriend setting each other’s hearts fluttering.”

He became conscious they were in a mould he didn’t fit. “I wanted to be a small fish in a big pond and carve out my little world.”

He began to enjoy ‘being different’ when he joined the Hutt Repertory Theatre and immediately felt at home. His mum enrolled him, hoping to cure his crippling shyness.

His first secondary school year at Lower Hutt’s Taita College was an uncomfortable one. He felt very much the odd one out.

“I had a serious conversation with my mother about finding another high school. She said ‘Convince me and your dad where’. I was passionate about it and got schools’ names out of the Yellow Pages.

“I sent for their prospectus. Onslow College was the first to get back.  It had a really good arts programme that involved productions, theatre sports and debating. I satisfied my parents it was the place for me.”

Their approval came with the stipulation that he also had to prove himself academically. 

Well, did he? “I thought I was a diligent kid but when I was invited back a couple of years ago to give the graduation speech the principal dug out my reports and they told a different story.

“She looked at them and said ‘You weren’t here all that often’. I had to admit I had a friend with a car and there were times we’d wag, go into town and feel like adults. But I really liked school.”

Onslow held another attraction for him; its students didn’t wear a uniform.

“We were individuals with our own dress sense and hair styles. That really helped me find myself in that big pond.”

It also taught him independence. “I had to catch two trains to get there which meant for two hours a day I was without someone looking over my shoulder.”

Life beyond schoolyard

Out of  Onslow he took a gap year working in a Wellington music store before heading to a café job in Auckland. It was his first taste of the hospitality industry in which he’s now entrenched. 

I moved up there with my first long-term boyfriend. We were a couple of young gay guys who really were small fish in a big pond, but we soon built up a network of friends.

“We marvelled at the fabulousness of the gay guys and girls in Ponsonby Road and at the gay parade. It was great to know there were other people like me out there.”

In 1999 Tāmati signed on for an Auckland University arts degree, aiming to graduate with a double major in history and political science “with a few other papers around the edges”.

University for him was a giant-sized pond but his small fish syndrome didn’t last beyond Orientation Day when he discovered his “Auckland tribe”.

“There were a whole lot of Maori students from all over there and that really spun my mind.”

By his third year he’d become president of the Maori Students’ Association.

His political awareness was also given a kick start, although he didn’t embrace any particular party. 

“My family had never belonged to one but had only ever voted Labour. We’ve always been a Labour family going right back.” 

Civil Union vows, parenthood

His television career was launched in his final university year. It ran until 2013 when he flicked the off switch.

“I’d done a decent time there. It had never really been my career path, and at university I used my brain quite a bit more.”

He was in television when he met Tim Smith in a Karangahape Road bar.

Tāmati had been a long time proponent for the gay rights movement and was a staunch advocate for the Marriage Equality Act. He and Tim exchanged vows in a celebrity-packed civil union ceremony soon after it became legal to do so.   

“We’re now celebrating 10 years of married bliss.”

From the outset they wanted a family. It made headlines that their son Tutanekai (“I call him Bubba”) was carried by a surrogate mother.

“She’s a friend of a friend we turned to after exhausting Facebook groups. We fell in love with her, her crazy kids and her mum.”

He describes surrogacy as a very scientific process.

“You are making a baby in a lab with Petri dishes and microscopes … Tim is the dad … it took first time.”

The plan is there’ll be a sibling for ‘Bubba’, now two and a half, within the next year or so. Another woman’s taking over pregnancy duties.

“She’s happy to give us her womb. We are about to embark on this journey with her and her family.”

This time round Tāmati will be the donor dad. It’s not for the first time. 

“I helped another couple out with a baby. There’s a beautiful little four-year-old girl out there who knows I’m her dad. Bubba plays with her and with his brothers and sisters by default [their surrogate and surrogate-to-be’s children]. 

Tāmati and Tim were drawn to Rotorua to live. It’s his mother’s turangawaewae (place to stand). 

They bought a house in Kawaha Point before they married. In 2013 they became permanent residents and founded their first enterprise, Ponsonby Road Lounge Bar, now the International Hotel Cocktail Lounge. Our House restaurant followed.  

Political career 

Tāmati admits he was “green and wet behind the ears” when, in 2014,  he stood for Labour in the Rotorua electorate. He lost to long term National MP Todd McClay.

“It was a great experience. I came out saying everyone should stand for public office because it’s both character building and soul destroying.”

Then list MP now Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, encouraged him to stay with politics.

“She said ‘Don’t give up’. That conversation really stayed with me. She’d stood unsuccessfully a couple of times.”

The story of Tāmati’s political career in the Waiariki seat is too well documented to repeat.

But we do ask if it hurt to be dumped as the sitting member last year and become a list member by default?

To him it’s not a demotion. “The night I lost I gave myself a kick in the backside and woke up next morning with a completely different mindset. 

“It’s still a challenging job, it’s a job like no other.  Democracy is where people are paid to oppose you. It’s bizarre.”

One final question -  how does he view Rotorua?

“It’s always been a safe place for me, the place where steam comes up out of the ground. We weren’t endowed with such geographic features in the Hutt Valley. Rotorua was where we came for school holidays, Christmas. “I was surrounded by aunties, cousins, my koro was here.

“It was home before I knew it was home.”