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Black Ferns champ recognised
Co-captain of the world champion Black Ferns Ruahei Demant was named a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to rugby in the King’s Birthday Honours list, the latest of a series of accolades for the former Mahurangi College student.
Demant was raised in the Bay of Plenty before moving to the Warkworth area with her family, aged 11.
By 2013, the touch rugby enthusiast was Mahurangi College head girl.
In 2018, she was selected for the Black Ferns – three years after her sister Kiritapu – and last year co-led the national team to the world title. World Rugby named her Women’s 15s player of the year for 2022.
Demant joined her fellow co-caption Kennedy Simon in being recognised in the Honours, and the team’s former coach Wayne Smith was knighted.
Educator honoured
Sandspit-based Michael Absolum, one of the country’s most highly regarded education evaluators, was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to education in the King’s Birthday and Coronation Honours.
Over more than 40 years, Absolum has worked as a teacher, lecturer, psychologist and Education Review Office reviewer. In 1999, he founded Evaluation Associates, a company helping educators to raise achievement and reduce outcome disparity for students.
His 2007 book Clarity in the Classroom has been described as the leading New Zealand text on assessment for learning.
“It feels weird, really,” Absolum said, commenting on his award. “I think awards are a good thing until you get one yourself and you think, ‘Me? Really?’ And then the texts and emails and messages flood in.”
An unexpected benefit was a reconnection with people he hadn’t seen in years – one of whom had been in his new entrant class. Another bonus was the fact his daughter, her husband and children were visiting on King’s Birthday Monday.
“They woke up, and I insisted that they read the Herald,” he laughed.
The honour came 11 years after Absolum’s wife and fellow education professional, Mary Chamberlain, became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Working with the Education Ministry’s Kāhui Ako education and training initiative, she has had considerable involvement with schools in the area.
Michael and Mary have lived in Sandspit for 10 years, but their association with the coastal settlement goes back decades, since he began visiting a long-standing resident in the mid-1970s. When his friend died aged 90, Michael became a trustee of his estate, and by then they had “become so attracted to the whole area that we decided to that we’d move up from urban Auckland”.
Absolum said he and Mary were now “reasonably retired”, even as their thriving enterprise, Evaluation Associates, continues to support schools’ efforts to develop their assessment systems.
“We’ve been lucky enough and smart enough, I think, to see our company get to the size where it’s able to provide high-quality services to teachers and school leaders,” he said. “We’re very, very proud of that.”
From their striking home overlooking the estuary, they enjoy a lifestyle featuring a fishing boat, membership of the Warkworth Golf Club and the Sandspit Residents and Ratepayers Association – and are friends of Heron’s Flight vineyard owner David Hoskins, “drinking the wine in great quantities”.
Golf, fishing, wine – what a combination!
Commissioner recognised
King’s Birthday Honours recipients with links to the Mahurangi area include Kevin Prime (Ngāti Hine), a commissioner of the Environment Court since 2003. Prime has played a key role in the court’s marathon appeal hearing against the granting of resource consent for a regional mega-dump in the Dome Valley.
The court is currently considering its decision.
Prime, of Motatau, is a farmer, forester and conservationist. He has been made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) recognising more than half a century’s service to Māori, the environment and health.
A member of the Waitangi Tribunal since 2021, the 79-year-old’s numerous previous awards and honours include that of Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, in 2016, for services to conservation and Māori.
