Do we like Matiu Walters?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record and genuine community good, held back from the top because his stance on LGBTQ+ and climate issues is thinly documented.
Walters is the voice of Six60, the band that began as flatmates at Otago University in Dunedin and took their name from their 660 Castle Street address. They started as a student covers band and grew into one of New Zealand's biggest acts. He once dreamed of being an All Black, which is a very Kiwi origin story for a frontman.
The formative thing is his Māori identity. He has said he comes from strong Māori families, Te Rarawa, Te Aupouri and Ngāpuhi, but grew up in Mt Eden, Auckland, without much of that cultural knowledge, and he described feeling “caught in this kind of middle ground”. Working on a te reo version of a band song opened the door for him to learn more.
The biggest stoush on file isn't his doing. In 2022 Australian broadcaster Rowan Dean criticised a Six60 tour poster written entirely in te reo Māori. The band answered with humour, posting his clip and offering him free tickets “if he wants to experience some positivity”. The 1News report attributes that to the band, not to Walters by name.
The other bump was in 2019, when some concertgoers at the Christchurch You Are Us benefit objected to the song Vibes, which has lyrics about guns and bullets. The promoter backed the band, saying the song is about love and shouldn't be read out of context. The Herald piece carries no direct statement from the band.
On the harm test, the searches turned up no harmful statements from him about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and no troubling company. His recent work is the band's own albums and touring. The flip side is that there are also no big statements of support from him on trans rights or climate that I could find, so this is a clean pass rather than a gold star.
The good stuff is real. In 2020 the band auctioned memorabilia, including a jacket Walters wore on stage, for the Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre. Walters said they had wanted to get behind the centre for a while. He has also helped bring te reo Māori into the band's music, and the 2026 airport stunt was built around staying connected to your roots.