A House Divided

In 2011, the Fifth National Government set up a Constitutional Advisory Panel (CAP) as part of a confidence and supply agreement the National Party had with the Maori Party.

Although there was no pressing need to make any changes to New Zealand’s unwritten constitution, and despite the fact that there had been a constitutional review just six years before that date which found that there was no need to make any changes, the new panel set out on a two-year process of poorly-attended public meetings and seeking submissions.

The goal appeared to be to create a written constitution that was based on a particular interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Government panel sparked the formation of the hard-left Independent Constitutional Working Group, which promoted the constitution of the “plurinational” socialist state of Bolivia as the way to go.

Another group called the Independent Constitutional Review Panel appeared and did its own consultation and this became the basis of a report titled A House Divided.

Constitutional law establishes the very basic framework of how our society is run, and short and simple changes there can have immense and irrevocable effects.

It seemed to the authors of A House Divided that the official constitutional advisory process was fundamentally flawed, being designed in its terms of reference, personnel and procedures to operate and produce predetermined results without any actual genuine public awareness or input.

They had little confidence that the official CAP would reflect the widespread public unease and discontent with the ongoing progression of the Treaty industry.

Worst of all, it seemed to them that the CAP, and the intellectual and political interests it was designed to serve, were unaware, or at least not concerned about, the immense dangers into which that continued progression was leading our country.    

The Independent Constitutional Review Panel suspected that its own public meetings, advertisements and general agitation did at least as much as the official panel’s activities to bring the issues to public attention.

Their findings may be read here. See https://www.nzcpr.com/a-house-divided/   

Auckland’s ‘monster’ Maori board

A petition to abolish Auckland’s Independent Maori Statutory Board was launched in early 2017 after Revenue Minister Judith Collins called it an “unaccountable monster”. How could a council body become so troublesome?

A brief look back at how the architects of the Auckland Council, and the Auckland Council itself, have handled their obligations to enable Maori representation, suggests that the Maori board is both a statutory body looking for a purpose and another half-baked idea from central government.

First, bear in mind that only 152,000 Maori live in Auckland, a city with a population of 1.4 million, according to the 2013 census. Around 85 percent of Maori living there are from outside the city with many ambivalent about tribal affiliation.

Maori representation in Auckland became controversial in 2009, as central government worked on transforming Auckland’s seven district authorities and one regional authority into a super city.

The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance had recommended that three Maori members should be elected to a new Auckland Council by voters who are on the parliamentary Maori Electoral Roll, and that there should be a “mana whenua” forum, the members of which would be appointed by Auckland “mana whenua”.

The term “mana whenua” describes the right of particular Maori to manage a particular area of land.

Local Government Minister Rodney Hide vehemently opposed such separate Maori seats.

The Minister of Maori Affairs Pita Sharples, also the co-leader of the Maori Party, lamented Maori's loss of a "guaranteed voice".

Former Prime Minister John Key pushed separate Maori seats.[1]

In the end, central government imposed, through the Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Act 2009, a nine-member Maori statutory board to be appointed by the Maori Affairs Department but paid for by Auckland ratepayers.

The board, comprising seven “mana whenua” members and two “mataawaka” members to represent other Auckland Maori, must appoint a maximum of two persons to sit on each of the Auckland Council's committees that deal with the management and stewardship of natural and physical resources.[2]

Over-zealous councillors granted voting rights to these board members, who sit on 14 of Auckland Council’s 18 council committees as well as on other steering groups and panels.

Having un-elected representation of Maori on committees voting on transport or infrastructure, as well as the fact that the advisory board requested (and initially received) a $3.4-million yearly budget, sparked significant debate.

More uproar was to come when the board submitted a $295 million wish list for the draft 10-year plan on December 1^st, 2011. The board was told to go away and see where the board’s requests matched existing budgets.

The board went away and returned, on September 2, 2012, with 49 goals that included compulsory teaching of Maori in all Auckland schools, a naming protocol in Maori, financial literacy programmes to promote Maori engagement in trade delegations, foreign direct investment, innovation and export.[3]

Worse was yet to come. In September 2012, a working draft of the proposed unitary plan was released to iwi authorities, which proposed two levels of protection for sites and places of Maori cultural heritage. A schedule detailed 61 sites and places of significance to Maori, and a cultural heritage layer which would cover about 2231 public and private sites.[4]

By early 2013, the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan included over 3600 scheduled sites of value to mana whenua.

An assessment was required for any improvements involving earthworks on or within 50 metres of one of these alleged sites of value. Consents from numerous Auckland tribes were required. Each consultation could attract a fee.

The council website had a map showing the geographic location of each site and the area affected, each marked as a purple circle.

The Auckland Council did not wait for the unitary plan to become operative before sending consent applicants to tribes. Applicants soon found that few receipts were given.

An Auckland group named Democracy Action formed in response to what amounted to council-sanctioned extortion.

Businessman Sir Robert Jones, who spoke at the group’s first meeting at Auckland’s Aotea Centre on October 19, 2014, described what his company went through when re-instating a shop window in an Auckland central business district building.

An Auckland council planner advised that under the proposed unitary plan, not enacted at that stage, their building being within 50 metres of a designated Maori heritage site, needed Resource Management Act approval (for a new shop window), at a cost of $4500, plus the approval of 13 tribes.

The planner located then wrote to the 13 tribes, ranging from Taranaki to Whangarei. Five replied stating they had no concerns while others said they were considering the matter.

One wrote, outlining his terms for "assessing the window's cultural impact" which, he said, would take him "a total of six to eight hours". For this he sought $90 per hour plus GST and "travel expenses of 0.77c p/km."

Sir Robert wrote: "It's a classic case of bureaucrats worried about cultural correctness without thinking through the consequences. I more succinctly call it a racket”.

Democracy Action chair Lee Short told the meeting that “of the 9000 submissions on the plan, over 1100 submitters opposed either the cultural impact assessments, the shared governance proposals, or both.”[5]

Tribes did not wait for from the unitary plan to become operative before sending out demands.

On April 9, 2015, Ngati Whatua Orakei advised property owners on Auckland’s prestigious Paratai Drive that they were sitting on a “site of significance to Mana Whenua” and were required to consult “with affected iwi to ensure any development respects the cultural values and associations with that site”.

Opposition built. The Auckland Council removed 600 sites from the list on November 11, 2015, although it had planned to remove 1373 sites.[6]

Meanwhile, National Party MP Judith Collins told an ACT Party conference on December 5, 2015, that the board was an "unaccountable monster" that thinks it's "outside the law".[7]

Ms Collins said she recalled her “experience trying to get some basic information about its members. The IMSB ignored the request and ultimately I had to get the Office of the Ombudsman involved." Even under instruction from the Ombudsman, the board still refused to comply, she said.

The sites-of-significance saga continued. Mr Short of Democracy Action appeared on TV3’s Story programme on December 17, 2015, showing reporter Heather Du Plessis-Allan a dump site that was regarded as a site of value.

Eventually, on July 28, 2016, the full Auckland Council rejected the inclusion of the sites of cultural significance from the unitary plan.

Mana leader Hone Harawira was furious and said board chair David Taipari should stand down, alleging Taipari “failed to protect wahi tapu [sacred sites] in the super city”.

Goaded into action, the Maori board appealed to the High Court against the removal from the proposed unitary plan of provisions relating to sites of value for mana whenua.

The appeal was rejected on March 10, 2017, with the decision released on March 15, because of the 2213 sites proposed, only 140 had specific submissions and evidence provided from mana whenua, and only 16 were supported by detailed evidence at the hearing.[8]

This was not the first-time Maori board affairs have ended up in court. The selection of mataawaka board members prompted a challenge by Willie Jackson’s National Urban Maori Authority in 2013.

The High Court voided the selection of Maori board member Tony Kake because the panel couldn’t show it had given proper consideration to the nomination of Jackson.[9]

On March 17, 2017, unsuccessful Auckland Council candidate David Rankin, a Ngapuhi leader, launched an online petition to abolish the Maori board because the board:

·       Has worked against the interests of Aucklanders.

·       Has cost ratepayers millions of dollars.

·       Is an example of race-based politics.

·       Most of its work has been focussed on bans: on people accessing Mount Eden; bans on people developing their own sections without paying a “taniwha tax”.

·       Is anti-democratic and as an experiment, has failed.[10]

New Zealand is a long way past the stage where “Maori” interests require separate representation. Universal suffrage has existed here since 1893. Rights, services, political representation, and responsibilities are already available to all New Zealanders irrespective of culture or ethnicity.

Three of the 20 councillors elected to the first super city council were Maori, which is further evidence that there is no impediment to Maori representation.

The problems that have dogged the Maori board show that the board was an expensive mistake.

The only way to get rid of the board is by a vote in Parliament to repeal Part seven and Schedule 2 of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009.

Which MP or political party will pick up the challenge and push it through Parliament?

Whanau Ora trough grows bigger each year

The three agencies that run New Zealand’s Whanau Ora welfare had their agreements extended for another three years on May 31, 2017, even though both the purpose and the results of the programme remain a mystery.

The Government had committed $73.5 million for the 2016-2017 year to those three agencies -- Te Pou Matakana covering the North Island, Te Putahitanga o Te Waipounamu for the South Island and Pasifika Futures for Pasifika people – and the agencies said they had supported 10,500 families.

A brief look back shows the scheme has never had a coherent goal, which is a reason for its stumbling lack of accomplishment.

The programme may be traced to November 2002, when the Ministry of Health published a strategy for Maori health by encouraging what they termed “whanau development”. The term “whanau ora” means “healthy families”.

The 2008 election brought a quid pro quo confidence-and-supply deal that former Prime Minister John Key struck with the Maori Party, and part of this deal was Whanau Ora.

In June 2009, the Government set up a taskforce to look at Maori social service provision. This taskforce produced a report full of waffle and psychobabble in January 2010 called Whānau Ora: Report of the Taskforce on Whānau-Centred Initiatives.[1]

Maori Party co-leader Dame Tariana Turia launched Whanau Ora on April 8, 2010. [2] The scheme was intended to:

• Devolve and redeploy funding from the health, social welfare and Maori affairs ministries into community organisations.
• Pay for contracts to community social welfare providers, to fix truancy, crime and ill-health.
• Make families more responsible.

Touted as a one-stop welfare shop to guide dysfunctional families through the daunting New Zealand welfare system, the scheme provided “navigators” to connect families to appropriate welfare providers and funding. Turia said this would end the nonsense of having five welfare cars up a driveway to help a single whanau.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters found evidence to back his criticism that the scheme was a “bro-ocracy. He said Otaki’s Rahui Rugby and Sports Club received $60,000 in 2011 to “undertake whanau development research” on resilience, “whanau connectedness” and community leadership”.[3] 

The Dominion Post newspaper revealed a $5000 contract between Te Puni Kokiri and an unnamed Hawke’s Bay whanau of 20 members for a hui to finalise “spiritual balance” and “family development”.

In that contact, $500 went to each of two facilitators, $400 paid for a venue, $1000 funded a hangi, $600 paid a chef, there was a $500 administration fee, $300 for travel, and $1200 for resources. The agreement was signed on January 12, 2012, with $4000 paid up front in April. The final $1000 would be paid when the whanau plans were completed at the end of June. [4]

Intercepted phone calls showed that gangs regarded Whanau Ora as a model to access funding. One Dunedin person was jailed for four years for dishonestly converting $20,000 of trust money, conspiring to sell cannabis and possessing cannabis for supply.[5]

Criticism of the scheme sparked an investigation. Auditor General Lyn Provost reported in Whanau Ora: The First Four Years in 2015 that it was difficult to work out what the scheme had achieved while noting that in the first four years $40-million was swallowed up in administration.[6]

The Maori Development Ministry Te Puni Kokiri responded with Understanding whanau-centres approaches: Analysis of phase 1 (2010-2015), which amounted to a 110-page defence of the scheme.

That report argued that phase 1 was all about “strengthening provider capability” (hence the big expenditure on administration). However, gains were minimal and vaguely stated. Based on 895 whanau surveys, the report said:

• Almost two-thirds who were engaged received support from navigators and developed whanau plans.
• Some gains were in improved service access, motivation, as well as unspecified increased income, and improved employment.
• Over 70 percent experienced advances in happiness, relationships and leadership.
• 76 percent and 61 percent made advances in safety and education/training.
• Other gains included knowledge of genealogy and reduced rates of smoking.

That limited benefit has cost $380-million since 2010, with the 2017 appropriation more than double the amount earmarked in the first year:

Budget 2010 - $29m

Budget 2011 – $43m

Budget 2012 – $49m

Budget 2013 – $53m

Budget 2014 – $52m

Budget 2015 – $54m

Budget 2016 – $73m

Budget 2017 -- $76m

The Te Puni Kokiri press release dated May 30, 2017, claimed that Whanau Ora commissioning agents said they had supported 10,500 families “this year”. There was no indication of what “support” meant and no evidence was provided of that support. Te Puni Kokiri’s 2015 report for the first five years only provided data from 895 interviews.

If Whanau Ora was blindingly successful, it could be rolled out to benefit everyone and not be limited to Maori and Pasifika.

However, the gains claimed are so small and the expense is so large that a prudent administrator would probably get rid of this unfocussed, politically driven, race-based programme that should never have got off the ground in the first place.

Auckland’s ‘ancestor’ mountains

Six Auckland summits readily accessible by car are to be closed to vehicles to recognise a claimed Maori view that the summits are sacred. How did this happen?

Those who assert these volcanic cones are sacred belong to the Tupuna Maunga o Tamaki Makaurau Trust, an entity set up by the Tamaki Makaurau Collective Settlement in 2012.

Those who say cars are no problem include Devonport kaumatua Hone Mutu Retimana. He said his forebears put a road up nearby Mount Victoria, also known as Takarunga, so people could easily get to the summit to enjoy the view.[1]

The sorry saga of vehicle bans began with the settlement transferred 14 volcanic cones to the Tupuna Taonga o Tamaki Makaurau Trust.

These 14 cones are: Wiri, One Tree Hill, Mount Wellington, North Head, Mount Eden, Mount Albert, Mount Roskill, Mount St John, Mount Hobson, Pigeon Mountain, Mount Richmond, Mount Smart, Mount Victoria, and Te Tatua a Riukiuta.

The settlement also vested in the collective for a one-month period four islands -- Rangitoto, Motutapu, Motuihe, and Tiritiri Matangi -- after which the collective vested them back to the Crown.

Thirteen iwi-hapu-whanau groups were involved in the settlement. They are Ngai Tai ki Tamaki, Ngati Maru. Ngati Paoa, Ngati Tamaoho, Ngati Tamatera, Ngati Te Ata, Ngati Whanaunga, Ngati Whatua o Kaipara, Ngati Whatua Orakei, Te Akitai Waiohua, Te Kawerau a Maki, Te Patukirikiri, and Te Runanga o Ngati Whatua.

A co-governance body was set up to “govern” the 14 volcanic cones.

This body includes six representatives from the collective, six from the Auckland Council, and a non-voting Crown representative appointed for a single three-year term which could be extended.

The Auckland Council remains responsible for the day-to-day management.

Financial redress was not included. A sum of $400,000 was contributed for the set-up costs of the governance body.

Public access was guaranteed.

About six months before the settlement was signed, big tourist buses were banned from Mount Eden, and the banning of beeping, diesel-belching buses from the peak appeared popular.

When the Tupuna Maunga Authority was formed in September 2014, Mount Eden became the main target of not only a bus ban, but a total vehicle ban.[2] The summit would be “pedestrianised” although keypad-controlled retractable bollards could provide vehicular access to the less mobile.

The vehicle ban was extended to five other summits in November 2016, being One Tree Hill, Mount Wellington, Mount Albert, Mount Roskill, and Mount Victoria. There was no consultation with local boards. Questions emailed by local board members to the tribal authority were ignored.

At the same time, Auckland’s volcanic cones began to be wreathed in a metaphysical aura. The Auckland Council’s page on the Tupuna Maunga o Tamaki Makaurau Authority declared that:

Auckland’s Tupuna Maunga (ancestral mountains) hold a paramount place in the historical, spiritual, ancestral and cultural identity of the 13 iwi and hapu of Nga Mana Whenua o Tamaki Makaurau (the Mana Whenua tribes of Auckland). The maunga are at the heart of Auckland’s identity and represent a celebration of our Maori identity as the city’s point of difference in the world.[3]

Auckland was to become Tamaki Makaurau, the home of the ancestor mountains. The council website continued the eulogy:

The Tupuna Maunga are revered by Mana Whenua as the creations of Mataaho (the guardian of the Earth’s secrets) and Ruaumoko (the God of earthquakes and volcanoes). They were significant areas of settlement, of agriculture, of battles, of marriages, of birth and burial.

What do Aucklanders think? A Herald DigiPoll survey in January 2015 showed that 58 percent of Aucklanders favoured the Mount Eden ban but only 28 percent supported a ban on the five other peaks.

The vehicle ban appears to combine political correctness run wild with grandstanding by a new group flexing political muscle.

The Tupuna Maunga Authority represents few. Only 152,000 Maori live in Auckland, a city with a population of 1.4 million, according to the 2013 census. Around 85 percent of Maori living there are from outside the city with many ambivalent about tribal affiliation.

The unilateral closure of the summits by the Tupuna Maunga Authority raises two questions:

• Why do leaders of a secular city promote the primitive religion of animism?
• Why, in a society in which rights are based on citizenship and not ethnicity, has a special race-based administration of Auckland’s volcanic cones been established?

The whole sorry saga goes to show the downside of giving control of a public resource to a group of ideologues because of their ancestry.

The tribal claim for water ownership

Iwi are now not talking about [water] ownership, Freshwater Iwi Leaders Group technical adviser Tina Porou told a water symposium in Havelock North on June 2, 2017. However, just two years ago her group took a roadshow around New Zealand garnering support for the steps iwi would take to gain ownership of water, which were to:

1. Transfer of title to all Crown owned river and lake beds and title to the water column above to regional tribal groups.
2. Title in fresh water consistent with Waitangi Tribunal rulings.
3. Guaranteed allocation of fresh water for all marae and marae housing.
4. Free water infrastructure for maraes and marae housing.
5. Tribal participation at all levels of fresh water decision-making that may include tribal representation on councils, joint management agreements, and co-management of waterways.
6. A $1-billion fund of public money to build the capacity of tribes to implement fresh water management and control.
7. Tribal involvement in resource consents or an allocation of tradeable water rights.[1]

It is not as though New Zealand is likely to run out of water. According to an Environment Ministry 2016 discussion document titled Next Steps for Fresh water, New Zealand has 145 million litres per person each year – six times as much as Australia, 16 times as much as the United States, and 70 times as much as China or the United Kingdom. We use only 2 per cent.[2]

Interest in water in New Zealand increased as conversion of sheep and beef properties to dairy farming put pressure on allocation, water storage schemes came into vogue, and bottling plants exporting water to China began to appear.

In an effort to encourage more efficient allocation, the Sustainable Water Programme of Action, launched in 2003,[3] raised the issue of the ownership of water. This resembled the way that the introduction of the quota management system raised the issue of the ownership of fisheries.

Whenever the issue of the ownership of a resource comes up, a Maori claim for a share of that ownership appears. We have seen this with fisheries, forests, even electromagnetic spectrum. The Maori claim to ownership of water rests on two arguments:

1. A Maori claim to customary or aboriginal rights to water.
2. A Maori claim that rivers are taonga, a treasure, and therefore are protected under Article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi.[4]

The Government position is that water is a public resource that the Government should manage. The Labour-led Government held this position in 2003. For this reason, Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia claimed that the Sustainable Water Programme of Action was “just another foreshore and seabed catastrophe dressed up”.[5]

The common law position is that there has never been ownership of naturally flowing water. The law recognised the rights of landowners to take and use water flowing over or under their land. Such water is not owned until it has been taken.[6]

Where a waterway runs through an owner’s land, the landowner owns its bed and banks. If the waterway forms a boundary, each riparian owner owns the bed to the mid line of the waterway. The beds of all navigable rivers are vested in the Crown.[7]

Section 21 of the Water and Soil Conservation Act 1967 extinguished all common law rights to water, and the sole rights to take, use, dam, divert, or discharge natural water was vested in the Crown.[8]

The Resource Management Act 1991 maintained this position, giving the primary responsibility for managing freshwater to regional councils and unitary authorities. These bodies may establish rules to allocate water among competing uses such as town supply, irrigation, hydropower generation, environmental values, and recreation.[9]

Maori argue that they have aboriginal title or customary rights that have not been extinguished by common law or statute.[10]

The Court of Appeal has recognised the common law doctrine of aboriginal title in New Zealand. Aboriginal title may be extinguished by the Crown exercising sovereignty. Where it has not been extinguished, aboriginal title will continue to exist provided that the relevant group maintains its traditions.[11]

To advance the interests of all iwi in relation to fresh water through direct engagement with the Crown, the Freshwater Iwi Leaders Group was formed in 2007. This group comprises the leaders of Ngai Tahu, Whanganui, Waikato-Tainui, Te Arawa and Tuwharetoa and reports to all iwi.[12]

A change of Government on November 8, 2008, brought the Maori Party into a coalition with the National-led Government which brought in from the cold Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia, a vehement critic of the Sustainable Water Programme of Action.

That helped put the issue of water ownership on the agenda for the new government.

The next step in exploring the way forward for water was the Land and Water Forum, an ostensibly independent group comprising 22 member entities in partnership with the Ministries of Conservation, Internal Affairs, Environment and Primary Industries. Environment Minister Nick Smith fronted consultation meetings.

The Land and Water Forum includes five iwi, four of which also belong to the Freshwater Iwi Leaders Group.

To make the connection between the government and iwi over water more tangled, the National-led Government adopted the practice of meeting regularly with the Iwi Leaders Group in closed meetings.

A request under the Official Information Act unearthed the fact that there had been 44 such meetings from 2008 to 2014.[13]

Freshwater and reform of the Resource Management Act was discussed at eight meetings involving Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson, former Agriculture Minister David Carter, Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples, former Environment Minister Amy Adams, Environment Minister Nick Smith, and Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy.

By fostering close and personal relations with the main movers and shakers, the Freshwater Iwi Leaders Group has had substantial input into water policy, both via the Land and Water Forum and through meeting directly with Cabinet Ministers.

There was one other group that has set itself up as the champion of Maori rights and that group is the New Zealand Maori Council.

The Maori Council has just one strategy and that is to go to the Waitangi Tribunal to get a favourable recommendation, and cite that recommendation in the High Court to get an injunction to stop the Government in its tracks.

This strategy was discovered during a standoff over forestry ownership in the mid-1980s, and again in the claim for a stake in commercial fisheries around 1990.

An opportunity for the Maori Council to launch their one and only strategy came in 2011, when the National-led Government in its second term prepared to partly privatise state-owned electricity generators.

In February 2012, the New Zealand Maori Council filed two claims with the Waitangi Tribunal, arguing that “Maori have unsatisfied or unrecognised proprietary rights in water, which have a commercial aspect, and that they are prejudiced by Crown policies that refuse to recognise those rights or to compensate for the usurpation of those rights for commercial purposes”.[14]

Iwi leaders commissioned the Sapere research group to examine the benefits involved in giving iwi a share of the allocable quantum of fresh water, and in doing so, shifting the allocation system from the current resource consent regime to a rights-based regime.

The report, dated December 6, 2014, argued that to spend up to $52 million to change to a new regime, plus an annual cost of $30 million, the benefits would be: better “pricing” of water, awakening of sleeper consents, less costly droughts, reduced cost of resolving over-allocated catchments, reduced costs of conflicts, and Improved capital formation.[15]

The report cited the allocation of shares in the commercial fishery as an example with a claim that the settlement iwi rights to fishery quota increased the value of quota by about 45 percent through removing residual uncertainty about the entitlement to fish.

Of course, a fair allocation of New Zealand’s commercial fisheries quota would have been to all New Zealanders, as would a fair allocation of water rights, although such concepts are kept well away from any discussion of rights allocations.

When the Sapere report was released, the Government would not move from its official position of no national settlement on water rights.

Addressing the assertion of iwi rights and interests in fresh water formed a substantial part of an Environment Ministry’s February 2016 discussion document titled Next Steps for Fresh Water.

This document introduced the terms “Te Mana o te Wai”, which sets principles proposed for the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, and “Mana whakahono a rohe”, which provides for iwi to enter into agreements with councils on how Maori can better participate in decisions on fresh water.

Both concepts were written into law through the Resource Legislation Amendment Act passed on April 6, 2017. This Act forces all councils throughout New Zealand into power-sharing agreements with local iwi. 

Tradable water rights surfaced in discussion again with the emergence of opposition to exporting bottled water to China for no charge. An Ashburton group called Bung The Bore led by Jen Branje spearheaded the movement that drew much support from people in Havelock North, after a deadly water contamination there in 2016 forced many to buy bottled water.

Freshwater Iwi Leader Group technical adviser Tina Porou’s statement that iwi leaders are focussing on water responsibilities and use, mentioned earlier, diverts attention from the group’s detailed justification for water ownership, circulated two years ago, which demanded:

1. Transfer of title to river and lake beds and the water column to tribal groups.
2. Title in fresh water consistent with Waitangi Tribunal rulings.
3. Guaranteed of allocation of fresh water for all marae and marae housing.
4. Free water infrastructure for maraes and marae housing.
5. Tribal participation at all levels of fresh water decision-making.
6. A $1-billion capacity-building fund.
7. Tribal involvement in resource consents or an allocation of tradeable water rights.

However, the Resource Legislation Amendment Act implements the demand for tribal decision making on water and involvement in resource consents.

The Freshwater Iwi Leaders Group appears to be proceeding within that framework, adding the new term Te Mana o te Wai to their public comments.

As a matter of interest, iwi water rights claimants routinely ignore 19th century sale and purchase deeds which show that the chiefs sold the water, along with rivers, lakes, and streams, trees, minerals, and all appertaining to the land or beneath the surface.[16] 

The Labour Party’s sudden opposition to a bill that would enable some Auckland reserve land to be used in a treaty settlement for housing appears to show cracks in the claimed cross-party consensus on treaty settlements.

If there was ever a moment when you thought New Zealand had drifted into the twilight zone, that moment could be when a Minister of the Crown with a straight face said that the Wanganui River had become a person.

Data obtained under the Official Information Act shows that since November 2008 there have been at least 44 meetings between the former Prime Minister, John Key, the current Prime Minister, Bill English, other senior Ministers, and the Iwi Leaders Group.

by Hugh Barr, Don Brash, Mike Butler, Reuben Chapple, Peter Cresswell, Bruce Moon, John Robinson and David Round

One Treaty, one nation - the book every New Zealander should read. 175 years ago our forebears brought forth a new nation, conceived in trust and dedicated to the proposition that all New Zealanders would be one people, living under the same law. But for the last 40 years we have been under relentless pressure to divide the country into two groups - iwi and the rest of us.

Back in 1975 Waitangi Day and the Treaty of Waitangi Act were set up to foster a sense of nationhood and a greater awareness of the Treaty as a symbol that embraces us all. What we got instead was years of protest and vitriol while billions of dollars have been taken from everyone and handed over to private tribal trusts.