Pee Kay
No Minister
Do you think these houses were ever going to be temporary?
Were these houses always going to be gifted to local Māori and do you think this was the agenda all along?
What about all the non-Māori people in Hawkes Bay who lost their homes to Cyclone Gabrielle? Were they gifted homes at a “nominal” cost?
What Treaty obligations require the taxpayer to “donate” housing to a marae?
Apparently the land was originally secured under a short-term lease from the trust, and the homes were explicitly labelled “relocatable”. Thereby bypassing standard resource consents under emergency provisions allowed these to be built quickly, effectively serving as a shortcut to permanent development. So now they are permanent! Do you smell fish?
Surely this transfer of ownership raises serious questions about equality in our disaster relief funding and how government ministers seem to be using taxpayer funds to enhance their standing. I know this is a local marae but I would have expected Hawke’s Bays’ National MPs Katie Nimon and Catherine Wedd might have been involved in a display of government generosity.
By converting emergency housing into a permanent tribal asset, surely the government has established a questionable precedent?
Is the “nominal fee” wording for this transfer not just window dressing by the minister as a method of avoiding government liability, because it represents a massive transfer of taxpayer wealth to one specific ethnicity?
Potaka cited Treaty obligations as a reason for handing over the homes for a nominal fee. Does this not clearly indicate that the long-term plan was always to transfer these taxpayer assets into permanent tribal infrastructure?
This article was originally published by No Minister.
