Muriel Newman
Dr Muriel Newman established the New Zealand Centre for Political Research as a public policy think tank in 2005 after nine years as a Member of Parliament.
In 2019, under the guise of implementing the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government adopted “Vision 2040” – the blueprint of radical Māori to replace democracy with tribal rule by 2040.
Drafted by a panel appointed by then Māori Development Minister Nanaia Mahuta, He Puapua was so explosive that Labour kept it hidden from their coalition partner New Zealand First – and also from voters – in the run up to the 2020 election.
Once Labour won an outright majority, He Puapua was bulldozed out by Labour’s Office for Māori Crown Relations – an agency of over 200 staff that worked in collaboration with iwi leaders.
The outrage that followed He Puapua’s discovery did not stop Jacinda Ardern from forcing illegitimate co-governance and Treaty partnership arrangements across the state sector and beyond. Those actions played a key role in Labour’s downfall.
Once the new National-led government was established, it was heartening to find ‘Stop all work on He Puapua’ was one of their policy commitments.
And while the Coalition’s main focus has been on reversing key He Puapua measures including repealing Three Waters and the Māori Health Authority, the tribal push for power has now switched to a new target – local government.
He Puapua outlined a strategy for the tribal takeover of local government. The measures included: expanding Treaty obligations to local government, transferring Council Resource Management Act consenting powers to iwi and accrediting tribal Hearing Commissioners, increasing the number of Māori Seats to 50:50, giving tribes effective control of freshwater along with royalties for water usage, and exempting Māori freehold land from rates.
Māori wards have created the pathway to achieve a number of these goals – at speed.
By abolishing the petition right, Labour opened the door for councils to change the voting system to introduce Māori wards, without the public having any recourse. Changing the way electors elect their representatives, without giving electors a say, is inconceivable in a modern democracy – yet not when Labour was in charge.
While separatists argue the tribal voice around the council table is still in a minority, that ignores the fact that Māori are now seriously over-represented in local government at 21.6 percent. As a result, when Māori elected in Māori seats join forces with Māori councillors in general seats, through the support of sympathetic councillors pushing environmental and social justice causes – they will often have a majority.
An effective tribal takeover of local government by stealth is now underway.
The Northland Regional Council provides a case study of how it works.
Their council of nine has two Māori seats and three councillors who campaigned on environmental concerns. This ‘coalition’ of radical interests, which now controls the council, is responsible for on-going dysfunction including leadership coups and counter coups.
In addition, the council has a Māori Advisory Group of 21 members representing competing tribal interests throughout the north. There’s also pressure from the Northland Iwi Leaders Forum.
As a result of tribal coercion, in April the council adopted “Vision 2040”, their Māori Advisory Group’s Treaty Strategy and Implementation Plan – a local government equivalent to He Puapua. The council is now effectively co-governed by Māori.
Their objectives include increased voting rights for the council’s iwi advisors, more funding for tribal involvement in council activities, staff time allocated to facilitate Māori engagement, more iwi employed by council, more iwi contracts with Council, transfer of the Council’s resource consenting powers to iwi, greater use of Māori cultural values including tikanga and Mātauranga Māori by the council, greater tribal control of freshwater, more funding for tribal economic development, and the facilitation of Resource Management Hearing Commissioners through funding more than $2,000 per person for three iwi members a year to become certified.
Taken together, the initiatives demanded by the Māori Advisory Group will cost the Council over $1.5 million a year.
It is little wonder that rates around the country are now almost double the OECD average!
In addition to all of this, there are three Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements with the council that have been independently set up under legislation passed by the National government in 2017, giving tribal groups further rights of involvement in local government decision making.
All in all, tribal capture is now crippling the Northland Regional Council. That means it is crippling Northland. In fact, the council opposed the government’s Fast-Track Bill on the basis that it would “severely constrain iwi and hapū participation in decision making”.
Some will say things can be sorted out at the council elections in 2025. But it’s not as simple as that.
Firstly, a great deal of damage can be done over the next 12 months when the motivation of the controlling group on council is self-interest.
And secondly, there’s an expectation that these powerful Māori advisory groups will be retained from one council to the next. While some new councils may hold a vote on the matter, in reality most new councillors would feel too intimidated and lack the confidence to oppose their reappointment – especially when there are 21 members of the group!
In light of the coalition’s announcement that the four local government wellbeings – cultural, environmental, social and economic – are to be abolished, surely it makes sense to abolish all formal council cultural advisory groups as well. This would free up councils from the oppressive influence of powerful tribal groups that are now in control of local government in their area.
It should be very clear to the new Local Government minister that a serious problem of ‘capture’ now exists within councils. It will be no easy task to return control of local government to local communities – and commissioners may need to be appointed in extreme cases.
Unfortunately, what is happening in Northland will be happening all around the country to a greater or lesser degree. The fact that 45 of the country’s 78 councils have introduced Māori wards – in spite of their communities being opposed – is an indication that most have been captured by tribal interests. Furthermore, many of the 33 councils that haven’t introduced Māori wards are already controlled by their powerful advisory bodies – like the Gore District where the Council’s Ngāi Tahu advisory committee persuaded councillors to designate their entire region as significant to Māori.
In other words, special rights for Māori are transforming councils from making decisions in the best interest of their community, to making decisions that benefit tribal interests.
The reality is that He Puapua is alive and well in local government and in spite of the coalition pledge to ‘Stop all work on He Puapua’, it is now so rampant that it is threatening to take over the sector entirely, with very significant consequences for ratepayers! What is even more galling is that many tribal landowners do not pay rates.
While successive governments have contributed to this dangerous situation we now face, it was the former Labour Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who set the ball rolling when he included in his new Resource Management Act, special rights for Māori to be involved in resource consenting including, through the transfer of council powers, as a consenting authority.
The problem is that over the years, thanks largely to taxpayer-funded treaty settlements, tribal groups have grown into multi-billion-dollar business conglomerates, that have fingers in many pies that come under the regulatory umbrella of local government. That’s why they are so focussed on influencing local government – not only to fully control resource consent processes, but also to ensure their representatives become authorised as Resource Management Act Hearings Commissioners, so they can directly influence outcomes.
This matter was discussed in the Annual Report of Ngāti Whātua – a billion-dollar tribal business corporation that orchestrated Māori seats throughout Northland. Their report makes revealing comments about the use of Māori Resource Management Act Hearing Commissioners:
The Dome Valley Landfill application by Waste Management was the second most important issue for the Rūnanga. The first hearing was held at the office of Ngāti Manuhiri in 2020. In that hearing we lost our case. In my view we lost because we had commissioners with strong pākehā views making the decisions. It was clear from their judgement they didn’t care about anything we had to say. The only Māori commissioner on the panel, Sheina Tepania, supported Ngāti Whātua on everything we said.
Our appeal against the decision was finally heard in the Environment Court in April this year at Te Ao Marama Community Centre in Te Hana. It was pleasing that we had two strong māori commissioners who sat on the hearings panel, and we had two Environment Court Judges who are familiar with māori values and tikanga.
What this confirms is not only that tribal groups are targeting the resource consent process, but the judiciary as well. In effect, this will ensure decisions are being made in the interests of tribal groups rather than for the benefit of the wider community.
It’s time for the coalition government to take this corruption seriously. The only way forward is surely to remove cultural considerations entirely from the resource consenting process.
In reality, Sir Geoffrey Palmer should not have created any special rights for Māori tribal interests in the Resource Management Act. Like its original predecessor – the 1953 Town and Country Planning Act – Sir Geoffrey’s legislation should have remained colourblind.
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, Constitutional Law Expert David Round, a former law lecturer at Canterbury University, is highly critical of Sir Geoffrey’s legacy:
“Sir Geoffrey seems strangely unaware of the insane complexities and delays and preposterous expenses of the present Resource Management Act system, which is often little more than a gigantic racket and can easily descend into outright corruption.
“The latest news is that there has been an agreement for Meridian and Genesis Energy to pay Ngāi Tahu, the Department of Conservation ‘and others’ over $180 million in return for them not objecting to applications to renew resource consents for electricity generation from Waitaki River waters. Those payments, of course, ultimately come out of our power bills.”
The reported payment of well over $100 million to the $two-billion Ngāi Tahu corporation in return for resource consents is so extortionary, that an inquiry should surely be held into the deal. Shareholders of Meridian and Genesis should be calling for it – as should taxpayers, since the government is the majority shareholder in both companies.
In a similar case, the Herald’s investigative reporter Kate MacNamara has revealed that Auckland Council’s water services company Watercare agreed to “$20 million worth of payments” in a secret deal with another $two-billion iwi – Tainui – in return for access to water until 2032 from the Waikato River. This was on top of an earlier $40 million agreement with the iwi.
Like the Ngāi Tahu extortion, it’s not the companies that pay these bribes – it’s the end user.
The fact that this sort of coercion now forms part of the consenting process illustrates only too clearly why vested interest groups should play no role in consenting decisions – and have no role in the replacement legislation to the Resource Management Act that is currently being drafted by the coalition.
David Round believes New Zealand is now in a perilous position:
New Zealand now is at a very dangerous time. Now is about our last chance to turn the tide against the divisive racism which fanatics in the Labour Party have long been pushing, and which cowards in the National Party have for far too long been tolerating. If we do not turn the tide back now we are goners as a nation.
He’s right. The coalition has a big job reining in tribal groups, which have now captured most of our institutions, including local government.
Lip service will not be enough to sort out this mess. Real action and real reform is now needed.
This article was originally published by the NZ Centre for Political Research.
