Resource management reform: challenge over iwi, hapu role rejected
WELLINGTON: The Waitangi Tribunal has rejected a challenge over government plans to give iwi and hapu a leading role in setting up planning committees under the law to replace the Resource Management Act.
However, the tribunal believes the planning committees should comprise 50% Maori representatives, instead of giving each region flexibility.
In an unusual finding, the tribunal concluded after a threeday priority hearing last month that the Crown was not in breach of the Treaty of Waitangi.
The New Zealand Maori Council took the claim against the Government’s plans to give iwi and hapu the leading role in determining the Maori representatives.
Its case was supported by former High Court judge Sir Edward Taihakurei Durie and John Tamihere, chief executive of Te Whanau Waipareira and chief executive of the Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency.
Mr Tamihere claimed that postsettlement governance entities set up by iwi were ‘‘feudal constructs’’ run by elites who had no genuine connection to Maori at the hapu or whanau level.
Their arguments were opposed by the Iwi Leaders Freshwater Group, and iwi such as Ngai Tahu and Ngati Whatua, which claimed that rangatiratanga resided exclusively with iwi and hapu and that the New Zealand Maori Council was an irrelevant institution of the State.
The Government has decided that under the RMA reforms, to be introduced to Parliament next month, there will be 14 regional planning committees throughout New Zealand comprising representatives of local government and of Maori.
The committees will be a minimum of six people altogether and a minimum of two Maori — to be negotiated between local government and Maori in each region.
Environment officials told the tribunal ministers had agreed on a broad outline of how Maori representatives should be selected but said there should be a large amount of flexibility within each region to allow for selfdetermination.
The Government wants iwi authorities and groups representing hapu to lead and facilitate discussions in each region as to how to appoint its Maori representatives.
They will be required to consult other groups, such as the New Zealand Maori Council and Federation of Maori Authorities, and to keep a record of engagement.
The committees will be autonomous decisionmaking bodies that will have to prepare a plan for every local authority in the region and monitor its implementation.
The tribunal has found that the proposal that iwi and hapu should lead and facilitate the process to decide an appointing body ‘‘is Treaty compliant at a high level of principle’’ — noting that all detail has not been decided.
But it expressed concerns about the composition of the planning committee.
‘‘On the broader composition issue, we appreciate that the regional planning committees have to be a reasonable and workable size to do their jobs effectively, and that this will mean that (as officials put it) the many [Maori groups] will have to be represented by the few.’’
However, it said a highlevel commitment to 50:50 composition ‘‘could take a lot of the heat out of the selection process’’.
It noted that 50:50 was the cogovernance structure in the Waikato River Authority, the Hawke’s Bay Regional Planning Committee and the proposed regional groups in the Three Waters reforms.
It pointed to a submission that had said the new resource management system should not aspire to less than was already available in terms of partnership arrangements. —