Iwi want co-governance rebranded to be accepted
Labour has tough job marketing its ‘working together’ policy, writes Audrey Young
When iwi chairmen meet new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins at Waitangi today, some leaders will be asking him to get rid of the “co-governance” label and replace it with “partnership” or “mahi tahi”.
Key among them is the chairman of the Waikato-tainui tribal executive, Tukoroirangi Morgan, who has been nominated as an iwi representative on the co-governance board in Three Waters’ Entity A, which stretches from the Bombay Hills to the Far North.
“Remove the label of cogovernance and go back to the concept of mahi tahi, partnership, or working together,” Morgan said he would be telling Hipkins.
In an interview about the Treaty of Waitangi, Morgan said the narrative around co-governance had been badly handled and some people were paranoid about it.
“Co-governance is a modern expression of partnership,” he said.
“Everything that our people signed up to in the Treaty is being manifested in this co-governance.”
But the narrative had to change because of the negative rhetoric, said Morgan, who has also been nominated by iwi as co-chairman of the Three Waters northern entity.
“This debate on co-governance is full of contradictions because there are a whole number of models in this country that in their own way amplify partnership.”
The establishment of Ko¯ hanga Reo was one example, and the establishment of charter schools or partnership schools, by Act, was another. Both were funded by the Crown and allowed Ma¯ori to educate their children in their own way.
“Without the shared approach with the Crown, Ko¯ hanga Reo would not have endured,” he said.
Charter schools were abolished by the current Government.
Morgan believed the younger generation was more inclusive and tolerant than his generation and that, in 20 years’ time, the concept of partnership would be deeply embedded in the frameworks of local and central government.
Of Waikato-tainui’s 83,000 tribal members, 40,000 lived in Auckland, Morgan said. He has experience with co-governance as part of the Waikato River settlement.
He is a former co-chairman of the Waikato River Authority, a cogoverned statutory board that has equal numbers of iwi and Crown representatives under a settlement passed in 2010.
Morgan co-chaired the authority with former National minister John Luxton, and said all decisions had been on a consensus basis. None had gone to a vote.
“Consensus decisions endure,” said Morgan. “When people use numbers as a hammer against their colleagues on the board, more often than not those decisions are relitigated.”
He preferred to describe cogovernance as “mahi tahi” — working together — because that encompassed the fact the board needed to have relationships with all stakeholders, including commercial interests such as Fonterra.
The other iwi representatives for the Three Waters Entity A are Haami Piripi of Te Rarawa, Te Warena Taua of Te Kawerau a¯ Maki, Mook Hohneck of Nga¯ti Manuhiri, Aperahama Edwards of Nga¯ti Wai, Anahera Morehu of Nga¯ti Wha¯tua and Pita Tipene of Nga¯ti Hine.
Hipkins has acknowledged
the
Government has failed to explain cogovernance properly and said the restructure will be reviewed.
He has not gone so far as ditching the four regional oversight boards, made up of iwi and councilappointed members.
Under the law already passed, the boards will set the strategic direction and appoint a more hands-on board of directors to oversee the operations of the four entities, which is not a cogovernance model.
Many iwi claim ownership of the water, a legal position that has never been conceded by a government. But successive governments have recognised Ma¯ori “proprietary interests” in water and created roles in local and regional decisions on water issues, citing its treaty obligations.
Different degrees of involvement and different models have been used in different pieces of legislation.
Nga¯ti Wha¯tua’s deputy chairman, Ngarimu Blair, has a mixed view of co-governance.
He said in many ways, cogovernance was a way of limiting tino rangatiratanga (self-determination, sovereignty).
“Maybe some of our most ardent objectors to anything Ma¯ori should thank the Crown officials for limiting the ambition of Ma¯ori to cogovernance,” he says, only halfjoking.
“I’m sure most iwi leaders would prefer a property right over water than co-managing it.”
Nga¯ti Wha¯tua had one of the very first co-governance agreements, with the Auckland City Council in 1991, to co-manage¯ Takaparawhau/bastion Point and Okahu Bay Reserve, which continues. In time, that could evolve to sole management by Nga¯ ti Wha¯ tua, while retaining public access.
It has also been involved in the cogovernance arrangement over Auckland’s volcanic cones but Blair is less positive about the involvement of other iwi.
The Crown’s original Treaty settlement offer to Nga¯ti Wha¯tua had included a plan to return One Tree Hill, Mt Eden and Mt Roskill. But other iwi objected in the Waitangi Tribunal, and the settlement stalled. The issue of 14 volcanic cones was then dealt with separately in a deal involving 18 other iwi, or, as Blair calls them, “pretenders to mana whenua”.
He felt that Nga¯ ti Wha¯ tua had been pressed to sign up or go to the back of the queue for its main settlement.
But Blair would like Nga¯ti Wha¯tua to have another co-governance agreement — over the Waitemata¯ Harbour, to bring together Nga¯ti Wha¯tua with all the disparate agencies that have a role in it.
“Where it would get sticky and where the Crown gets it wrong is that they would invite any Ma¯ori who ever paddled a waka up the Waitemata¯ to also have a say, which in our view breaches tikanga.”
He was confident most Aucklanders would support a comanagement regime if it was communicated properly and clearly and was based on the health and wellbeing of the harbour.
“As most Aucklanders know, our harbour has really suffered over the last 50 years in terms of silting, urban run-off, sewage pollution and overfishing of both recreational and commercial and the ongoing encroachment, mainly by the Port of Auckland.”
The Crown is currently negotiating a co-management agreement between relevant iwi (not Nga¯ti Wha¯tua) and northern councils for the Kaipara Harbour and its tributaries in what will be the first harbour settlement.
The last National Government approved parameters for Treaty of Waitangi harbour settlements in 2016.
Blair said the iwi had a good relationship with mayor Wayne Brown because he recognised Nga¯ti Wha¯tua as the only mana whenua of central Auckland.
He said the iwi supported the Auckland Council to establish Ma¯ori wards but did not see it as a Treatybased
relationship because the councillor could be “Hone from Nga¯ti Porou who went to Avondale College”.
“That is quite different from a Treaty/te Tiriti-based relationship between the descendants of Hobson and the descendants of Te Kawau who established the city.”
A¯ pihai Te Kawau had been “the real father of Auckland” because he had gifted 16,000 acres (6475 hectares) of land in 1840 to establish the city.
Blair said that while the iwi would give views on many things the Auckland Council was doing, “that does not require us to have 50 per cent of the seats over setting the bus timetables or budget for parks”.
“But where we have a deep connection over a particular resource like the Waitemata¯, like particular water bodies potentially, cultural landscapes we think we have a lot to bring to the table in a shareddecision-making capacity, like Bastion Point, like One Tree Hill, like the Waitemata¯.”
The iwi has about 6000 members and its original $30 million asset base had since grown to $1.65 billion.
Even so, Blair says there is a risk that the settlements will be reopened one day.
“The Crown does a great job of limiting cash settlements, pegged to a number they plucked out of the sky in the 90s — $1 billion — and we have been forced to settle 2 cents in the dollar.
“If we are to be doing our job, repairing the damage of the past 180 years, we need significant economic resources.
“And unfortunately the Treaty settlements of the past 20 years have been so miserly and mean in most cases, I believe there is a risk of a future generation coming back to the table seeking a fairer, just settlement in relation to what was lost and in relation to the actual job that needs to be done to repair the social and spiritual wellbeing of our people.”