Iwi payments

Adam Dudding (‘‘Who’s telling porkies?’’ Focus, September 11) is as guilty of post-truth (well, journalism, in his case) as he accuses John Palino of being.

Yes, cultural impact assessments and payments to iwi (‘‘bribe the tribe’’, according to one wit) were a very big pile of doo-doo hanging over the head of those unfortunate landowners sitting under a pink spot in the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan, and many fell victim to this extortion racket before the Independent Hearing Panel came to its senses and threw it out.

I hope the media is inundated with horror stories of landowners falling foul of the resource procedure in this way, and I hope some clever lawyer finds these people and initiates a class action suit to recover these monies. Lesley Munro, Wellsford

I was disgusted by your blase assumption that Palino was telling political porkies about tribal demands.

Despite there being a wellestablished process for identify heritage and/or waahi tapu sites, council staff and the Independent Maori Statutory Board took to Auckland with a coloured pen, marking 3600 very broad-bush areas as sites of value to mana whenua. For the past 3-4 years, affected homeowners seeking resource consent had to contact up to 19 tribal groups to see if they had an interest in the property, get each to process a Cultural Impact Assessment, and then pay whatever each tribe demanded. With the people I interviewed this meant about 13 tribal groups, thousands of dollars paid with no receipts, and a few extra months added onto the consent process. I don’t recall anything ‘‘of significance’’ being found. Fiona Mackenzie, Whangaparaoa