LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND MAORI

Since I started writing these columns 13 years ago, I have covered and commented on four rounds of local government body elections.  This year, there will be another round and the Electoral Commission has already opened its voting enrolment campaign.

As part of that, the Commission joined with Te Puni Kokiri, the Northland Regional Council and Whangarei District Council, a couple of consultancy firms, NorthTec and an organisation called Te Huinga & Te Tai Tokerau Māori and Council Working Party to call and host the Te Tai Tokerau Māori in Local Government Symposium at Waitangi on Thursday 27^th June.

With a fairly comprehensive range of speakers, beginning with a keynote address from Nanaia Mahuta, Minister of Local Government, and concluding with Andrew Judd, ex-Mayor of New Plymouth and self-described ‘recovering racist’, the symposium focused on getting Māori to engage with the election process, whether as candidates or voters.

I was personally most impressed with the youth speaker, Justice Hetaraka, a law student who spoke on why  Māori rangatahi are disengaged and why many (if not the majority) don’t vote.  She prefaced her kōrero with the statement that tino rangatiratanga was her goal.  BUT until then, she felt Māori should participate in the current system. 

And that, I suspect, was how the majority of those present felt; even speakers like Arapeta Tahana (Councillor of Bay of Plenty Regional Council) and Glenn Wilcox (Deputy Chair of the Auckland Independent Māori Statutory Board), who are already at the decision-making table in some form or other.

There is no doubt that local governments have an impact on Iwi Māori.  But, even when Māori succeed in getting elected, we are inevitably a minority voice and must represent a wider constituency than Māori; one which is often hostile to our rangatiratanga.

Since 2002, when the Local Government Act was passed, I have seen three yearly cycles of discussion around how Councils might meet their statutory obligations to maintain and improve opportunities for Māori to contribute to local government decision-making processes, and to facilitate Māori participation in those processes.  But in between times, there have been no sustained or consistent gains. 

Of the current 39 Councillors from the four Councils located in Te Tai Tokerau, only three have Māori hakapapa.  And, apart from the mixed motivations of the failed 2013 campaign for a separate unitary body in the Far North, we have seen the Northland Regional Council set up a Māori Advisory Board in 2014 and some members of the Northland Mayoral Forum have signed a governance agreement with some members of the Tai Tokerau Iwi Chairs Forum this year.  That’s it.

To a degree, Justice Hetaraka’s position matches my own.  However, the critical questions for my Iwi are, first, where does participating in local government fit in our list of priorities?  And second, how much of our very limited resources, time and energies do we invest in either the Electoral Commission’s enrolment campaign and/or those of any Māori candidates?  

More on this in future columns.