TALKING WITH OUR WAI

The brewing brouhaha and blame shifting going on between various governing agencies over the shortage of water available to whānau living in Kaitāia, and elsewhere around the motu, has got me wondering: if the water could talk, what would it say to us? and if it could hear, what would we say to it?

So, I went down to the water closest to me here in Kaitāia and here is what it told me.

On my surface lie otaota (weeds) that do not have hakapapa (genealogical links) to this whenua (land).  As they flourish, die and rot they entangle he para (other rubbish and litter) thrown into me – plastic, paper, food and a shopping trolley that used to glitter but is now flaking rust. 

My view of Ranginui (the Sky Parent) is clouded by all these and other parakino (pollutants) coming from upstream.  Over the years I have received avalanches of slipped whenua, been coated by sewage spills, and have had farm and factory runoff, truck washes and stormwater emptied into me; I have even held the dead and the discarded.

I have had karakia and waerea intoned over me, pipes and drains inserted into my banks and rāhui laid on me.  I have seen my tangata whenua (people of this land) marginalised by foreign powers and prevented from exercising their kaitiakitanga (care) of me and their whaunangatanga (relationship) with me.

Each winter, every drop of water that drains from Maungataniwha, Raetea and all the awa between, passes through me.  But, with each passing summer, I have become more and more dirty and diminished.  Aue!  I am tired.  When shall I rest and be cleaned? 

In response, this is what we have to say to our wai.  Ko wai mātou?  (Who are we?)  Ko wai mātou.  (We are water.)  We are here still and, although we have yet to fully recover from our own long marginalisation, we are increasingly carrying out our kaitiakitanga and whanaungatanga with you. So, hold on, help is at hand.

It is true that hapū and iwi Māori are still doing the mahi of kaitiakitanga of their wai.  In the case of Kaitāia, the kaitiaki of Ngāi Tohianga at Ōturu Marae are working hard with everyone, including those foreign authorities that still like to think they have some power and authority over our wai.  

They are wrong about that, but they will have a role to play under the correct power and authority of the mana whenua.

In the meantime, we will continue to talk with our wai.

THE PRICE IS PAID

Last Wednesday, our roopu of kuia, mokopuna and rangatahi arose, readied ourselves and made our way to Waitangi in time to join the throngs who came to open the 28 Māori Battalion Museum which is built opposite the ‘treaty house’ there.

In the stygian darkness, Wahoroi Shortland of Ngāti Hine prepared us for the ritual to come, beginning at 5am with the drawn out urgency of the pūtatara, continuing through the rhythmic revelation of the waerea, and culminating in our thrice repeated responses to two questions, “Ko wai te ingoa o tēnei pou?” (what is the name of this pou?) and “Ko wai te ingoa o tēnei whare?” (what is the name of this house?).

Then, as we began the long, slow hikoi past the pou and into the whare, one of my mokopuna became suddenly nauseous.  So, we moved out of the throng and took seats beneath the flagpole to allow him to recover in the warm womb of darkness.

Sitting there, I pondered what had happened and wondered why.  

I thought about how the Battalion’s four Companies had been organised along hakapapa lines and had nicknames reflective of them and / or their rohe. 

A Company, drawn from Ngāti Whātua, Ngāpuhi and other northern iwi were Ngā Keri Kāpia (the Gum Diggers).  B Company, centred on Te Arawa and the Mataatua tribes, were Ngā Ruku Kapa (the Penny Divers).  C Company drawn from the the Tairawhiti/East Coast region were Ngā Kaupoi (the Cowboys) and D Company, which covered the whole of the South Island and the remainder of the North Island were the Foreign Legion or Ngāti Walkabout.

I thought about how the location of the museum was based on Sir Apirana Ngata’s famous 1940 speech at Waitangi where he said Māori serving in World War 2 was “the price of citizenship”.  And I thought about how there had not been unanimous support from the descendants of the Battalion’s other Companies for it to be located in Waitangi.

Then I thought about the men of our whānau who had served.  Two brothers, Arani Pirika Herepete (A Company) and Timoti Herepete (B Company), two cousins Rawiri Te Paa (A Company) and Robert Kara Rollo (B Company).  I thought about how they all came home alive but changed and how not one of them lived beyond 50.  Maringi noa nga roimata and as my tears fell in the darkness, I understood. 

For the next few hours, I told my mokopuna about each of their tūpuna.  Then the sun came up, and as we surveyed the crowds still thronging through the doors we quietly left. 

While Te Rau Aroha (the name of the museum) contains mementos and artefacts of our tūpuna and their compatriots, their essence is contained within us, their uri.  And when we return, to properly honour them all I hope my mokopuna will understand that not only has the price of their and our citizenship been paid, it should never have been charged.

THE WHITE WORRIER

In December 2009, the New Zealand Parliament recognised the tino rangatiratanga (sovereignty) flag as the national Māori flag and announced its decision to hoist it alongside the New Zealand flag on all government buildings on Waitangi Day.

This decision, described at the time as a symbolic recognition of partnership and unity between Māori and the Crown, proved polarising.  While some saw it as a mere token gesture to Māori, others saw it as yet another step towards Māori separatism.

Sandra Koster, a Pākehā resident of the small South Island town of Timaru was amongst the latter when she ripped up a Māori flag in protest, arguing that Māori aspirations for greater self-determination posed a threat to the nation and to present and future generations of Pākehā.

Calls for separate institutions in particular led Koster to feel “really quite frightened for my grandchildren because I can see us becoming just like South Africa”. Koster stressed that her actions were not racist and were justified by her desire for “harmony” between Māori and Pākehā in order to re-make Aotearoa/New Zealand “a wonderful, beautiful country to live in”. 

In her 2011 thesis, “Being Pākehā: White Settler Narratives of Politics, Identity, and Belonging in Aotearoa/New Zealand”, Jennifer Terruhn opened with this story as an example of the growing public unease amongst some of the white settler majority of Pākehā about ‘the self-determinative politics of aboriginality’ and, more specifically, the ‘persistent presence’ of indigeneity.‘

In Aotearoa/New Zealand, that unease is reflected in phrases such as ‘Treaty fatigue’ and what conservative politician Don Brash referred to in his incendiary Nationhood speech as the “Treaty grievance industry.”

These phrases match a growing sense of resentment amongst white majorities internationally over the rights claimed by indigenous, ethnic and immigrant minorities.   As Wulf D. Hund and Alana Lentin noted in their 2014 study on international racism, “in just a few decades following the generalised, if at times begrudging, acceptance that racism is unjust, we have hit ‘racism fatigue’.”  

Here in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the critical whiteness theories and theories of settler colonialism which framed Terruhn’s study of Pākehā identities and imaginaries, indicate that the resentment of some Pākehā often aligns with attempts to “recuperate, reconstitute and restore white identities and the supremacy of whiteness in post-apartheid, post-industrial, post-imperial, post-Civil Rights societies.”

In his 2003 analysis of ‘paranoid nationalism’, Ghassan Hage coined the figure of the ‘white worrier’ to identify how white Australians, particularly males, marginalized by the inequalities of economic rationalism and globalization, had displaced their anxieties onto even weaker ‘others’ – Aboriginals and migrants, particularly refugees.

Throughout this year, I will occasionally revisit this phenomenon of the resentful ‘white worrier’; not to ridicule it (it is a genuine condition) nor to reverse it (only those with it can do anything about it), but, rather, to understand why it exists and why it cannot stop the persistence of indigeneity.

And with that thought, I wish us all a safe and serene Waitangi week 2020,

A HOLIDAY READING LIST

As the Gregorian calendar year winds towards an end, I am preparing to take a break from the daily grind and go on ‘holiday’. 

The dictionary says that the word ‘holiday’ comes from the Old English ‘hāligdæg’, meaning ‘holy day’.  It also tells me that the modern meaning of holiday is “an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or in travelling.”  But for me, and I suspect most Iwi insiders, ‘holiday’ mainly means going home to the amazing places and people who raised and imprinted us from birth to be and to belong.

Even though my body has not yet hit the beaches, bushes, valleys and vistas of home, my thoughts are there and my preparations are under way.  That includes compiling my holiday reading list, much of which consists this year of academic papers, treatises and theses downloaded from academia.edu, a free research sharing website.

My current focus and interest has been sparked by the relatively new field (in New Zealand anyway) of ‘critical white studies.’  As an Iwi insider, I suffer from research fatigue, particularly research carried out on Iwi Māori by scholars steeped in Eurocentric pedagogies and methodologies.  They may mean well in most cases, but unless they are aware of their own ethnicity and its attendant privileges, they are quite hoha.

So, I am glad to see more and more white scholars turning the research lens on their own ethnicities and checking their own assumptions, imaginaries, isms and impacts on the indigenous Iwi in whose lands they live.

My list opens with a paper by Vincent O’Malley and Joanna Kidman titled, Settler colonial history, commemoration and white backlash: remembering the New Zealand Wars.  It researches the backlash that occurred when students from a North Island secondary school began a petition to Parliament in 2014 seeking a national day of commemoration for the victims of the New Zealand Wars and sparked a national debate about how, why and whether New Zealanders should remember the wars fought on their own shores.

Other papers on my reading list include Katie Higgins, The migrancy of racial and settler imaginaries: British migrants in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as, Settling in: The politics of Pākehā Ethnicity by Steve Matthewman and Douglas Hoey, and Jerssica Terruhn’s paper, Everything is different now: Memory and settler identity in Aotearoa New Zealand.

  

I have two main purposes this summer holiday; first, to refresh myself through my mahi toi (arts and crafts), whanaungatanga (relationships) and whakangahau (social occasions).   And second, but just as importantly, to better understand how such a significant section of our population have managed to become so selectively amnesiac about the privileging of white people off the back of ongoing Māori dispossession.   

When I return next year, it will be with greater clarity in my work of redressing the damaging imbalances wreaked on everyone as a result.  Mauri ora!

BUILDING BRIDGES

18^th February 2016.  That was the day on which Ngāti Kahu first met with the New Zealand Transport Agency, the Crown entity tasked with promoting safe and functional transport by land. 

Nine days earlier we had received a letter advising that the Agency wanted to open discussions with us about the then proposed Taipā bridge upgrade.  Bearing in mind that this was one of the nine bridges promised by the National government during the 2015 byelection which they had lost to Tā Winitana of Aotearoa Tuatahi, I must say I was pleasantly surprised that it was still on the drawing board.  However, I digress.

At that first meeting in 2016, Ngāti Kahu’s advice to NZTA was simple and clear – you are operating in the rohe of sovereign hapū and iwi, not the other way round; listen to the hapū and iwi, build tikanga relationships with us, then work with us and on those foundations we will build a beautiful  bridge together. 

Did that happen?  Yes.  Was it easy?  No.  Would we do it again?  We already are. 

1,383 days after that first meeting, in the pre-dawn darkness of a balmy Ngāti Kahu morning, more than 1,000 people gathered for the official opening of the new Taipā bridge and the unveiling of the pou, Parata o Te Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa. 

Those who were blessed to be present will never forget the ihi, wehi, mana and kotahitanga felt by us all; from the first signal of the pūtātara through the rhythm of ancient waerea and the soaring call of karanga; from the karakia Mihingare through the himene, mihimihi and patere; from the speeches, songs and reveille through the laying of the first wreathe at the war memorial plaque; from the reading of the plaques commemorating our voyaging waka and tupuna through to the reading of the plaque honouring Tā Hekenukumai-ngā-iwi Puhipi, the great waka and bridge builder – those feelings were all-encompassing.

As the sky filled with light, smiles and tears were visible on many faces and I saw for the first time that the banks, road and bridge were filled with hakapapa Māori, Pākehā, Hainamana, Iniana and many others); and this hakatauki came to my mind –

Ma pango ma whero, ka oti te mahi

With black and with red the work is completed.

The rest of the day was spent watching waka taua, kiriata and kapa haka, as well as speechmaking, feasting and socialising.  Since then, our beautiful bridge has become a focal point of positivity, excitement, some controversy (jump or not) and pride.

Thanks to our tūpuna, Kahutianui raua ko Te Parata, Ngāti Kahu hapū and iwi exist.  Thanks to the hapū and iwi, tikanga was applied.  

Thanks to tikanga, everyone was kept safe.  

Thanks to the NZTA team, the hapū and iwi were heard.  

Thanks to each and every person who took part.  Together we built a bridge in 1,383 days.  Engari, there are more to be built on the same foundations.  Haere tōnu tātou (let us continue).

REPORT FROM THE NATIONAL IWI CHAIRS FORUM

A large contingent from Ngāti Kahu attended the Te Ātiawa o te Waka a Māui hosted National Iwi Chairs Forum (NICF) hui at Waikawa (Picton) from October 31^st to November 1^st where a number of important matters were considered, including:

(a)    Freshwater: The Freshwater group has received legal advice that it has a strong case to take to the courts over ownership of freshwater and the Forum supported this action being taken. Tainui is leading this work.

(b)    Climate Crisis: In addition to taking legal action against the Crown in this country, the Climate Change group Chair, Mike Smith, is also taking legal action against the Austrian company OMV in the International Criminal Court (which sits in The Hague, Netherlands). OMV is the large international oil-drilling company that is drilling off the Taranaki coast.

(c)     Data: The Forum’s Data group has managed to negotiate an agreement on how Statistics NZ is to engage with them. It is called Mana Ōrite (Equal Authorities) and requires each party to have equal standing and respect for each other in the work they do. It took a multiplicity of approaches and strategies to achieve this agreement.

(d)    Pou Tikanga:  Despite the Tiriti Framework agreed to by the government and the Statement of Engagement between the Crown and the Forum, the government is effectively ignoring it.  

The Forum also delivered the following key statement to the government party when they came on the final day of  the hui.

NATIONAL IWI CHAIRS FORUM KEY STATEMENT

·         Under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Crown is obligated to engage iwi early, meaningfully and effectively on any matter affecting iwi, hapū and whānau.

·         The National Iwi Chairs Forum provides a forum for the Crown to work alongside member iwi on improving delivery of this obligation, while maintaining the mana and independence of all iwi of the motu.

·         The Forum notes that the Prime Minister and the Crown have made commitments over 2019 to a relationship with the Forum that the Crown has not fulfilled.

·         Meanwhile the Crown has embarked on several important policy decisions over 2019 without direct input from the Iwi of the motu and without regard for our individual settlement legislation and in the absence of any discernible plan for engagement with Iwi.

·         This situation leaves the Forum member iwi considering taking direct courses of action to address the serious derogation of Crown obligations to iwi under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

·         This statement serves as notice to the Crown of this situation.

Finally, the forum unanimously supported the government being asked to issue a statement repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery. The Forum will be writing to Jacinda Ardern asking her to issue a statement repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery.

The next Forum hui is set for 4th and 5th February 2020 and will be hosted by Ngapuhi in Waitangi.  The Forum asked that its February hui spend the bulk of its time determining strategic priorities. Ngāpuhi as hosts will determine how best that can be achieved.

SPOT THE REVERSAL

Most of us have seen it happen. When abusers are exposed, they switch the script and rewrite the narrative to make themselves the hurt ones. 

The example I’ll use here is the racist offender who works to convince their victim and any observors that they deserved the abuse somehow; that it’s the victim’s fault.

This tendency is documented widely and known academically as DARVO, introduced by Dr. Jennifer Freyd in 1997: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender is a three step behaviour that is classical and typical of an abuser.

DARVO is an incredibly effective tactic used by most racists and their supporters.  But it’s possible to spot it.  Here are the signs.

Denial:  Even if the proof of their racism is explicit, the abuser will either refuse to acknowledge it happened, or will minimise it.  “You’re being crazy.”  “How can you think that about me?”  “I’d never say something like that.”  “Can’t you take a joke?”

Here’s the wild thing: even when we have the proof in our hands, because we don’t like to take sides, the moment the abuser denies it, the easiest place to go is to “hear both sides of the story.”

The minute the abuser has you believing that their side of the story is just as valid as the victim’s, you’ve taken the first step down a rabbit hole of misinformation and deception.

Attack:  Now that you’re doubting the victim’s story, the racist can start tearing away at the foundations of support for the victim.  “As if you’ve never made a mistake before! Take a look at yourself.” 

This builds on our preference to believe that bad things don’t happen to good people. So, the victim can’t be perfect and they must have done something to deserve being abused.

The final step is to reverse victim and offender:  Now that the abuser has us potentially believing them, they flip the switch and start talking about themselves as the victim. “I’m being attacked.”  “This is a witch hunt!”  “I am hurt.”

Racists have been known, when challenged over their abuse, to burst into tears. 

As a society, we hate to believe that bad things can happen to people who don’t deserve it because that opens up the frightening possibility that it could happen to us.  So, we are predisposed to believe the abuser’s point of view and we are more likely to question or challenge the victim; ‘What did you do to deserve this?’  ‘What do you hope to achieve by talking about this?’ 

The thing is, innocent people don’t use these DARVO techniques. They’ll deny a false accusation, sure, but not in this over-exaggerated pattern of reversing the attack.

The three steps of DARVO are correlated, meaning that when a racist or their supporters do one, they tend to do all of them.   The good news is that it’s easy to spot it in the news and in real life and to call it out. 

APPEAL UNDERPINS SOVEREIGNTY

Te Mana o Te Wai Hapū Integration Roopu are a collective of sovereign hapū within Ngāti Kahu who are most affected by the unsustainable overflow of high nutrient discharge levels coming from the Taipā Wastewater Plant which is owned and operated by the Far North District Council. 

In 2009, FNDC applied to the Northland Regional Council for a renewal of its discharge consents, which it was already in breach of. 

The hapū response was swift, loud and clear – the treatment regime is not sufficiently cleaning the wastewater of nutrients (especially phosphates), so find better treatment options and stop discharging into our waterways.  

After an initial period of cooperation, hapū kōrero and engagement with the FNDC ceased for several years due to differences of opinion about the selection process of treatment options.  So, the hapū and their supporters got on with finding and testing the options themselves.

Having found a cheaper and more effective alternative in electrocoagulation (EC), the hapū worked over the past three years with individuals and roopu from the community of Maheatai/Taipā, as well as Te Rūnanga-ā-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu, to help FNDC implement that alternative into the TWWP.  But all they met with was resistance.

Finally, In June this year, after a decade of delays, independent environment commissioners held a hearing into the FNDC’s application to renew its consents.  To the dismay of the hapū, in spite of the evidence, the consents were granted to the FNDC by the Northland Regional Council. 

There are no conditions in the consents granted that provide any opportunities to explore the EC option that the hapū and their supporters have already investigated and tested.  Instead, the consents indicate that they will have to restart exploring the options’ process altogether.  It seems to be a case of ‘business as usual.’

Te Mana o Te Wai Hapū Integration Group, Far North Envirolab Ltd, Clean Waters to the Sea Tokarau Moana Charitable Trust, Te Pokapu Tiaki Taiao O Te Tai Tokerau Trust (Far North Environment Centre) and Te Rūnanga-ā-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu are now appealing through the courts to have the three interim resource consents quashed until immediate action is taken to stop the unsustainable levels of nutrients from contaminating their waterways. 

In the lead up to the recently concluded local body elections, the current Mayor-elect and at least three of the Councilors-elect attended information hui on the EC system and showed interest in it.  Now, they need to obtain genuine understanding of the science behind it. 

If the latest iteration of FNDC continues to be obstructive, there are viable alternatives for the hapū and their supporters.  To that end, the FNDC also need to comprehend the role and standing of the hapū whose sovereignty is underpinned by both the appeal and the alternatives. 

PRIORITISING PUNISHMENT

In 2018, the removal from serving prisoner of the human right to vote was found by the Supreme Court to breach the Bill of Rights 1990 and just last week, it was also found by the Waitangi Tribunal to be in serious breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Dr Bronwyn Hayward (Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Canterbury): “Voting isn’t just choosing somebody to represent you. it’s actually being part of a society and being able to participate and give something to it and be heard.“

Ex-Inmate 1: “The night before [the 2011 election] we were all getting ready and we were all like, ‘Yeah! We’re voting tomorrow.’ The next morning … we got told, ‘You are not voting.’  I could see the hurt and the pain; … that we were not worthy of anything. How can that be? I know I did a crime, but I wanted to be part of the change.”

Professor Jack Vowles (Professor of Comparative Politics, Victoria University of Wellington): “From a moral point of view you can make the case, ‘These are bad people, they shouldn’t vote.’ But what you’re doing is … making them feel even more apart from society, and potentially making it somewhat more difficult to rehabilitate them when they leave prison.”

Richard François (Human rights barrister): “We are actually talking about a fundamental right which is guaranteed under the Bill of Rights: Every New Zealand citizen who is of or over the age of 18 years: has the right to vote in genuine periodic elections of members of the House of Representatives (Section 12, Bill of Rights Act, 1990).”

Ex-Inmate 2: “I made a mistake. I acted in a way that was wrong. But that’s not who I am as a person.  I was there wanting to get back on track and do the right thing. And one of the first obstacles I come up against … is that I am prevented from being able to vote, from having a say.  I’m being rendered voiceless.“

Tanya Sawicki-Mead: “It it was your brother, or your sister, or your mum who had hurt someone and had ended up in the system, what would you want to happen to them? It wouldn’t be to punish them further. It would be about diverting them out of the system, giving them a chance at a better life, helping them to see where things had gone wrong.”

Awatea: “I get the idea that … you have incarceration or confinement in order to protect the public. But I don’t understand how preventing an incarcerated person from voting is a form of public protection?”

In November 2018, following the Supreme Court’s ruling, Justice Minister Andrew Little said the matter was “Not that much of a priority“.  We have yet to see how the government will respond to this latest judicial finding.  Will it move to strike out a pernicious, populist and pointless law?  Or will it continue to prioritise punishment?

ETHICAL REMEMBERING - HOPE AND ACCOUNTABILITY

This is the final in a series of extracts from Cook and Ethical Remembering, in which Tina Ngata of Ngāti Porou, distils years of discussions with rangatahi on the subject into ten guidelines for teaching what has happened in Aotearoa over the past 250 years ago.  This week, the last four guidelines are covered.

Guideline seven:  GIVE OUR TAMĀRIKI AND RANGATAHI HOPE.  Discuss clear actions they “can take to resist imperialism and dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery.

Teach them about the strong leadership already being shown in this space … calling upon the Vatican to rescind the papal bulls [and] impress upon them the importance of promoting the Indigenous perspective.

“Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery and Imperialism holds great benefits for [everyone], so consider discussing the promise of a post-Doctrine of Discovery future [and] what actions could be taken by the Vatican, by governments, by communities and at an individual level.”

Guideline eight:  PREPARE THEM FOR DIFFERING POINTS OF VIEW, (EVEN RACIST ONES).  “Provide all sides of the argument. Many Māori are participating in the TUIA250 celebrations and it’s important to understand their reasoning.  Groups like Hobson’s Pledge and white supremacist groups also support the commemorations and the return of the Endeavour replica, and it’s important to look at the correlations and contrasts between these positions and compare them to those who oppose.”

Guideline nine:  DISCUSS ACCOUNTABLE RESPONSIBILITY.  “It’s very easy for people to learn of this history and fall into the trap of resenting non-Indigenous peoples, or indeed Christianity. Listen and watch for clues as to how children and young people are responding to the information before them.  

“Shawnee/Lenape scholar Steve Newcombe makes an important and helpful distinction between Christianity as a faith and Christendom as the amalgamation of church and state, an alliance between monarchies and the church which resulted in the ‘divine right’ of monarchs to do as they wish.  Discuss how many non-Indigenous people have been forced away from their homelands through Imperialism. Accountability rests with all of us to speak to the harms of Imperialism.”

Guideline ten:  PROMOTE ETHICAL REMEMBERING BY DISCUSSING “how colonialism, as a construct, rests upon … fictions to justify its own importance, centrality, and beneficence. It’s … important to deconstruct those fictions [and] to understand how [they] are transmitted [through] statues, currency, education, media, entertainment, place names, memorials and events like TUIA250. 

Discuss a more ethical remembering of who we are and what is important in order to set a pathway for who we want to be in the future.

“Pose similar scenarios for comparison:  Would it be appropriate to ‘balance’ the evils of the Holocaust with workshops on Hitler’s other, more redeeming characteristics?  When confronted with the horrors carried out by the conquistadors, is it at all appropriate to celebrate what an excellent navigator Hernan Cortes was?  What version of history has dominated our worlds up till now? What counts as ‘important’ history and what is the right way to remember painful histories?”

MAGIC VS LOGIC

What does ((((2 x 2) + 1) – 54) + (1.5 x 3)) x 2 equal?  My calculator tells me the answer is not a positive outcome.  But apparently that’s only in the logical world of whānau, hapū and iwi. 

In the magical world of local government, it seems that (((2 laws x 2 local bodies) + 1 resource consent application to discharge higher levels of nutrients into our waterways) - 54 opposing submittors) + (1.5 supporting submissions x 3 days of hearings)) x 2 independent commissioners = 1 resource consent granted and issued.

The background to this clash between logic and magic is that, for almost a decade, the Far North District Council operated in breach of its resource consent to discharge treated municipal wastewater from its treatment plant at Taipā into the waterways.  Put simply, it was putting more tiko into the water then it was allowed to under the consent that the Northland Regional Council originally gave it.

During that entire time, both FNDC and NRC effectively ignored the concerns of the hapū on whose stolen land the plant is built, and who depend heavily on the affected waterways which are now seriously degraded.  In doing so, the two Councils breached both the Resource Management Act and the Local Government Act.

So, having breached the laws, they get punished, right?  Wrong.  Apparently, in the magical world occupied by these Councils, not only does their lawbreaking not get punished, it gets rewarded.  Now, that’s just not right.

Logically, hapū have always opposed the discharge of wastewater into the waterways.  They fought long and hard against the treatment plant being built on their whenua in the first place because they knew it was going to be bad news for them and the environment.  But, at the time, the Councils had their say and got their way.  Then, they left the hapū to deal with the tiko outcomes. 

One of the basic requirements of all humankind is drinkable water.  But, many factors of modern life, including globalization, population densities and pollution are leading towards a critical shortage and forcing all of us to think more meaningfully about water purification and reuse.

Over the past few years, the hapū and their partners have searched for and tested a range of treatment options with a view to finding one capable of effectively and affordably purifying wastewater enough to enable land application.

Those tests have showed that electrocoagulation is the most logical option.  The technology and test results have been shared with both Councils, along with clear evidence of the current technology’s failings.  Perhaps predictably, both Councils have rejected it all and, on 26^th August, a consent was issued.

An appeal seeking to overturn that consent has now been filed in the Environment Court.  Magic has its place, but not in tiko treatment.  If humanity is to survive, we must have drinkable water and logic must prevail over magic.