Category Archives: Local body politics

29/08/2025
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Local body politics

What the heck is up with the rates?

Rates are going through the roof and people are struggling. Even so, I’m going to say something that most mayoral candidates won’t admit. Rates are going to keep going up and anyone who promises that they can stop that happening is lying to you. The Government would sack the council and install commissioners if we did what it would take to stop rates increasing.

Let me explain. Rate rises are being caused by three things: increased debt levels, inflation and the need to upgrade our water infrastructure.

First our debt levels have risen. All councils use debt to pay for long term assets like infrastructure, as a way of spreading the cost over the life of the facility. Recently our Council has been borrowing money to pay for operating expenses – the day to day costs. That’s like borrowing money to pay for groceries and is something I have opposed. In fact I led a revolt of councillors against the mayor’s plan in 2023 to borrow even more to keep rates down. That debt has locked in substantial rates increases for the next few years.

Second, we have all seen the cost of living rise due to inflation. Council costs have gone up more than households because of the kinds of things we spend most of our money on eg. construction.

Third, we need to upgrade our water infrastructure. For decades the council has underinvested in this and it’s now catch-up time. This will be the biggie for the next few years. I will write at another time about possible pathways forward but the reality is that the government standards have changed and we need more expensive systems to meet them. Estimates are that we need $200 million over the next 10 years and it won’t stop there.

It is incorrect to say, as some do, that rates rises are because council spends money on “nice to haves” like the council building upgrade 3 years ago, the Mitchell Park upgrade, the Boat Harbour and the Rex Morpeth redevelopment. The council building work, which was primarily about earthquake strengthening the Emergency Operations Centre, adds about $50 a year on the average rates bill. The Mitchell Park upgrade costs the average ratepayer less than $2 a year to provide some decent public toilets and add drainage. The Boat Harbour wasn’t funded out of rates at all. At the Rex Morpeth / War Memorial hub the Council has only budgeted money for essential maintenance such as fixing the leaking roof. There is also a small amount to rescope the proposal to something more affordable and to develop a plan to get outside funding to pay for it.

If you look at the council’s budgets, almost all the money is spent on core functions such as hard infrastructure (roads and pipes), community services (the library, swimming pool, sports fields, community halls etc) and things that central government requires us to do. Despite what some candidates say, the only way to stop future rates increases is to not upgrade water infrastructure. That would put the community’s health at risk and put us in breach of the law. It would almost certainly lead to the sacking of the council and the appointment of commissioners.

Cutting out all the so-called “nice to haves” won’t make a significant difference to the rates, but it would suck the life out of our district. I do think there are other things we can do to help control council costs, but they are not enough to stop rates rising. These include:

Less use of outside consultants. It means more staff if we want to bring more things in-house but it would save us money and retain expertise in the organisation.


AI is changing how people work across the globe. We need to carefully make use of new technology such as AI to boost productivity.

The Mayor needs to champion our district. They need to work with outside funders to help pay for community assets, leverage relationships in Wellington to unlock government funding and get the councillors working as a team.

Finally we need to work with other councils to pressure government to fix the funding model for councils. Taking GST off rates and / or returning a portion of the GST raised in a district back to the council would help a lot, as would the Government paying rates on its properties.

I have said that I want Council to be more open and transparent. I won’t spin a story to try to win votes. If anyone is telling you that they will cut rates, ask them how.


(Published in the Whakatāne Beacon 29/8/25)

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13/02/2025
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Activism, Local body politics

MORE THAN MATERNITY SERVICES AT STAKE


The massive downgrading of maternity services at Whakatāne Hospital is just the tip of the
iceburg. Investigations have revealed a hospital in crisis, with dedicated and highly
competent staff struggling to keep servicing the community within a dysfunctional system.
When news first broke that Obstetrics and Gynecology services were closing, the public
was told that it was just a recruitment issue and that secondary maternity services
(obstetrics) would resume in 12 months. After speaking to a number of staff within the
hospital, it is clear that there are far bigger issues that have led to this closure, and which
threaten other departments. The community has a right to know, and to make our voices
heard.
Recruitment is absolutely an issue, with a shortage of obstetricians globally, but more
importantly the recruitment process at Whakatāne Hospital is a shambles. A number of
departments have chronic staff shortages, but they get almost no recruitment support.
When they manage to find applicants, getting contracts signed off by the bureaucracy in
Tauranga can take up to ten months. The coalition organising Saturday’s Hikoi for Health
has heard of multiple examples of great people being recruited by local senior staff, but by
the time their contracts are approved they have moved on.
Other applicants have become so frustrated by the lengthy delays in getting a permanent
contract that they end up applying through a recruitment agency and being taken on as a
locum, at a higher cost and with numerous other disadvantages. Senior staff have
complained at being unable to identify where the hold ups are, with decision-making
unclear to locals. What is clear is that recruitment for Whakatāne takes a back seat to
Tauranga.
This is made worse by the lack of a local General Manager for the hospital, someone who
has oversight over the whole hospital, a local perspective, and who can advocate within Te
Whatu Ora for Whakatāne’s needs.
Even when people are recruited, staff shortages mean that doctors and nurses are
constantly under stress and exhausted, leading to people leaving. The Coalition
understands that of the four obstetricians who recently resigned, leading to the closure of
the unit, three had been recruited from the USA within the last couple of years. They
moved country, relocated families, bought houses here, only to move on within a short
space of time. This is indicative of a dysfunctional working environment and poor
management from Tauranga and our coalition hopes that those people will tell their tale so
the local community can understand what is going wrong at the hospital.
On top of all of that, succession planning seems to be almost non-existent. Te Whatu Ora
had plenty of advance warning of at least one of the obstetricians resignations but didn’t fill
the position, leading to gaps in the roster and only patchy coverage since last year. In
another department a doctor coming up for retirement gave a years notice, but the hospital
sat on it’s hand rather than proactively planning for it. There are enough cases that it
seems to be a systemic issue. Overseas recruitment is vital to keep the hospital staffed,
and at least 6 months is needed to allow to visas to be approved and families to relocate,
so succession planning is a necessity. The lack of dedicated recruitment staff also means
that silly mistakes get made. Recently a number of new staff had to be put on hold
because they had applied for the wrong visa, following faulty advice.

Some of the problems are not new but recent moves to a more centralised system have
made it worse, with Whakatāne staff having little autonomy to make decisions about what
is best for our community. Added to that is cost cutting driven from Wellington, including
the downgrading of the back office functions that front line staff rely on to do their job.
I am deeply disturbed at what has come to light since the closure of Obstetrics and
Gynecology services. It is apparent that a number of other department’s are on the edge of
collapse. We cannot allow this to happen. Whakatāne has always had excellent medical
services, as many of us know from personal experience. We need to join together to fight
to keep them.
The Hikoi for Health Coalition is a broad coalition of people behind the Hikoi for Health
thus Saturday. Members come from a wide range of backgrounds and ages and from
across the political spectrum, united in their determination to protect local medical services
and staff . They include concerned members of the community, health professionals, as
well as representatives of organisations such as Whakatane Action Group, Whakatāne Act
Local, NZ Labour and the Green Party.
We are not medical experts but from talking to people who are, it is clear that there are a
number of things that could be put in place straight away to ease the situation. Allowing
heads of departments to appoint staff to vacant positions without having to go through
Tauranga is one. The appointment of a local General Manager to the hospital is another.
Third is to appoint some recruitment specialists. Lastly Te Whatu Ora needs to improve its
management of people and rosters and support our amazing medical staff. We will be
marching on Saturday Feb 15 at 12 noon from Mitchell Park to call for urgent action to
reinstate full maternity services in Whakatāne, and to fix the broader systemic issues at
the hospital.


Published in the Whakatāne Beacon 12/02/25

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22/01/2025
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Activism, Local body politics

MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD ON OBSTETRICS CLOSURE

The decision to close down secondary birthing services at Whakatāne Hospital will put mothers and babies at risk. Not just in Whakatāne, but across the wider Eastern Bay area and up the coast. It means that only low risk births will be supported in Whakatane, with an estimated 300 deliveries a year having to transfer to Tauranga. That’s a long way to go in an emergency. Whānau will have worse outcomes and reduced choices. We cannot allow it to stand.

The closure has already taken place, last week. We are assured it is temporary, and that the service will reopen in 12 to 18 months, once new specialists can be recruited. I find it hard to believe that this will actually happen. My concern is that it will become the victim of a broader push by this government to slash spending in the public health service. This is already happening in other areas of healthcare. Once we have become used to the lack of services in Whakatāne it becomes too easy to just let the restart deadline slide, and keeping sliding, until it just becomes the new normal. Even if that is not what Te Whatu Ora intends right now, without a strong community pushback other priorities will come to the fore as local health bosses grapple with increasing central government demands for savings.

We are told that the service is closing because the hospital has not been able to recruit the specialist staff needed to run it. There has been some internal criticism that they haven’t been actively recruiting, and that the shortage of staff was foreseeable. Could this closure have been avoided? I am not an expert and I know how easy it is to criticise people when you don’t have all the facts. I believe that Te Whatu Ora regional leadership has done the best it could do with what it had. The question for us as a community is how do we make sure that our opposition to the closure is heard, and that we don’t allow it to become a permanent thing? Taking Te Whatu Ora at their word, how can we best support them to ensure that the funding is there to restart when new staff have been recruited?

It is not Council’s job to fix the public health service. We don’t have the expertise, the resources or the mandate. I do think it is council business, however, to talk about the closure of critical local medical services, to advocate for our community and to pressure the government to do better by this sub-region. We are a growing area and right now the Government should be investing in us – in housing, in workforce development, in business support, and yes, in increased medical services. It is not a time to go backwards.

The pressure must come from the community. It is about our willingness to stand up for ourselves. A number of people have said that we need a march to demand the reopening of the service, and after talking to Kat Walsh (who started the petition) and others I am putting my hand up to be the contact point. We need to keep this issue on the table and not allow it to slide into oblivion. A strong show of support from the community will make a huge difference right now, to make sure the issue doesn’t get forgotten. If you are willing to help organise the march, please get in touch. We need a strong team of us to make it a success.

Following a successful march, I think there are a number of other things that the council can do to support the community. It just takes some political leadership and skill. Council is not just about roads and water pipes. Civic leadership, backing our communities and supporting local action on important issues like this are all part of a council’s role.

If you can help organise the march please contact Nandor at <nandor.tanczos@whakatane.govt.nz> or 021 887 011

Published in the Whakatāne Beacon 22/01/25

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16/06/2023
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Local body politics

WHY I VOTED FOR A 9.5% RATES RISE


People often say they want politicians to be honest. Sometimes that means saying things that they don’t want to hear. That is especially true when it comes to rates.
People don’t need to be told that costs are going up. They see it every time they shop for groceries or get a tradie to fix something. The same is true for council. For the things that council spends most of its money on, like construction and maintenance, inflation is even higher than for households. It probably costs council about twenty percent more to do things this year than last.
It’s not just inflation. Storm damage is increasing. Climate change means we need to spend more each year to fix things up, and spend more money on making our infrastructure resilient for the future. In addition, years of underfunding has meant that there is a large unpaid bill looming. For example waste water pipes in Edgecumbe have remained cracked since the ’87 earthquake and that is causing problems with storm water infiltration into the system. That needs money to fix.
Councillors in the past have at times been more focused on minimising rates rises than doing the work needed. You can understand why. Voters tend to elect people who promise to keep the rates down, and don’t always ask how they plan to do that. Often it’s by making short sighted decisions. An example is Whakatāne town’s water supply. It could have been secured for a moderate additional amount of money when the bore went in at Paul’s Road many years ago but wasn’t, to avoid a rates rise. That decision has led to much bigger costs to try to find a new supply, and we are not even there yet.
In addition to all that, central government is constantly adding new responsibilities to councils but without providing the funding to pay for it. The job of local government is getting bigger all the time.
Plus health and safety now requires two people to do some of the things that used to be done by one, especially people working in remote places, so as to ensure there is back-up if anything goes wrong.
What do we do? We can cut services, but to make any real impact we’re not talking about a planter box here or a painted line there. We’re talking about significantly cutting services – closing libraries, shutting down swimming pools, or the airport, letting our local roads deteriorate (as Waka Kotahi has been doing with State Highways). Council staff have been trimming costs where they can, or deferring projects to smooth out spending, and that has helped keep rates rises below 10%, but no elected council member has supported taking a chainsaw to council services.
Actually, the main way that rates rises have stayed below 10% for next year is borrowing. It’s not an approach I’m happy with. Borrowing to pay for intergenerational infrastructure is a good strategy, but borrowing just to cover the bills is a recipe for long term trouble.
The question that councillors had to decide this year is whether to borrow more money and stay with a 6.3% increase, or borrow a bit less for a 9.5% increase. Ease the financial pain for people now, but with even more pain next year when we have to make up the shortfall, or bite the bullet now to avoid cementing in bigger rates increases in the future.

It was a hard decision. We all know that people are struggling to pay bills as it is. No one wants to add more financial hardship than necessary, but whatever happens those costs are not going away.
In fact by pushing them into the future, they just get bigger. That does no one any good.

Published in the Whakatane Beacon 16/6/23

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10/03/2023
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Climate change, Local body politics, Social ecology

Building a resilient future

Sometimes people don’t need more facts. What they need is a plan.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realise that we face multiple challenges in the world today – environmental, economic, political and social. Climate change is far from the only problem, but it is probably the most significant, because it makes everything else much worse. Many of us have been talking about this for decades, and slowly gaining traction, but it wasn’t another rigorous, scientifically conservative, well referenced report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that seems to have tipped the balance. It has taken a cyclone of unprecedented scale to bring home the real cost of our, and the world’s, inaction.

The science tells us that we still have a brief window to stop runaway climate change. That means we can still prevent the sort of feedback loops that would probably bring an end to homo sapiens 10,000 year experiment with civilisation. If they kick in, we just won’t have the abundance of resources, including the food surplus, to make cities work.

So it give me great comfort to know that the window still exists. That’s a helpful fact. Now what we need is a plan.

That has been my main focus since first being elected to Whakatāne District Council in 2016. In that first term the council agreed a set of principles to govern how we respond to climate change. We asked the people of Whakatāne for feedbaack, and we got strong support. In my second term on council we agreed a set of strategies, targets and action plans. Again these got strong support. The result has been both reduced council carbon emissions and substantial work on adapting to climate change. Last year we agreed on a reset of those strategies – a shifting of gears. You can expect to have your say as part of that work.

I need to add here that I didn’t do that work by myself. The success of the programe is really down to the highly talented staff that work and have worked at WDC. What I provided was the political leadership that allowed staff to do their jobs well.

The next phase of the climate change work needs to engage our communities better. If we have learned anything from the array of disasters that Whakatāne District and other areas have experienced, it’s the need for resilience in the face of an uncertain future. At the heart of resilience is community.

National and regional agencies, and the council, are important in terms of emergency response and long term recovery, but it is our willingness to look after each other that is the most critical. It is when we check on the neighbours because we know they may need a little help, or get stuck in where we see the need, that we see the best of us. Great examples are the Community Emergency Response Teams in action, or springing up, in places like Edgecumbe, Matatā, Waiohau, Thornton, Galatea / Murupara, Awatapu and Manawahe. Marae, who fling open their doors to become critical parts of the emergency response infrastructure, are another. It is a reminder of how blessed we are in the Eastern Bay to live in communities where people look out for each other.

Adapting to climate change isn’t just about disaster response. Council’s job is to make sure our infrastructure is both robust (strong) and resilient (able to spring back when parts of the system fail), but that’s just one part of the story. Given the impacts that Cyclone Gabrielle is already having on things like food supplies, how do we build a more resilient economy in the Eastern Bay? It’s not just about food sovereignty – we need to build strong local economies, that cycle resources (including money) around and around the community as many times as possible so as to extract maximum value.

WDC Council members were privileged recently to hear from Jacob Kajavala of Industrial Symbiosis Kawerau about the work to build synergies across businesses in Kawerau (and increasingly beyond). They work with workforce development training, recruitment and employment, and growing industry and opportunity. These kinds of collaborations across local businesses have great potential to build a vibrant local business ecosystem which provides some buffer from international economic shocks because they are grounded in strong and enduring relationships.This could be a building block towards a true circular economy, where upcycling applies to resource flows (eg the waste from one enterprise becomes the feedstock for another) people flows and financial flows.

It’s just one example of how the Eastern Bay of Plenty has the ingredients we need to build a strong, resilient, interconnected, prosperous and ecologically grounded sub-region. We just need a positive vision and leadership.

First published in the WhakatāneBeacon 8/3/23

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15/02/2023
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Local body politics

Representation to the Justice Committee of Parliament Inquiry into the Local Elections 2022

Greetings to the committee.

I request that you accept this as a late contribution. I had intended to send it before the deadline of 14 February but my internet has been down due to Cyclone Gabrielle.

I wish to make an oral presentation.

INTRODUCTION

My name is Nandor Tanczos. I am a third term councillor on the Whakatāne District Council and an accredited RMA commissioner. I was a Member of Parliament from 1999 to 2008 and sat on the Justice and Electoral Committee. I was also active during the committee stage of the passage of the Local Government Act 2002, although I did not sit on the Local Government committee. I mention these simply to establish my familiarity with local goverment legislation and practice, including electoral matters

I previously wrote to the committee in anticipation of this inquiry. Some of what I write below will have already been covered by that letter, but I wish to ensure that my comments are formally considered during this process. I thank you for the opportunity to have my say.

THE 2022 LOCAL ELECTION – THE PROBLEMS

As you will be aware, this years election had a number of significant problems with the administration of the vote. While our council endeavoured to make voting as accessible as possible by providing drive-in voting and taking mobile units out to some of our more remote communities, these efforts were greatly undermined by broader problems at (it seems) a nation level. Specifically two issues loom largest.

The first was the large numbers of people who didn’t receive their voting papers in time, or at all. While this has been a problem in the past, my understanding is that it has been relatively minor until now. Last year the scale of it seems unusual – and entirely unacceptable.

I have been contacted by local electors who received voting papers in the past at the same address, or who updated their details on the electoral roll well before the cut-off date in August, but who did not receive their voting papers for this election. I heard from families where the parents received papers but their (voting age) children did not, or vice versa. I heard from people who updated their address in time but whose papers still went to their old address, or sometimes to both. I also heard from a number of people who received their papers in the last few days prior to election day, who either posted their papers (and almost certainly didn’t have them counted because they arrived too late) or thought it was too late to vote. This included, but was not restricted to, overseas voters.

Of course all these people could make a special vote (if they did not receive their papers) or take their papers to a ballot box (if they arrived late, and there was one available in their community). The reality is that many people found it hard to understand what they needed to do in such circumstances. As a candidate I found myself advising people often on how to vote when this should have been clear to them. In addition, some people did not even realise that they hadn’t received papers until voting was closed.

All of this is a disincentive to vote, in an election that already suffers low turn-out. Given the lack of understanding about local electoral processes generally among the general public, I have no doubt that this suppressed the vote, in particular among those demographics already least likely to participate. Simply put, the harder and more complicated we make it, the less likely people are to vote, especially people not used to voting.

The second issue relates to the broader question of voting method and system. This includes whether postal voting is a method fit for purpose in the 21st century, and whether First Past the Post voting, both for Mayor and for ward councillors, delivers genuine democracy.

Many young voters have probably never posted a letter in their lives, and even people who grew up using postal services, such as myself, struggle to identify where a post box is these days. Snail mail is no longer the universal service it was. I am aware that councils have the ability to change the voting method under section 36 of the Local Electoral Act but in my observation, representation reviews by councils rarely touch on this question and many councillors would be unaware this power exists, or what the resource implications for the organisation would be. Some discussion of this by the Justice Committee, taking a broad national approach, would be helpful. I am aware that this latter question was briefly canvassed in your previous report but I am of the opinion that it could do with a more thorough consideration than you gave it at that time.

On the voting system, local elections are rife with examples of how candidates splitting the vote can lead to the election of people with strong negative ratings among the majority of voters. Especially smaller councils are often not well equipped to have a proper evidence based discussion on the pros and cons of moving to a Single Transferable Voting system and it would be helpful if the committee could provide some research basis and political commentary to assist.

OTHER MATTERS

The regular inquiry into local elections is an important function of this committee and used to its potential, I think it provides an opportunity to help address the some of the systemic disincentives to voting. My request above that you give a more detailed consideration of voting method and system is made in that vein. Perhaps even more importantly, I think it would be helpful to see your conclusions more widely disseminated. At the least, your report could be emailed to all elected councillors so that they are aware of your findings. My observation is that many elected councillors are not even aware that a review of local elections by your committee takes place on a regular basis, nor are they made aware of your conclusions. Given the importance of that work, wider appreciation of it (especially during representation reviews by councils) can only enhance local democracy.

Along similar lines, I think it would be helpful if elected councillors, or even all candidates in local elections, were emailed notification of your inquiry when it is initiated. Again most councillors would not be aware that the inquiry is taking place and that submissions are open, and many would have valuable insights into the process. In fact I was disappointed to not receive direct notification myself of this inquiry from the committee, given that I had already written to the clerk and chair to request that it be initiated promptly following the election.

Lastly, I support a voting age of 16 for local and central government elections. I think it will improve voting quality, because it will lead to near universal enrolment through schools and associated civics education.

CONCLUSION

In summary I am writing to ask you to give attention to three things:

  • The causes of, and solutions to, large numbers of people not receiving their voting papers in time to vote.
  • The question of postal voting in general, whether it is appropriate as a voting method and what alternatives might be preferable.
  • What the evidence tells us about the benefits and disadvantages of STV voting vis a vis FPP
  • The advantages of lowering the voting age to 16.
  • How your report can be more widely promoted, in particular among elected councillors and candidates, both in terms to eliciting submissions and also to disseminate your findings more widely.

I thank you for your time. Please contact me at this email if anything I have written needs clarification.

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03/02/2023
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Local body politics

WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER

One of the best available accounts of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi is given by William Colenso, who was there at the time and a fluent speaker of Māori.

Colenso describes Governor Hobson standing to explain the purpose of the proposed treaty. The missionary Henry Williams translated. Hobson started by saying that the Queen of England wished to do right by the Native people of New Zealand.

“But as the law of England gives no civil powers to Her Majesty out of her dominions, her efforts to do you good will be futile unless you consent…

“ The people of Great Britain are, thank God! free; and, as long as they do not transgress the laws they can go where they please… You have sold them lands here and encouraged them to come here. Her Majesty, always ready to protect her subjects, is also always ready to restrain them.
Her Majesty the Queen asks you to sign this treaty, and to give her that power which shall enable her to restrain them.”

In case you missed it, he is saying ‘to restrain THEM’, the English who had come here, who were running amuck in Kororāreka (Russell) and the like.

He then read out the treaty in Māori, which affirmed the right of hapu to their tino rangatiratanga – their own authority. It granted the rights of British Citizens to the Māori people, and protected the rights of different faiths (including Māori spiritual practises). And it provided for the Crown to exercise ‘kawanatanga’ – the ability to pass laws to restrain their own people.

The often repeated claim that Māori ceded their sovereignty when they signed the Treaty of Waitangi is simply incorrect. The Māori language translation that was read out, and that Hobson and almost all the rangatira signed, makes no mention of cedeing sovereignty. It is that version that takes precedence under the international legal principle of contra preferentum.

It seems obvious really. Why would they give up their right to rule themselves? They outnumbered the British many times over. They did not need to come under the authority of Queen Victoria to reap the benefits of technology transfer. Māori were already doing very well, adopting European ways of doing things where it suited them and keeping their own where it didn’t. Māori food growers fed Auckland, Māori textiles and timber filled the holds of trading ships and Maōri owned fleets were sailing to Australia and the USA to do commerce.

Some people have said that colonisation benefitted Māori. It is hard to see how. Māori were already enjoying the fruits of this rich cultural exchange. How could colonisation – war, murder, rape, the theft of land and resources, the attempted destruction of culture and traditional political organisation – add anything positive to that?

Today more people are becoming aware of that history. There is no reason for anyone today to feel guilty about it, nor would guilt serve any useful purpose. Neither can we return to 1840, even if we wished to. What we can do is reflect on what kind of nation we are today, and what we wish to be. How might our political-economic system serve us ALL better, empowering ordinary people over corporate power? How might it reflect more of the generosity of spirit that characterised that momentous event at Waitangi (and around the country – it wasn’t until 16 July that the Treaty was signed at Pōhaturoa by rangatira of Ngāti Pūkeko and Ngāti Awa).


There is a lot of talk about ‘co-governance’ at the moment, for example in 3 waters. The reality is that while Iwi Māori do get input into some very high level statements and expectations, the water services entities will be governed by independent boards. Iwi will have a say on the make up of the panel that decides who will sit on those boards, but that is as close as they get to the board table. Having a Māori world view represented in setting the DNA of those entities , though, will benefit us all. It doesn’t deserve the racist backlash that we’ve seen.

Perhaps in some ways more interesting is what happens at a local level. Local Government reform is a chance to examine the role of local councils in relation to Tangata Whenua, and to more clearly define the boundaries between them. Constitutional reform, to recognise the mana of Tangata Whenua and at the same time to provide an inherent right for Local Government and local decision-making, would be a step forward in my opinion. I would like to see local government legislation better provide for the resource management practises that Māori developed over centuries and that were attuned to the needs of specific catchments, ecosystems, climatic zones. I would like to see the intergenerational aspirations and values of a Tangata Whenua worldview embedded into council long-term planning frameworks. And I would like to see the relationship between local authorities and Tangata Whenua organisations (both post settlement entities and hapū) clarified and improved.

We shouldn’t be frightened of these discussions. This is an exciting opportunity to think about what it means to live in Aotearoa today. We all want the best for our descendants, and those descendants are increasingly Māori AND Pākeha, and chosing to honour their whole whakapapa. Let us mold our democracy to be something unique in the world, something that brings together the best of the Westminster adversarial system of representative majoritarianism with the best of Indigenous practise and decision-making. A system grounded in the reality of living in Aotearoa New Zealand.


First published in the Whakatāne Beacon 3/2/23

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