The Local Government Commission has rejected a claim that the views of Wairoa's Maori population will not be adequately reflected in a telephone survey it has carried out to assess local opinion on amalgamation.
Wairoa District Council's Maori standing committee wrote to the commission's chairman, Basil Morrison, last week voicing concerns that the district's high Maori population, combined with a low rate of fixed home phonelines, meant the views of local Maori would be under-represented in a region-wide survey.
The commission has previously said it planned to telephone-survey 2000 people across Hawke's Bay as part of its process to decide whether to issue a "final proposal" in favour of a merger of the region's five councils into a single unitary authority.
The chair of Wairoa's Maori standing committee, Graeme Symes, said with a Maori population of 59.4 per cent, and census data indicating 29 per cent of Maori households in the district did not have access to a fixed telephone line, "these factors when taken together in the opinion of the Maori Standing Committee has denied tangata whenua within the Wairoa district the ability to fairly participate in this process".
Mr Symes said the committee had "deep concerns regarding the methodology" of the phone survey. A spokesperson for the commission said its survey firm, Colmar Brunton, had interviewed 400 Wairoa residents aged 18 or over, 44 per cent of whom had identified themselves as Maori. While Maori accounted for 59 per cent of the total population of Wairoa, for those aged 18 and over the figure was 54 per cent, the spokesperson said.
