David Taipari with photos of his tipuna in his office. Photo / Dean Purcell.
David Taipari has gone from possum trapper to one of the most influential Māori roles in Tāmaki Makaurau.
It was his grandfather who put him on the path to chair the Independent Māori Statutory Board, a watchdog set up to promote issues of significance to Māori at Auckland Council and ensure it gives effect to the Treaty of Waitangi.
When Taipari was 8, his grandfather told him to go to school and learn English to get his tribe's land back. University was not for him. Instead, he chose the "University of Moehau", a training ground far removed from academia that now sees him advancing the interests of 19 tribes across Auckland.
The IMSB is a little-known anomaly of the Super City. It was created after the National-led Government and Local Government Minister Rodney Hide rejected the recommendation from the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance for three Māori seats on Auckland Council - two elected and one appointed by mana whenua.
The board has nine members, who sit on council committees with voting rights but not on the governing body. The members are appointed by a selection process overseen by mana whenua and set up by the Minister of Māori Development. It has its own staff, a separate office and an annual budget of $3 million.
Taipari was appointed chair of the board in 2010 and has served four terms in the role.
The job, he says, pretty much started with a blank piece of paper with a key focus on participating in the decision-making processes of council and standing up for the interests of Māori.
This has certainly been the case recently on prickly issues such as co-governance and the creation of Māori seats on the council.
The IMSB expects Māori seats will be in place for the 2025 local body elections and supports the recommendation by the Royal Commission for three seats - two elected and one appointed by mana whenua.
Taipari says the seats would provide Māori representation at the governing body and the IMSB should continue to provide independent advice to council. The IMSB could be rolled into a national body to provide advice to councils across the country, similar to the Māori Health Authority being set up as part of the Government's health reforms, he says.
"I don't know of any examples of co-governance that aren't working," says Taipari, who points to the success of the Tūpuna Maunga Authority, which governs 14 volcanic cones.
"Our maunga nurtured our peoples for centuries. They were central as places of birth, habitation, rituals of daily life, food cultivation and defence. The tangible inscriptions of the ancestors remain, especially the terraced fortifications.
"For decades the maunga were vantage points to see the city as long as we didn't disturb grazing cattle and sheep. Now they are being transformed under the guidance of the authority, which is leading the push for world heritage status for the volcanic field," he says.
When it comes to the Three Waters reforms, which will create four massive water entities that will be 50 per cent council members and 50 per cent iwi at the strategic level, Taipari said the board supports good management and quality water for everybody.
"Maori do have a kaitiaki responsibility and should be part of the decision-making. I don't know why anyone would think differently."
To those who do think differently and feel uncomfortable with things Māori, Taipari has some advice: "Open your eyes a little bit more and your mind. You will probably find it's a good thing rather than a bad thing."
Taipari was born in Thames, where his great-great-grandfather opened up the goldfields and supplied food from Coromandel in the 1860s when Auckland was broke.
He comes from the Marutūahu iwi, including Ngāti Paoa and Ngāti Maru, whose tribal interests span the broad reaches of the Hauraki Gulf, South Auckland, North Shore and parts of Great Barrier Island.
After leaving school, Taipari trained as a spray painter at the Toyota car factory in Thames during a period of redundancies in the 1980s. He lost his job and became a welder down the road at Campbell Tube Products before heading overseas.
A week after Australia lost the America's Cup at Fremantle in 1987, Taipari landed a job at the Royal Perth Yacht Club painting Alan Bond's spectator superyacht, Southern Cross.
On his return to New Zealand, he got a job at the Kerepehi Dairy Factory on the Hauraki Plains, where he became a union delegate and ended up handling the redundancies and relocations for 600 staff when Anchor shut down the plant.
Unbeknown to the dairy worker, losing his job and then busting a knee playing rugby helped launch senior roles as a Māori trustee, in economic development, on conservation boards, Treaty negotiations and the IMSB.
Taipari's career took off when he won a possum and pest control contract at Moehau on the Coromandel Peninsula for a Māori trust and through that got a job as a researcher with the Hauraki Māori Trust Board for Waitangi Tribunal claims.
From that point, Taipari has been on a life-long mission to set up a structure for his tribe and become engrossed in Māori development, local and central government.
"I'm reasonably recognised as being obsessed with structure. I'm a people person. I'm all about sharing the destiny, but in the same breath, when decisions need to be made, I will make those decisions and get on with it. I hate procrastinating," he says.
Four terms into the Super City, Taipari said the IMSB is seeing the perspectives, interests and views of mana whenua being taken into account in a positive and mature way by the
council and council-controlled organisations(CCOs), but there's still significant work to be done.
The IMSB has developed the 30-year aspirational Māori Plan with input from mana whenua, taking Taipari from being an advocate for his tribe to an advocate for 19 tribes and a population of about 170,000 Māori.
"One important function is to get an audit of Auckland Council and measure their performance of giving effect to the Treaty of Waitangi, which I think is a great tool," Taipari says.
The IMSB has put considerable effort into encouraging more diversity through Auckland Council's senior echelons, but Taipari says this remains an area where much more could be achieved.
"Having a diverse boardroom and senior management team is an important aspect of improving organisational performance. For public organisations, this is even more important. Most understand they should look something like the communities they serve.
"While we see Māori on CCO boards more than they were - they are or recently were chairing boards such as Eke Panuku and the Ports of Auckland – council has a lot to do in terms of the diversity of its senior management teams and at its own top table," he says.
Other focuses for the board are housing; advocating for more to be done for the homeless and transitional housing; and better transport services to the south and west.
"We do not support a regional fuel tax because the public transport upgrades it is funding neglects to a large degree places like MĀngere, Ōtara, Rānui and Massey," Taipari says.
A big motivation for Taipari is the opportunity to further drive the economic potential of Māori and iwi.
"It is only several decades since there was a common perception that the contribution of Māori to Auckland's economy was as factory workers, labourers, truck drivers and cleaners. Fast-forward to the present. Māori are becoming significant economic powerhouses. In Auckland alone, Māori own more than $23 billion of assets, and contribute more than $4b to Auckland's GDP, according to NZIER research."
Taipari says as the border re-opens, the opportunities from greater recognition of the contribution Māori can make are significant.
"In no other country can visitors see a Tāmaki Herenga Waka festival, or celebrate Matariki. The IMSB is interested in how we can continue to develop the economic contribution of Māori and iwi to Auckland's economy.
"We want to see more commissioning and positioning of Māori sculptures, art and taonga in significant places around Auckland, making expressions of Māori culture highly visible to international and domestic visitors," he says.
Taipari returns to his great-great-grandfather, who cared for Aucklanders in the 19th century.
"We are all about looking after everybody and being hosts. The trouble with us for the past 100 years is that the asset base we used to do, that got ripped from under our feet by the government.
"But we are still the same kind of people with the same kind of thinking. Our views are holistic and manaaki and inclusivity and family and whanaungatanga."
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