Editorial: City must make cuts to find funds for Maori

Mayor Len Brown will have to slash $3 million from existing spending in his first budget or raise rates to pay for the unbudgeted cost. Photo / Greg Bowker

Rodney Hide must be rueing his die-in-a-ditch stand against two Maori seats on the Auckland Council. The alternative, a statutory advisory board of Maori, probably sounded like an innocuous solution to him at the time.

Since then, he has discovered that the advisory board will be putting nominees on most of the council's standing committees and they will have voting rights. Now the board has been given a budget of $3.4 million a year.

That figure is not far short of the $4.1 million allocated for the mayoral office, which has active executive functions under the legislation Mr Hide steered through Parliament.

The amount requested by the Maori board was approved by the council's finance committee this week without much explanation and it is a decision that does not need to be put to the council.

The board's chairman, David Taipari, said the budget was the result of independent external advice that took into account the board's work plan, a range of projects, the cost of advisers and a secretariat that would be independent of the council.

Clearly this body means to do much more than merely ensure Maori views are heard on council projects.

For that money, it had better be much more than a sounding board because the council's staff includes a department of 19 employees that has been set up to develop Maori strategy, whatever that is, and relations. A council spokesman said the job demarcation between the department and the statutory board was still being "worked through".

In that case, it is far too soon to approve a budget for the statutory board. Mayor Len Brown and the finance committee have committed the ratepayers to $3.4 million a year before they even know what the board will do that could not be done by their own department.

It looks very much like the board has presented a bill and the mayor and the committee have simply accepted it, no questions asked.

Yet the items on the bill invite many questions. The fees and expenses of the nine board members are expected to total $494,500 and another $50,000 for other nominees to council committees. They intend to employ a staff costing nearly $1 million. They want $470,000 to buy advice on law, communications and tikanga.

Their consultation with Maori communities will cost $280,000. They will spend $175,000 auditing the council's adherence to the Treaty of Waitangi. They intend to commission $650,000 of research on the wellbeing of Maori and another $369,000 on council support services.

The budget established for the council by the transition agency provided only $400,000 for its Maori board. The agency's estimate fell so far short of the board's ambitions that it must be wondered how many other council activities are going to make nonsense of the agency's calculations.

The Maori board's costs will have to be found from savings in council operations or from higher rates. If it is too late to take a closer look at the board's account, the mayor would be well advised to take a hard look at the council's Maori strategy and relations department. There looks to be plenty of strategy and relations in the board's intended outlays.

How much simpler and cheaper it would have been to reserve two seats on the council of 20 for Auckland Maori. One way or another Maori will have a voice in public decisions these days. When they look at the perverse consequences of Mr Hide's stand they may be grateful.

Their board appointees will have much more say, and vastly more resources, than a couple of electorates would have produced. Now it is up to the board to ensure the city sees $3.4 million worth of results.