Bruce Hucker explains how Auckland's changing ethnic mix will influence the Super City.
Rodney Hide is wrong. Joris de Bres is right. The rejection of Maori seats and the proposed two-year sunset clause on Pacific and other ethnic advisory boards is a missed opportunity in the new Super City.
The work done by existing councils to engage with tangata whenua and other communities to celebrate our unique diversity is vital to the social and economic fabric of Auckland and to our cultural identity as Aucklanders.
To Rodney Hide such an approach is separatist, which is why he does not understand the two challenges Auckland faces.
One is how in symbolic and practical ways we can continue to build a multicultural society on a bicultural base, with more respect for the dignity of difference, more tolerable harmonies, more social cohesion and an enriched sense of a more inclusive common good.
The other is how to create governmental structures and processes that are congruent with, and responsive to, the browning of Auckland.
The browning of Auckland is a metaphor to describe a significant trend where New Zealand Europeans are on their way to becoming a minority ethnic community in the make-up of the region's population.
About 190 different ethnic communities now make their home in Auckland.
In data prepared for the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, today the largest group is New Zealand European (57 per cent). Asians come next (19 per cent), followed by Pacific (14 per cent). Maori constitute 11 per cent and others 8 per cent.
What is striking, according to Statistics New Zealand's medium population projections for 2016, is that Europeans could be down to 50 per cent of the region's population and Asians up to 25 per cent.
Why should the new Auckland Council have reserved Maori seats so that Maori are represented around the decision-making table as well as on an advisory Maori Statutory Board? The answer is simple.
The Government has an obligation under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
That obligation is part of a continuing conversation involving Article One and Article Two of the Treaty: between kawanatanga, government or governorship, and tino rangatiratanga, the unqualified exercise of the chieftainship of Maori over their lands, villages and all their treasures.
Maori seats would enable them to bring to the new Auckland Council their authority over their resources and their values as a contribution to our common good.
As the royal commission noted, two of those values are manakitanga: a sacred obligation to care for all people within their rohe (area) including non-Maori. The second is kaitiakitanga: a sacred obligation to protect Papatuanuku (the Earth Mother) within their rohe.
The Treaty relationship is not contractual but covenantal. This distinction has always been understood by Maori, but seldom by our settler governments.
Covenant has Jewish roots. Lord Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi for the Commonwealth, defines it in this way: "We create co-operation not by getting you to do what I want, but by joining together in a moral association that turns You and I into We. I help you, you help me because there are things we care about together.
"Covenant is a binding commitment entered into by two or more parties, to work and care for one another while respecting the freedom, integrity and difference of each ... What difference does it make? For one thing, it gets us to think about the common good, the good of all of us together."
Maori are also becoming significant economic actors in the region. Nationally, according to a conservative estimate by Te Puni Kokiri, the growing Maori asset base is worth $16.5 billion.
Even part of this taonga committed to an inclusive common good reinforced by seats around the decision-making table is a major benefit for all who make our home together in the region.
The Government's failure to understand and fulfil its Treaty obligations has implications for the second dimension of the browning of Auckland.
Minority ethnic communities from Pacific to Asian and Indian are aware that the Government will be even less likely to respond to the diversity and needs of their communities which are still not seen as part of the economic and political mainstream.
The royal commission drew attention to the under-representation of Maori, Pacific and Asian communities in Auckland's local and regional government.
It will be even harder for people from minority ethnic communities to get elected to the new Auckland Council, the primary seat of power.
Many of our ethnic communities have settled in Auckland for the advantages it offers - opportunities to make money, to secure jobs, to get a better education, and for children and young people to move into the professions and business.
The presence of minority ethnic communities is a source of strength rather than of strife, a positive rather than negative influence on Auckland's sustainable development.
The Government still has time to change its approach to the Super City, by including Maori seats in the Auckland Council, and by building on and extending existing local body mechanisms to include minority ethnic communities in the mainstream and give them a stronger voice in the public arena.
* Dr Bruce Hucker, a former deputy mayor of Auckland City, is a senior lecturer at the School of Architecture and Planning, University of Auckland.
