Waka to get new home on East Coast

A waka that cost taxpayers more than $500,000 and has lain on a riverbank near Ruatoria for five years is to get a new home.

The canoe will be moved from the banks of the Waiapu River to a site at Rangitukia, near Tikitiki on the East Coast, says Te Runanga o Ngati Porou chief executive Amohaere Houkamau.

Local people will be better-equipped to care for the waka on a more accessible site, she says.

People have questioned the cost of the waka, which featured in the Weekend Herald last month.

Ms Houkamau said that when the vessel was commissioned as part of the 1990 sesquicentennial celebrations it was envisaged that it would be 25m to 30m, but it ended up being 45m, creating a dilemma for Ngati Porou.

The waka took 11 years to complete and was finished in 1999. Ngati Porou received $80,000 from the Government for the waka as part of the 1990 celebrations but to date the canoe has cost more than $500,000.

Most of that was Maori access training funding the iwi received to run courses on waka-building under Greg Whakataka-Brightwell's tutorship.

"The taxpayers' money that has been invested in the waka was to purchase training programmes which were carried out as per the agreed contracts that the runanga had with the Iwi Transition Agency," Ms Houkamau said. "The fact that Ngati Porou built a waka in the process demonstrates our ingenuity and was actually a bonus.

"The Government contracted us to run training programmes for young Maori people and that is what we did."

A hui of Ngati Porou named the waka Te Aio o Nukutaimemeha, which means the "peaceful, calm Nukutaimemeha [45m waka of safe passage]".

- NZPA