Kaipara District Council has voted to disestablish its Māori ward, becoming the first council to do so under new rules, in a tense council meeting.
Councillors voted 4 to 3 in favour of disestablishing the Te Moananui o Kaipara Māori ward with one abstention.
Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson, Deputy Mayor Jonathan Larsen and councillors Gordon Lambeth, Mike Howard, Ron Manderson, and Ash Nayyar voted for the removal of KDC’s Te Moananui o Kaipara Māori ward ahead of the next local elections in October 20/5 - as protesters outside the meeting erupted into a haka and banged on the meeting venue walls.
Māori ward councillor Pera Paniora, and councillors Mark Vincent and Eryn Wilson-Collins voted against the council removing the ward.
Paniora who is a lawyer, said the decision was hypocrisy.
Polls had been held up as an essential part of the Kaipara community having its say on Māori wards.
But today’s decision to remove the ward had been made without public consultation.
New government legislation allows for councils to get rid of their Māori wards before the next local election or keep them and hold a binding poll.
Paniora tried to get today’s council meeting to pause its decision around the Māori ward’s future and talk to Māori before then but her efforts failed.
The KDC Māori ward will stay in place until the next local election.
Paniora said her message to other Māori ward councillors around New Zealand in the wake of today’s KDC decision and the recent government legislation change that enable it was for them to be strong.
A protester stepped through the council meeting room doors, opened by Māori ward councillor Pera Paniora, and her haka drowned out the meeting as Democracy Northland’s Frank Newman was speaking.
Mayor Craig Jepson adjourned the meeting, just half an hour after it began.
Police removed the protester performing the haka from the doorway.
Paniora continued to put points of order, as Howard became the first speaker to be allowed to talk for longer than the allocated five minutes.
Te Runanga o Ngāti Whātua has this morning filed judicial review proceedings against the council’s potential canning of the ward.
Te Runanga o Ngāti Whātua trustee Deb Nathan said court proceedings had been filed because there had not been adequate time allowed for consultation with mana whenua over the council potentially getting rid of its Māori ward.
Should the council proceed to remove its Te Moananui o Kaipara Māori ward at this morning’s meeting, the proceedings lodged will become a High Court injunction to block the council action.
More than 200 protesters were this morning outside the council’s Mangawhai extraordinary meeting as it got under way and headed towards making a decision.
■ LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.