The future is ours, let's go and get it

All seemed to agree that Thursday's inauguration of the Far North's new Mayor, councillors and community board members represented the launch of a new era.

"The future is ours - let's go and get it," Mayor-elect John Carter told the gathering in the Kaikohe Memorial Hall moments before making his official declaration and accepting the mayoral chains from chief executive David Edmunds.

He vowed to return 'local' to local government, and to unite the district. The council and iwi would be "joined at the hip", and communities within the Far North would be making more decisions for themselves.

Mr Carter acknowledged those who had gone before those elected earlier in the month, and who had imparted their wisdom. Now the Far North could march into the future with confidence. Voters had selected 10 skilled people to represent them, and 19 community board members, who had agreed to work together in unity in the best interests of the district.

"We will be the servants of the people, and we will work with the staff," he added.

"We will look after the staff. They are the people who carry out the policy the council makes, and without them we are nothing. They will have our support.

"We will work with the community, with iwi, with business, with educationalists and with trusts. The councillors will be out in the community working for you, so you can make your contribution through them."

Mr Carter said he, Whangarei's new Mayor Sheryl Mai (who was present), new Northland Regional Council chairman Bill Shepherd and Kaipara commissioner John Robertson would work together in the best interests of Northland.

"This place needs that to happen, and it will," he said.

"You can expect us to make decisions. We will get on with the job. I have told the staff that the worst thing about a decision is not making it. When we are wrong we will put our hand up, we will learn from it and we will move on, without recriminations. Mind you, we don't want to be making the same mistake two or three times."

Mr Carter ended by thanking many people, above all his wife Leoni. She was the one who had seen him tired and grumpy at the end of the day; she was the one who had put up with him.

"A man could not ask for more," he said.

Mr Carter's promises of a more harmonious Northland followed six years of sometimes fractious relations between the Far North District Council and the Northland Regional Council in particular. He may, however, have to build relationships with Maori after his comments during the campaign that a proposal for dedicated Maori seats amounted to apartheid, but his optimism was shared by others who spoke, including Hokianga kaumatua and academic Patu Hohepa, who described Ms Mai's presence as a double blessing, and the beginning of the reunification of the North.

Another described the ceremony as a celebration of a new era with new leadership, adding that Mr Carter, who had come home, could once again be known as Hone.

"If you want to know anything your encyclopaedia is right here, in the community," he added.

Arthur Harawira agreed that a new era had begun, but the council would need to display goodwill in terms of the new administration that would evolve with the settlement of treaty claims. A lot of Maori land had been "inherited" by the council, and he urged the new councillors to continue the dialogue that had begun under previous Mayor Wayne Brown, and to embrace the meaning of tinorangatiratanga.