The Whanganui River was granted the legal rights of personhood in 2017. Photo / Ngā Tāngata Tiaki o Whanganui
A Whanganui River tribal leader has dismissed a call for a referendum on co-governance, labelling it shameless politicking.
Gerrard Albert says an act of Parliament five years ago is ushering in a better version of local democracy that goes beyond co-governance and has everyone at the table.
Local Democracy reporter Moana Ellis reports.
Whanganui iwi leader Gerrard Albert has spent most of his life fighting for legal recognition of the rights of the Whanganui River and its people.
He says Act Party leader David Seymour's proposal for a referendum on the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and co-governance is not worth paying attention to.
Albert says the river tribes have moved beyond narrow views of co-governance and are working from a framework rooted in their indigenous belief system – a worldview enshrined in law since 2017 when the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act granted the river system the legal rights of personhood.
Five years on, Albert says the legislation is bringing significant change to how democracy is practised in central government, local government and community processes.
What is the Whanganui River Māori view of co-governance?
Some see it as a 50-50 representative model, some as having Māori wards. In our context, Te Awa Tupua isn't co-governance but a much stronger framework.
It is community governance, which has hapū, iwi and community working together effectively, removing barriers to co-operation and making democracy work better for all.
Te Awa Tupua is a community-led model where hapū and iwi are just part of the picture.
Māori are part of our community and have a distinct voice within that community.
Democracy exists to provide for that, to ensure voices are heard.
Unfortunately, people see co-governance or any co-operative arrangement that includes Māori as a threat, and of course, it isn't.
What difference has the Awa Tupua legislation made to local democracy?
We needed the legislation to clarify where hapū and iwi sit within our community with regard to our river.
The Resource Management Act (RMA), for example, has been an adversarial environment that has pitched parties against one another – whereas Te Awa Tupua says we're all part of the river's picture and we should focus ourselves on what's best for the river.
Within Te Awa Tupua, you don't have to find a place for hapū and iwi to exist because that key principle – we are the river and the river is us – is at the centre of the arrangement.
When you talk about what's best for the river environmentally, socially, economically and politically, hapū and iwi are inextricably part of the river's picture.
We don't need to have a status conferred on us, neither can you alienate a status from us. It just is.
The Awa Tupua Act provides for what many would view as a co-governance arrangement, bringing mayors, councils and community interests together with the river tribes to set a strategy for Te Awa Tupua. Why was it important to include this 17-member collaboration, Te Kōpuka, in the Act?
Te Kōpuka is a community governance group that's going to produce a strategy to usher in a new way of doing things.
It's not a co-governance arrangement at all – it's a better community democracy model of how you would plan for a river.
Currently, you have the regional council [based] in Palmerston North, which is responsible for, I would argue, four major water systems.
Te Kōpuka is focused on one: the Whanganui River catchment.
Having councillors sitting around the table in Palmerston North is an inefficient democratic process: four or five come from a Palmerston North constituency because the biggest population is in the city.
The whole of the Whanganui catchment gets only three councillors – one from Ruapehu and two for the Whanganui constituency.
There's a problem with democracy from the outset because how can you look after a river system if you have to trade votes at a table about what you should do in respect of that river system?
Even if the three Whanganui catchment councillors all agree on what they need to do, they would still have to convince another eight or nine members around a table that this is the best course of action for that river catchment.
Why is Te Awa Tupua a model for better democracy?
Councils can be hampered by one or two councillors who come out with that well-worn trope that in a democracy the majority rules, and therefore you can't give Māori too much of a say because they're not the majority.
This ignores that democracy exists to have a fair and equitable society. Councillors exist to provide for a fair, equitable and just society, and to make decisions on that basis.
Te Awa Tupua has taken a step toward what we need as a more effective, democratic community around our river.
In Te Kōpuka, local government bodies have four votes around the table. The rest go straight to the community by having primary industries, tourism, recreation and environmental interests at the table.
If you look at Te Pūwaha, the Whanganui port redevelopment, it's a community-led model which isn't relying on the councils to make decisions but on the community being engaged to guide the process – a much stronger democratic model.
Around council tables there is still the spectre of the archetypal Māori bogeyman who wants to veto everything: if you let Māori into a decision, they're going to complicate, stall and stop things.
With the cycleway bridge at Upokongaro, there was conjecture that Māori were holding it up: the iwi's made a demand for a million dollars, the human personhood of the river's holding it up. None of that was even remotely near the truth.
When the hapū first got wind that there was a bridge planned, because we saw it being built, we asked why the local council had not talked to the Papaiti, Upokongaro and Mākirikiri Valley communities.
As a consequence, a community meeting identified matters that the community was concerned about, including speed limits through the village and safe access to the bridge.
There are toilets being planned now because the community was brought into a discussion about what to do with extra traffic from people biking out there and needing a toilet.
The council did none of that work before they started building a bridge.
The bridge was held up because the council hadn't fulfilled its legal obligation to gain permission to occupy that space.
The legislation on who owned that space was clarified in 2017. It was a complete failure of government infrastructure, engineers and planners.
That's why I say the Awa Tupua is really a greater community model. It's a way to encourage and expect better democracy within our community.
Are you concerned Act Party leader David Seymour's campaign against co-governance might affect the advances you've described?
What David Seymour is promoting is not worth giving any attention to. Most people see it for what it is: a shameless tilt at scaremongering to get votes – shameless politicking.
The more we listen to squeaky wheels, the more we'll buy into what is a really topical issue at the moment: misrepresentation and the deliberate spread of disinformation to serve a political end.
We had it with the anti-mandate, anti-vaccine brigade. It's easy to spread misinformation – disinformation actually, because it's deliberate – to paint Māori in a particular light because there's a part of the community that votes for the Act parties of the world.
They're the people who have been brought up in a world that wasn't populated by positive models like Te Awa Tupua, who are scared about change because that represents for them a losing of the power that they have.
Was the Te Awa Tupua Act framed around the Treaty of Waitangi, or other ture (law) – natural ture, indigenous ture.
It was framed around the river itself. Te Awa Tupua did come through a Treaty settlement process but the Treaty's not mentioned in the act.
Treaty or not, we would have the same view about our place in the community and on our lands and river.
The courts have treated the Treaty as if it's something they alone have the ability to define.
The Treaty should be defined by the community to whom it belongs – the people of New Zealand, and in our context with our river, by the people on the river.
The Awa Tupua is actually a more inclusive framework than any other Treaty model has provided, because it includes the community as part of the river's picture.
The Treaty shouldn't be lost and exist in 1840. Neither should it be lost and exist in whatever court in any given year decides, or what any given political party wants to recognise at any particular time.
The Treaty should be something that's lived through the people at place and in real time, deciding what a fair, equitable and just society looks like.
With Te Awa Tupua, we've created an opportunity to do that, and it's working.
Hapū, iwi and Māori are very insistent that people accept we'll always be here. We'll always expect equitable voice and decision-making, and the best outcome for the whole community – ourselves and everyone around us. And this is not understood.
People don't understand the way Māori think in that regard. They think it's just people with their hands out, which again is something Te Awa Tupua is showing isn't the case.
How exactly is this model working?
Te Kōpuka as a group has to produce a strategy that will be the community blueprint for implementing Te Awa Tupua over the next generation. It is a good model.
You've got everybody around the table. You haven't got councillors sitting in boardrooms making decisions for a community. That's how it's working – changing the ways councils operate so that they remove themselves from their ivory towers and work with the community.
We've got a proposition which we'll be taking out to communities – primary industries, recreation, tourism, environment, people in general – to work with them to build the strategy.
The strategy, when it's finally produced, will itself facilitate the necessary change, because we've got everybody around the table.
It is a more equitable space because Te Kōpuka selected the chair and deputy chair – myself as chair and Hera Smith as deputy chair – from amongst the iwi membership of Te Kōpuka. We are leading using the community-based model that we're talking about.
Sure, we have to accentuate and provide equity for the hapū and iwi voice which has been downgraded and discarded for a very long time, but it's on the basis that the whole community is involved in decisions around its river. There are no problems because it's being led in the right way.
Te Awa Tupua is better for the community and we can utilise it to address anything. We've got RMA and Three Waters reforms, yet we don't have to fear these continuous changes that come out of Wellington.
Whatever legislative change happens, the Awa Tupua provides a constant for our community.
It ensures that we're planning and have our house in order so that every three, six or nine years – whenever a government comes in and wants to change the law or the way we do things – we're able to absorb that into a collaborative, co-operative, equitable community space.
• Te Kōpuka is a permanent joint committee of local authorities in the Whanganui River catchment, established under the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017. It is charged with advancing the environmental, social, cultural and economic health and wellbeing of Te Awa Tupua through developing a river management strategy. The group comprises up to 17 members appointed by iwi, and other communities with interests in Te Awa Tupua, including: Whanganui Iwi; other iwi with interests in the Whanganui River; local government; Genesis Energy; the Department of Conservation; Fish and Game New Zealand; environmental and conservation interests; tourism interests; primary industries; and recreational interests.
• Te Pūwaha refers to the gateway, or river mouth, and is the name of the Whanganui port redevelopment project, a partnership of Whanganui iwi and four investors: Whanganui District Council, Horizons Regional council, Q-West Boat Builders and Whanganui District Employment Training Trust. The $50 million project aims to develop a modern marine precinct and secure the Whanganui port as a long-term economic and recreational asset.
• Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air
