Tukoroirangi Morgan, chair of Waikato-Tainui tribal executive Te Arataura, has been nominated as co-chair of the Three Waters northern entity. Photo / Audrey Young
When iwi chairs meet new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins at Waitangi today, some leaders will be asking him to get rid of the “co-governance” label and replace it with “partnership” or “mahi tahi.”
Key among them is the chairman of the Waikato-Tainui tribal executive, Tukoroirangi Morgan, who was recently confirmed as the chair of Three Waters’ Entity A or Waipuna aa rangi, which stretched from the Bombay Hills to the Far North.
“Remove the label of co-governance and go back to the concept of mahi tahi, partnership, or working together,” Morgan said he would be telling Hipkins.
In an interview about the Treaty of Waitangi, Morgan said the narrative around co-governance had been badly handled and some people were paranoid about it.
“Co-governance is a modern expression of partnership,” he said.
“Everything that our people signed up to in the Treaty is being manifested in this co-governance.”
But the narrative had to change because of the negative rhetoric, said Morgan, who has also been nominated by iwi as co-chair of the Three Waters northern entity.
“This debate on co-governance is full of contradictions because there are a whole number of models in this country that in their own way amplify partnership.”
The establishment of Kōhanga Reo was one example, and the establishment of charter schools or partnership schools - by Act - was another. Both were funded by the Crown and allowed Māori to educate their children in their own way.
“Without the shared approach with the Crown, Kōhanga Reo would not have endured,” he said.
Charter schools were abolished by the current Government.
Morgan believed the younger generation was more inclusive and tolerant than his generation and that in 20 years’ time, the concept of partnership would be deeply embedded in the frameworks of local and central government.
Of Waikato-Tainui’s 83,000 tribal members, 40,000 lived in Auckland, Morgan said. He has experience with co-governance as part of the Waikato River settlement.
He is a former co-chair of the Waikato River Authority, a co-governed statutory board that has equal numbers of iwi and Crown representatives under a settlement passed in 2010.
Morgan co-chaired the authority with former National minister John Luxton, and said all decisions had been on a consensus basis. None had gone to a vote.
“Consensus decisions endure,” said Morgan. “When people use numbers as a hammer against their colleagues on the board, more often than not those decisions are relitigated.”
He preferred to describe co-governance as “mahi tahi” - working together - because that encompassed the fact the board needed to have relationships with all stakeholders, including commercial interests such as Fonterra.
The other iwi representatives for the Three Waters Entity A are Haami Piripi of Te Rarawa, Te Warena Taua of Te Kawerau ā Maki, Mook Hohneck of Ngāti Manuhiri, Aperahama Edwards of Ngāti Wai, Anahera Morehu of Ngāti Whātua and Pita Tipene of Ngāti Hine.
Hipkins has acknowledged the Government has failed to explain co-governance properly and said the restructure will be reviewed.
He has not gone so far as ditching the four regional oversight boards, made up of iwi and council-appointed members.
Under the law already passed, the boards will set the strategic direction and appoint a more hands-on board of directors to oversee the operations of the four entities, which is not a co-governance model.
Many iwi claim ownership of the water, a legal position that has never been conceded by a government. But successive governments have recognised Māori “proprietary interests” in water and created roles in local and regional decisions on water issues, citing its treaty obligations.
Different degrees of involvement and different models have been used in different pieces of legislation.
Ngāti Whātua’s deputy chairman, Ngarimu Blair, has a mixed view of co-governance.
He said in many ways, co-governance was a way of limiting tino rangatiratanga (self-determination, sovereignty).
“Maybe some of our most ardent objectors to anything Māori should thank the Crown officials for limiting the ambition of Māori to co-governance,” he says, only half-joking.
“I’m sure most iwi leaders would prefer a property right over water than co-managing it.”
Ngāti Whātua had one of the very first co-governance agreements, with the Auckland City Council in 1991, to co-manage Takaparawhau/Bastion Point and Ōkahu Bay Reserve, which continues. In time, that could evolve to sole management by Ngāti Whātua, while retaining public access.
It has also been involved in the co-governance arrangement over Auckland’s volcanic cones but Blair is less positive about the involvement of other iwi.
The Crown’s original Treaty settlement offer to Ngāti Whātua had included a plan to return One Tree Hill, Mt Eden and Mt Roskill. But other iwi objected in the Waitangi Tribunal, and the settlement stalled. The issue of 14 volcanic cones was then dealt with separately in a deal involving 13 other iwi or as Blair calls them, “pretenders to mana whenua”.
He felt that Ngāti Whātua had been pressed to sign up or go to the back of the queue for its main settlement.
But Blair would like Ngāti Whātua to have another co-governance agreement - over the Waitematā Harbour, to bring together Ngāti Whātua with all the disparate agencies that have a role in it.
“Where it would get sticky and where the Crown gets it wrong is that they would invite any Māori who ever paddled a waka up the Waitematā to also have a say, which in our view breaches tikanga.”
He was confident most Aucklanders would support a co-management regime if it was communicated properly and clearly and was based on the health and wellbeing of the harbour.
“As most Aucklanders know, our harbour has really suffered over the last 50 years in terms of silting, urban run-off, sewage pollution and over-fishing of both recreational and commercial and the ongoing encroachment, mainly by the Port of Auckland.”
The Crown is currently negotiating a co-management agreement between relevant iwi (not Ngāti Whātua Orakei) and northern councils for the Kaipara Harbour and its tributaries in what will be the first harbour settlement.
The last National Government approved parameters for Treaty of Waitangi harbour settlements in 2016.
Blair said the iwi had a good relationship with mayor Wayne Brown because he recognised Ngāti Whātua as the only mana whenua of central Auckland.
He said the iwi supported the Auckland Council to establish Māori wards but did not see it as a Treaty-based relationship because the councillor could be “Hone from Ngāti Porou who went to Avondale College”.
“That is quite different from a Treaty/Te Tiriti-based relationship between the descendants of Hobson and the descendants of Te Kawau who established the city.”
Āpihai Te Kawau had been “the real father of Auckland” because he had gifted 16,000 acres (6475 hectares) of land in 1840 to establish the city.
Blair said that while the iwi would give views on many things the Auckland Council was doing, “that does not require us to have 50 per cent of the seats over setting the bus timetables or budget for parks”.
“But where we have a deep connection over a particular resource like the Waitematā, like particular water bodies potentially, cultural landscapes we think we have a lot to bring to the table in a shared-decision-making capacity, like Bastion Point, like One Tree Hill, like the Waitematā.”
The iwi has about 6000 members and its original $30 million asset base had since grown to $1.65 billion.
Even so, Blair says there is a risk that the settlements will be reopened one day.
“The Crown does a great job of limiting cash settlements, pegged to a number they plucked out of the sky in the 90s - $1 billion - and we have been forced to settle 2 cents in the dollar.
“If we are to be doing our job, repairing the damage of the past 180 years, we need significant economic resources.
“And unfortunately the Treaty settlements of the past 20 years have been so miserly and mean in most cases, I believe there is a risk of a future generation coming back to the table seeking a fairer, just settlement in relation to what was lost and in relation to the actual job that needs to be done to repair the social and spiritual wellbeing of our people.”
By 2040, he hoped traditional hapū leadership structures would be restored and be robust “and we would have the economic wherewithal to deliver social, economic and cultural services to our people so they can stand on their own two feet as whānau, and when called upon, join readily into hapū affairs”.
Rebuilding Better
The New New Zealand: Rebuilding Better is a major series from the NZ Herald and NZME that examines how Aotearoa can rebuild economically and socially.
Can we emerge from the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic as a fairer, more prosperous and more sustainable nation?
The project focuses on a series of themes - we started last year with the economy before moving on to social division. The project continues this year with Audrey Young’s look at the Treaty and co-governance.
Acting PM David Seymour speaks to the media following ACT Party flagship annual event, the “Free & Equal” Rally. Video / NZ Herald