Thomas Cranmer: Tūhoe – “co-governance is not our word”

Recently obtained board minutes from Te Urewera reveal a troubled relationship between the Board and Crown, a Board that rejects the term ‘co-governance’ and is wary of the court of public opinion.  THOMAS CRANMER writes –

Last week Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson admitted that the ship had sailed on explaining co-governance to the public, which is why he conceded that it needs to be reframed in a way it can be understood.

Jackson believes that he’s worked out the two areas the Government has gone wrong with explaining co-governance.

The first was the vacuum that was created because of Jackson and Mahuta being left to carry the load and second, he believes, is the way co-governance has been broadened out across a number of different areas “without defining it”.

Whilst Jackson believes that most New Zealanders understand co-governance from a Treaty of Waitangi and rights perspective, such as the settlements negotiated with iwi, Jackson says there’s a second type – social equity co-governance – that has been misunderstood.

THOMAS CRANMER: King Tut – the Tuhoe strongman who boasts of the National Park that disappeared

“We made a national park disappear” are the words of the Te Urewera chairman, Tamati Kruger – or as his iwi call him, King Tut.  Kruger’s triumph is an ominous portent to the consequences of the co-governance concept which the Ardern government champions.  THOMAS CRANMER writes – 

The High Court ruling last week that ordered an immediate halt to the burning of the huts in Te Urewera revealed some astonishing detail about what has gone wrong with the co-governance arrangements that were agreed in 2014.

The principal iwi negotiator for Tūhoe at the time was Tamati Kruger. Since then, he has gone on to be the chairman of Te Uru Taumatua (TUT), the Tūhoe governance body for Te Urewera. Kruger is a divisive figure – even within Tūhoe. In fact, the applicant for the emergency injunction to stop the huts being destroyed – Wharenui Clyde Tuna – is Tūhoe himself.

One of the revelations to emerge from last week’s injunction was that the Department of Conservation and TUT had not agreed their annual operational plan as required by the Te Urewera Act. That is primarily down to the fact that Kruger – the Tūhoe strongman installed by John Key’s government – has refused to engage with the department for the last two years.

THOMAS CRANMER: Te Urewera is not co-governance – it is Tuhoe-governance (and Mahuta is tapping into it for Three Waters)

Protests led by Tūhoe elders have brought the media spotlight back to Te Urewera as the governing body removes 48 huts.  Some consider this to be co-governance and it’s the model which Nanaia Mahuta is applying to her Three Waters reform.  But THOMAS CRANMER – who urges us to take a hard look – says we will find it is far from co-governance.  He writes: 

 Te Urewera is back in the headlines and it is important to consider why that is the case. Increasingly it is held up by the government and its supporters as an example of co-governance in action. A governance model put in place by the Key government in 2014, and a working example of why co-governance is not new nor particularly controversial.

It is also used as an example of effective Crown-iwi partnership when the Three Waters co-governance model is criticised and it forms the governance model which is currently being rolled out in the Milford Sounds and elsewhere across the country.

The first point to note, however, is that Te Urewera is not actually an example of co-governance. It is not an example of the Crown and iwi working together as equal partners. It is something quite different.

The Treaty partnership at work? DoC’s Minister is defied after declaring opposition to a rāhui in Whirinaki Conservation Park

The Point of Order team, constantly keeping an eye on Beehive decisions that affect the way we are governed, has been looking for evidence that the Minister of Conservation is in charge of the Department of Conservation and that her department can over-ride travel bans imposed by anyone who cares to put up a “Keep Out” sign.

The evidence sadly suggests the Minister, Kiritapu Allan, is not in charge.

At least, not when Maori tribal leaders opt to flex their muscle.

This raises significant questions about accountability and ministerial responsibility under the Ardern government.

It also raises questions about so-called Treaty partnerships and co-governance.

Our appetite for checking out Allan’s grip on DoC was whetted by news that tribal leaders in the Bay of Plenty area have slapped a “Keep Out” sign on the Whirinaki Conservation Park.

They don’t call it a “Keep Out” sign, of course.  They call it a rahui.

Jobs for the boys (including a Nat) – govt sets up two panels to work on the reclassification of DOC’s stewardship land

It’s great to see former Cabinet ministers – two of them elderly white men – landing jobs as members of panels set up to work on the reclassification of “stewardship land”.

Moreover, it’s great to see the government’s fondness for diversity resulting in a former National cabinet minister, Christopher Finlayson, being among the appointees, along with former Labour ministers Philip Woollaston and Mita Ririnui. Remember them?

They have been appointed to two “independent” expert national panels tasked with coming up with revised classification recommendations to the Conservation Minister.

“Stewardship land” is the term given for land allocated to the Department of Conservation  when it was formed in 1987. It includes former State forest and Crown Land that were considered to have conservation value.

We are talking about a hefty chunk of the country.  Around 30% of conservation land is stewardship areas, approximately 2,508,000 ha – or 9% of New Zealand.

Whee – it’s Whio Awareness Month, folks, but we must wait a while to learn how Kiwis will be cared for in a reformed health system

Our Beehive bulletin

We must wait for Budget 2021 to be delivered on 20 May (the date was announced today) to find how much we will be borrowing to implement initiatives and programmes the government announces almost daily from the Beehive.

Some of those initiatives profoundly and directly affect most if not all of us.  Reform of the health system, for example.

Others – not so much.

Conservation Minister Kiri Allen has announced two of these –

• Seventeen hand-reared whio (blue duck) will be released into Arthur’s Pass National Park later this week, the first of several whio releases planned across the country over the next few months.  The first release coincides with “whio awareness month” (we confess we were blissfully unaware the calendar included such a month).
• Philanthropic contributions to save the kiwi are being encouraged. This was announced at the launch of the Kiwis for kiwi Endowment Fund, which aims to raise $20m over the next five years to support kiwi conservation.

While Allen was hailing the kiwi as a taonga, Andrew Little was tidying up the speech in which he described our publicly funded health system as one of New Zealand’s greatest assets.

But it is under serious stress and does not deliver equally for all, Little said.

Don’t go looking for Treaty principles in the Treaty – they come from the courts and DoC is grappling with a new set of them

A Supreme Court judgement in August last year has led to the Department of Conservation undertaking partial reviews of the Conservation General Policy and the General Policy for National Parks, to give better effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

And what are these principles?

Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage told Point of Order:

“The principles of the Treaty of Waitangi are not explicitly stated in the articles of the Treaty itself.”

Nope.

“They have evolved primarily though jurisprudence…”  

They also have significant governance and constitutional implications.

Another stage in this evolutionary process was the Supreme Court’s ruling which   buttressed an iwi’s claim to exclusive rights to conduct commercial tours for at least five years on the Rangitoto and Motutapu islands in the Hauraki Gulf.

Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki went to court to challenge DoC’s issuing five-year tourism concessions to Fullers and the Motutapu Island Restoration Trust on the islands.