The need to find a new home for Tauranga's "hidden" waka has spurred leading Maori to oppose the council's plan to delay construction of a new $650,000 waterfront waka house.
Peri Kohu (Ngaitamarawaho) and Puhirake Ihaka (Ngati Tapu) yesterday urged the council to stick with its original timetable for the major project planned for The Strand.
The cash-strapped council wants to postpone the waka house by a year to cut $350,000 out of this year's budget, meaning project would not be completed until 2017.
Mr Ihaka argued a lot of planning had gone into reaching the point where the project to showcase the city's history as a safe anchorage was ready to begin. The new waka house would be bigger and visible to everyone and would hold a second new waka.
It would replace the obscure Te Urunga (shelter) at the end of The Strand that holds Te Awanui, a waka carved from a 300-year-old kauri tree by the late master carver Tuti Tukaokao in 1972.
Mr Ihaka said Te Awanui was in a whare at the end of The Strand hidden behind trees. Many people did not even know it was there.
He saw big cultural and tourism gains from the project.
Cr Clayton Mitchell said the new council had received a financial hospital pass and asked if tangata whenua would be willing to help pay for the waka house.
Mr Ihaka replied he was unable to answer "off the cuff", saying they had already put in a lot of time and resources into the project without payment over the past 18 months.
Mr Kohu said it now looked like the first casualty of budget cuts would be the Maori cultural component.