Iwi upset over bid to stall Strand waka

Artist's impression of the waterfront waaka house.

A bid to delay construction of a major cultural and tourist attraction on Tauranga's rejuvenated waterfront has met with strong opposition from Maori who want to celebrate the city's name as a safe anchorage sooner rather than later.

Peri Kohu of Ngaitamarawaho and Puhirake Ihaka of Ngati Tapu today asked the council to stick with its original timetable for the $650,000 project to build a waaka house on The Strand reclamation.

The cash-strapped council wants to postpone the staged construction of the waaka house by a year in order to cut $350,000 out of this year's budget, meaning that the project would not be completed until 2017.

But Mr Ihaka argued that a lot of planning had gone into reaching the stage where the project was ready to begin in order to showcase Tauranga as a safe anchorage.

The waaka house 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. It would also house a second new waka.

Mr Ihaka said the waaka house would allow waka to be put into the harbour quickly and easily and would became a tourist attraction, including to encourage cruise ship passengers to stay in Tauranga.

He said that once a project loses momentum it took time to pick up the pieces and get started again. Tangata whenua had put a lot of time and resources into the project over the last 18 months.

Mr Kohu, who like Mr Ihaka also spoke on behalf of the Otamataha Trust, said the waaka house was a resurrection of previous efforts to establish Tauranga as the landing place.
Carvers had been planning their work since January and now it looked like the first casualty of budget cuts would be the Maori cultural component.

He said the waaka house would effectively become a new gateway to Dive Crescent and help give focus to what was already in place at the Harbour Link. "Do not interfere with the progress made to date."

Councillor Clayton Mitchell said the new council had received a financial hospital pass and, while it was important to get the waterfront done, the priority was to get the balance sheet into a better position.

The council reserved its decision on the submission to its 2014-15 Annual Plan.