In the past three years, Ngāti Toa has quadrupled its total net assets under management. “We have not asked ourselves — not once — ‘What can we do to make money?’” says Helmut Modlik, CEO of Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira, the iwi’s operatingarm.
Modlik was on a panel debating “Māori leadership in sustainable finance, intergenerational investment and investing for social outcomes” at Infinz’s recent conference.
“The only thing we’ve ever asked ourselves is what can we do to enhance the wellbeing, prosperity among our people and all of the manuhiri who live on our whenua.”
He added that Māori have endured the better part of 180 years of economic marginalisation and dispossession. “So, there is a gap in respect of competence that we’re catching up on. There is a gap in respect of wellbeing and familiarity with the wider economic machine and all the actors and stakeholders and roles. And the how is always in connection with the worldview and the values that our people gave us.”
Modlik is keen to look at partnership opportunities with Crown agencies to further the iwi’s social outcomes-based agenda.
“The real gold is in the identification of sustainable and competently managed, governed and delivered real economic activity that fits with, from our point of view, that sustainable framework of intergenerational sustainability.” He cautioned, “it’s a damn good idea if you want to engage with the Māori community that you come in with your eyes wide open ...
“We’re relationship people, we’re not transactional people. Iwi by definition is an intergenerational endeavour.
“I’ve been vexing over the predispositions of our capital markets for 35 years. We still don’t really have a set of capital market actors that are operating, in my view, in a very sophisticated way, to bank or invest in a growing economy that isn’t just fundamentally tied to property.”
June McCabe is an independent director at Devon Fund Management and chairwoman of Te Rarawa’s commercial arm.
Ngāi Tahu and others at the big end of town have set the pace of recognition by the markets. But there are many still sitting in the middle or at the lower end without such wonderful endowments to leverage and grow from.
“Some who didn’t get as much cash, as in our iwi, but the little cash we had we invested in and never, never touched it at all, so to hold it.”
June McCabe, an independent director at Devon Fund Management and chairwoman of Te Rarawa’s commercial arm, has some insights.
McCabe’s affiliations are with Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kaharau and Ngāti Kahu.
She has long been at the forefront of developing models so iwi can access capital to develop collaboratively-owned assets.
McCabe has collaborated with Adrian Orr at the RBNZ. It is slow progress getting the banks to move.
“We are all at a different point in time. But what we do think about a lot is, if the Māori economy as we understand it today is $70 billion, which is the number that gets bandied around, with growth projections to $100b, that’s by default not design.
“Imagine if by design, we can lift those metrics, but not for the sake of just lifting the metrics, but for the sake of dealing with social issues and community issues.
“We’re sitting here at the moment going, okay, we’ve now got to a point, how do we start to build services businesses?
“And how do we take some of these kids who are sitting in South Taranaki, which has real poverty and has a real disadvantage in the quality of the education opportunities.
“How do we create services businesses in those communities to provide jobs, to provide pathways for people, to provide educational opportunities?”
McCabe says the focus on government funding is problematic. “What’s sustainable to me is cash that comes from what we can create internally.’’
Andrew Knight
Andrew Knight, chairman of Taranaki Iwi Holdings.
Andrew Knight has led the creation of pan-iwi collaborative vehicles to create scale, instil professional management and make an impact.
Knight believes New Zealanders need a collaborative society where we work together. “The ‘co’ bit of collaboration or co-governance has been an ugly word, recently, but collaboration is a step towards partnership.”
As chairman of Taranaki Iwi Holdings, Knight has overseen the creation of housing funds, which “look a lot like a property fund”. This has paved the way for iwi to collaborate, leverage up and get bank funding.
“We were very conscious about creating a structure that the banks and other financiers would be comfortable dealing with.”
It has also paved the way for the Government to see they could trust the partnership.
“I just want to shout out to the Reserve Bank for its initiative in 2022 and for its ongoing work in this space.
“And for the work we’re doing in the Iwi Leaders Forums to try and build on that and to create intermediation because we’re not getting that intermediation from banks. We have to create that intermediation ourselves, which is how do we work more collaboratively among ourselves to plug-and-play into those opportunities.
“Everything we do from a finance point of view in our Taranaki Iwi Holdings is based on our settlement money, but that’s just a part of what we’ve been trying to do for generations, which is build a sustainable community.
“Sustainable communities require health, education, communities that can bond, culturally aligned.
“All of those things need to come together, and they need to come together with the tools that enable that. And finance is one of the tools. All of those steps took time, but they came with scale, came with collaboration.”
