The four Heretaunga (Hastings and Heretaunga) Regional councillors met to discuss this and resolved that one of our company should step forward and assume a leadership role in TANK. We discussed it with other key stakeholders who were also in despair that the process was failing.
Peter Beaven was our nominee to be the chair of TANK .
Peter has deep roots in Heretaunga, he was born in Hastings, attended Karumu High and went on to get a degree in law. After a career in law he entered the pipfruit industry as a grower latterly becoming the Pipfruit NZ CEO and chairman of the World Apple Organisation. And ever more importantly, he is a serious and dedicated whitebaiter who jealously guards his spot on the Tuki Tuki river mouth.
Peter is widely respected by all in our community as a fair and decent person and we thought he was the perfect choice for this job.
We took this proposal to a wide range of stakeholders including NKII, Te Taiwhenua Heretaunga, environmental groups, the wine growers, major ground croppers, local marae, the process industry and others. We gained unanimous support from everyone and took the proposal for Beaven to be installed as the TANK chair to the TANK general meeting.
The meeting agreed to support this unanimously with the exception of HBRC Cr Scott who opposed it. As TANK is officially a HBRC committee this decision from Heretaunga needed to be signed off by the HBRC at our next meeting which we naively thought would be a fait accompli.
However the one dissenting voice at the TANK meeting had her day and four other councillors supported her position and the proposal for Peter Beaven to be the chair of TANK was rejected.
This is our rohe and one wonders how a proposition supported by all the major stakeholders in Heretaunga and its four regional councillors can be overturned by the other five councillors , three from Napier, one from Central HB and one from Wairoa. Is this how democracy and Rangatiratanga works in Hawke's Bay? Well it would seem so in regard to Heretaunga.
In contrast last week we had a presentation from a hapu/iwi group from Tangoio and we signed an agreement to hand over Treaty money held on account and to partner them in an environmental improvement project in their rohe. The formal contract was described as mana enhancing and they defined mana as it pertained to the agreement to include Rangatiritanga, pride, identity, esteem and self respect.
I thought it was a quite an amazing ground-breaking concept and a clear and refreshing break from our regular Norman Anglo Saxon contract with all its prescription and default threats. This deal is about working in partnership by recognising the attributes of both parties and enhancing their respective mana.
Its also as importantly about Rangatiratanga, granting self determination and authority to small communities and hapu within the greater catchment.
So what about the TANK group and its Heretaunga stakeholders? What about their mana ?
Unless we can embrace the concept of our communities' rights, either collectively or as hapu groups to determine their own destiny and manage their own affairs, we will fail and that includes the Regional Planning Committee. The five HBRC councillors who voted against the proposal supported by a vast majority of the TANK stakeholders to establish their own leadership have resoundingly trampled on the mana of the people in Heretaunga.
- Rex Graham is a Hawke's Bay regional councillor.
- Business and civic leaders, organisers, experts in their field and interest groups can contribute opinions. The views expressed here are the writer's personal opinion, and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz
