Wairoa in Focus: First council in NZ to introduce Māori ward readies for representation review

Blacks Beach on the Nuhaka to Māhia road in the Wairoa District. Photo / Paul Taylor

The Wairoa District Council, which was the first council in Hawke’s Bay to include a Māori ward, has begun its obligatory representation review which will decide how the currently six-member council will look at the next two local elections.

The reviews are required to be carried out by all councils every six years, and will decided whether the 2025 and 2028 elections will see any change from the current structure of a mayor and two wards – a general ward and a Māori ward each with three councillors at the table.

Councillors can be elected from wards (including district-wide), “at large” (by all electors in the district, irrespective of whether they are on the general or Māori roll), or by a mixture, and a key consideration is whether the number of councillors should increase, or whether there should be any community boards for specific areas of the district or council operation.

The options are retaining the current structure, or expanding to eight councillors with one district-wide Maori ward (four councillors) and one district-wide general ward (four councillors), or one district-wide Maori ward (three councillors), one district-wide general ward (three councillors) and two councillors elected at-large by all voters.

Ultimately sanctioned by the Local Government Commission, representation arrangements need to be fair, effective, and representative. Geographic wards should be divided so that each councillor represents roughly the same number of people while ensuring communities of interest, such as urban, rural, isolated, or centralised, are represented.

The council is seeking early feedback on how many councillors there should be, whether they are elected from wards or return to the previous district-wide election or a combination of both, whether the district should have any community boards, and how general and Māori wards would be framed.

It will help the council determine a preferred option which will go to public consultation in the district in July-August.

There are currently no community boards in a district which at the last election in 2022 had seven candidates in the general ward and six in the Māori ward, and when 51.5 per cent of the 5563 on the rolls voted.

In a referendum at the 2016 local elections, there was 45 per cent voter support for the establishment of Māori wards for the elections in 2019 and 2022.

Of other councils in Hawke’s Bay, the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and the Hastings and Tararua district councils introduced Māori wards in 2022, after the need for a referendum was withdrawn by a 2021 change of legislation.

Napier and Central Hawke’s Bay have decided on incorporation of Māori wards at the next elections and are currently going through of how they will appear in their representation, but a bill now before Parliament could bring back referenda if required.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 50 years of journalism experience in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.