Brian Rudman: Badly drafted Super City law reopens Maori representation

Len Brown. Photo / Dean Purcell

The Royal Commission into Auckland Governance wanted two Auckland Councillors elected by voters on the Maori roll and another appointed by mana whenua - local Maori with ancestral ties to the land. Local Government Minister Rodney Hide rejected the concept of separate Maori seats and Prime Minister John Key agreed but after protest from Maori, says this decision was not "set in stone".

The outcome was one general roll for the Super City elections with Maori given a separate forum called the Maori Statutory Board.

After his election as mayor last October, Len Brown spoke to Television New Zealand about the possibility of holding a referendum on Maori seats in his first term. "I want to see Maori representation, particularly mana whenua representation on that council. I want us to have a full debate across the community, and I want to find out the best way of including the whole community in that," he said.

What everyone seemed to have missed in the rush to get the legislation through was that Act leader Mr Hide and his National Party allies had nodded through law so badly drafted that it left open for the unelected Maori appointees on the statutory board, the opportunity to claim widespread voting powers across the 20 second tier committees and forums, where much of the council's work gets done.

Given both Mr Hide's and the National Party's antipathy to separate Maori representation, at both parliamentary and local level, it seems likely the situation now unfolding is the result of sloppy, fast-track law making. Certainly Mr Hide is expressing surprise that the new board is claiming the right to appoint people to all council committees. He argues that the legislation requires it to appoint people only to committees that dealt "with the management and stewardship of natural and physical resources." Resource management issues in other words.

But the wording is sufficiently broad to have encouraged Maori statutory board chairman David Taipari and his colleagues to nominate two of themselves to every committee - future vision, strategy and finance, transport, regulations and bylaws, social and community development, parks and heritage - you name it.

As committee members, they will have full voting rights, able, in close voting situations, to exercise the casting vote. On issues like protecting the volcanic cones, I should be welcoming this development. The cones need all the help they can get. But the sneaky way this has been done, and the affront to the democratic system, that giving votes to self-appointed representatives of our "first people" represents, is quite unacceptable.

As far as the parliamentary Maori seats go, I take a pragmatic approach. It seems least disruptive to let them wither away when Maori no longer see the need. But to introduce race or ethnic-based or however else you like to describe these seats, into the cultural diversity of Auckland's local politics isa recipe for division.

Even if you accept that "first people" have some special voting rights, the problem in Auckland is that most Maori living here are of migrant stock as well. In the 2006 census, of the 137,133 (11.1 per cent) of the regional population who identified as Maori, the biggest group of 50,040, identified as Ngapuhi, the main Northland tribe, followed by 13,215 from the East Coast's Ngati Porou, then came Te Rarawa (6843) from the Far North and Tuhoe (5685) from the Urewera.

The royal commission's compromise was to have two councillors elected by people on the Maori electoral roll and a third, appointed by mana whenua, to represent local interests. The Government chose instead a Maori Statutory Board, which is top heavy with seven mana whenua representatives from Ngati Whatua, Waikato and Hauraki tribes, and has just two to represent the vast majority of "migrant" Maori. This board was appointed by an unelected selection body convened by Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples in October.

These statutory board members are now proposing to turn up in pairs at up to 20 Auckland Council committees, with the full speaking and voting rights of elected councillors. Labour's Auckland issues spokesman, Phil Twyford calls it undemocratic and untenable and says the law needs amending to make the positions advisory. Anyone disagree?