Kaipara District councillors at their 2022 swearing-in. Back row, from left: Rachael Williams, Gordon Lambeth, Jonathan Larsen, Mike Howard, Eryn Wilson-Collins, Mark Vincent. Front row: Ron Manderson, Mayor Craig Jepson, Pera Paniora, Ash Nayaar. Photo / Susan Botting
Kaipara District councillors at their 2022 swearing-in. Back row, from left: Rachael Williams, Gordon Lambeth, Jonathan Larsen, Mike Howard, Eryn Wilson-Collins, Mark Vincent. Front row: Ron Manderson, Mayor Craig Jepson, Pera Paniora, Ash Nayaar. Photo / Susan Botting
Kaipara District Council has spent an unplanned $52,000 producing a document that attempts to spell out what legal obligations it has to Māori.
Mayor Craig Jepson claimed the document would serve as a guide for staff, councillors and the public, clarifying obligations and potentially saving the council money in thefuture.
But one councillor has described the paper as “actively anti-Māori”, while another deemed it “bulls***”.
The unbudgeted 127-page document was produced by Wellington law firm Franks Ogilvie and was formally adopted in late July by a narrow 5-4 vote.
Kaipara District Council chief executive Jason Marris commissioned the report after direction from the council’s remuneration and development committee, which oversees his performance and is chaired by Jepson.
Marris said he had not received committee direction on how the document should be used with staff, but he would now consider its implications.
Councillor Eryn Wilson-Collins asked whether staff would be required to follow the Māori interaction ceilings outlined in the document.
“There are many questions around its purpose and where it will go from here,” she said.
She added that, while there was currently no formal direction, she feared the document would serve as the ceiling for council dealings with Māori.
The document was developed as a single point of reference, summarising and explaining council obligations - or lack of them - to Māori under various laws and frameworks.
These include the Treaty of Waitangi, principles of the Treaty, the Local Government Act 2022, Resource Management Act 1991, Māori Language Act 2016, New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Jepson said there had not been a single source of information around these previously.
“It provides an opportunity for other councils around New Zealand to follow.”
Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson. Photo / NZME
The Jepson-chaired remuneration and development committee’s members - Deputy Mayor Jonathan Larsen and councillors Mike Howard, Gordon Lambeth and Rachael Williams - voted to adopt the document.
Howard said the document was worthwhile because it addressed legal obligations rather than misinterpretations.
However, Wilson-Collins described it as “embarrassing” and said she looked forward to a new council after the upcoming elections.
She said community feedback showed concern about ratepayer money being spent on a document that was divisive and politically charged.
“There are a lot of questions that the community have raised with me around the framing of the document.”
She said it falsely claimed that councils were not part of the Crown, and therefore had no real Treaty of Waitangi duties, only those narrowly imposed by statute.
“This is false and misleading.
“While councils are not the Crown in the constitutional sense, courts and the Waitangi Tribunal have repeatedly said Crown obligations can extend to councils where powers or functions are delegated.”
Te Moananui o Kaipara Māori ward councillor Pera Paniora said the report was “bulls***” and an echo chamber of the political positions of some councillors.
She said Jepson, Larsen, Howard, Lambeth and Williams, who had worked on its genesis, should have paid for it themselves.
“It said mana whenua mandates had no statutory basis.”
This was a complete dismissal of hapū and iwi rights, with existing obligations spun as optional.
She said the document repeatedly reinforced the idea that a council’s obligation was to general community democracy, as if that were incompatible with upholding Māori rights.
It referred to the Waitangi Tribunal as non-binding and nearly irrelevant to council operations.
She said the report was politically biased and echoed rhetoric from NZ First, Act, and other narratives opposed to co-governance.
