New approach to recover $4m in unpaid rates

Te Tai Tokerau Maori advisory committee chairman Dover Samuels

The Northland Regional Council is a looking at a two-pronged approach to rating to help recover almost $4 million in unpaid rates, with almost two-thirds owed on Maori-owned land.

The council's Te Tai Tokerau Maori advisory committee chairman, Dover Samuels, says the problem of unpaid rates on Maori land has languished in the "too hard" basket for too long.

The regional council is owed more than $4 million of unpaid rates and penalties in the Far North District alone, as of June 30 this year, and Mr Samuels said roughly two-thirds of that related to Maori land.

"That's a lot of money by anyone's account, especially if you consider our council's entire rates demand in the Far North for the current financial year is just over $7 million."

He said the situation was not acceptable to councillors or the majority of people they were elected to represent.

The regional council is proposing a two-pronged approach to rating, with the first utilising the relatively new Maori Advisory Committee to scope the problem and investigate possible solutions.

The second prong option would see the council approach its three district council counterparts - Far North, Kaipara and Whangarei - to investigate shared services.

One possibility included a single-rating platform with one council collecting and processing rates for all four councils. Currently, all three district councils collected their rates separately, with each also collecting rates on behalf of the regional council in their area.

The law allowed for some unpaid rates and penalties to be written off after six years but the politics, costs and practicalities of trying to collect rates from often multiple land owners had led to huge "debts" sitting on the books, incurring GST and other costs, Mr Samuels said.

Culture and the sometimes diverse ownership arrangements surrounding Maori land should not be used as an excuse for non-payment, he said.

Mr Samuels had raised his concerns about rates on Maori land at a recent local government meeting in Wellington and Northland was not alone in grappling with the issue.