Te Runanga o Whaingaroa chairman Murray Moses, left, and chief executive Toa Faneva at Te Putahitanga. The carved pou depicts Puhi, the eponymous ancestor of Ngāpuhi. Photo / Peter de Graaf
A newly opened innovation hub in Kerikeri aims to help emerging Māori businesses grow and employ more young Northlanders.
Te Pūtahitanga was officially opened last Friday by Kaeo-based Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa in a ceremony adapted to Covid restrictions.
The Clark Rd building houses meeting rooms, workstations, offices and ''innovation spaces'' aimed at new Māori enterprises trying to get off the ground.
Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa chief executive Toa Faneva told a gathering of about 100 people there were three key reasons for buying the building and expanding into Kerikeri.
The first was the need for more space, with the rūnanga growing significantly in the past year and staff at its Kaeo premises now ''sitting on top of each other''.
As the organisation picked up an increasing number of Northland-wide contracts it also needed a base in a more central, urban setting.
Another reason was the need for the rūnanga's asset holding company to diversify its portfolio due to declining income from fisheries, its former mainstay. It had already invested in pine forests and now in commercial property.
The third reason was the need, especially in times of climate change and Covid, to lift emerging Māori businesses so they could grow and ''sop up'' youth unemployment.
''We need to power up small Māori enterprises to help them employ these rangatahi,'' Faneva said.
Te Pūtahitanga would be open to people who wanted ''a safe space to explore ideas and initiatives'', meet officials, print documents and seek support. Staff based in Kerikeri would include specialist business advisers and mentors.
It was a similar concept to The Orchard, a Whangārei business incubator used by fledgling companies which don't yet have their own premises.
Faneva said he hoped the hub would also help different groups, Māori and non-Māori, collaborate more and ''come up with some really good solutions for the whole community''.
The rūnanga was, for example, already working closely with Kerikeri charity Bald Angels to combat hardship in Far North families.
The new hub was formally opened by Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones, along with Whangaroa kuia Pat Tauroa and Ngāti Rēhia kuia Nora Rameka.
Jones praised the initiative, saying governments alone could not solve the challenges facing New Zealand.
The building has previously housed engineering and accounting firms but has now been bought by the rūnanga's asset holding company. The company has in turn leased the building to Te Puna Koanga, the rūnanga's service provider.
The building was purchased with a bank loan and without outside funding.
Faneva said the rūnanga also had plans for more investment in Kaeo, and had sought Ngāti Rehia's approval before expanding into Kerikeri.
Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa is a mandated iwi authority representing Ngāpuhi ki Whangaroa and Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa.
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones is calling on health officials to be more open about New Zealand's options for dealing with the Covid pandemic.
Jones made his comments during the opening of an iwi innovation hub in Kerikeri, saying industry advocates and Māori had raised concerns with him about the economic impact of the country's Covid-19 strategy.
He was pleased Parliament's Health Select Committee had been reconvened because it meant health officials could be made to spell out more clearly exactly what risks needed to be managed and what they were trying to achieve.
''The current system of lurching between lockdowns and liberality is, economically speaking, extraordinarily expensive... I've struggled to understand fully the risks the health officials believe they're managing,'' he said.
''I suspect the challenges we've seen between the border of Auckland and the rest of New Zealand have made it starkly obvious that the current model is not sustainable.''
It was clear Covid would come and go for some time, and the ''new normal'' called for new models that allowed the economy to keep functioning while the country coped with occasional outbreaks.
Jones said it wasn't clear to him whether health officials believed lockdowns were their only option, or if more tailored interventions were possible.
Without more transparency it was hard to develop alternative solutions, he said.
''It's one thing to borrow dough, the more challenging aspect is maintaining revenue to service borrowings. Unless we can maintain and expand revenue, over the foreseeable future it's likely to be very tough paddling for New Zealand.''