Napier City Council’s Māori wards decision process to start in September

Protests took place in May last year as Napier City Council decided not to include Māori wards at the 2022 elections. It will in 2025, and will soon start the process to decide the numbers.

Napier City Council is set to start the process of deciding how many Māori ward members it will have after the 2025 local elections and whether it will need a rare increase in the total number at the council table.

A council spokesperson said the representation review, which councils are required to do every six years, is currently in an initial planning phase. The first step will involve a resolution and public notice in September of the electoral system to be used (first-past-the-post or single-transferable vote).

This will be followed by preliminary consultation early next year on the representation review, which will inform a proposal due in mid-2024.

The notification of that proposal will be followed by a one-month formal consultation and a decision will be notified in November 2024.

Councils around New Zealand were embroiled in the issue early last year after new legislation did away with an option of a public poll to decide whether councils would have Māori wards.

Napier City Council, having had a change at the 2019 election as a result of a review the previous year, unsuccessfully sought a ministerial extension of time to consult and make a decision, determined to not make any change for the 2022 election.

But on October 20 it decided to introduce Māori wards for the 2025 election, with the numbers and boundaries left for the review process.

Elsewhere in Hawke’s Bay, Wairoa District Council already had a Māori ward in place, and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, Hastings District Council and Tararua District Council (which is the Horizons Manawatu-Whanganui Regional Council area) all made decisions which resulted in Māori ward councillors taking their seats at the tables after the triennial elections last October.

At the 2022 local elections, six of the 11 regional councils throughout New Zealand had Māori constituencies and 29 of the 67 territorial authorities (such as city and district councils) had Māori wards.

The Napier council review will establish whether there will be any increase to the number of councillors (currently 12, plus the mayor) and the number of Māori wards, boundaries and number of representatives.

Napier has had two changes in its council structure in the last six elections but without any change to the number of councillors.

The model of 12 councillors elected at large across the city was replaced in 2007 by a mixed-representation model in which six were elected at large and six were elected in geographical wards. In 2019, that was replaced with a full-wards model, with four each in the Nelson Park and Taradale wards and two each in the Ahuriri and Onekawa-Tamatea wards.

The Central Hawke’s Bay council, which currently has eight councillors split equally across its Ruataniwha and Aramoana/Ruahine wards and did not make the change last year, will first be working with mana whenua and its wider community.

But CHB council chief executive Doug Tate said it will confirm a final decision in November this year.

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.