By MARTIN JOHNSTON
Maori groups are pushing to remove the term "mana whenua" from new health legislation because of fears about legal battles and access to health funding.
The Public Health and Disability Bill provides that each of the 21 new district health boards must forge partnership relationships with the mana whenua of its geographical area.
The mana whenua are the people whose customary authority over their tribal areas comes from ancestral links.
Two Maori groups at a parliamentary health select committee hearing in Auckland yesterday urged MPs to remove the term or to make other changes to nullify possible problems.
They argued that the term could lock urban Maori authorities such as the Waipareira Trust out of influential relationships with the health boards.
Waipareira told the committee the wording could restrict its role in providing Government-funded health services to 12,000 Maori of any tribal affiliation in West Auckland.
The trust fears that mana whenua organisations will gain power and work for the benefit of their own tribe to the exclusion of pan-tribal groups like Waipareira.
Waipareira says tribunal findings entitle it to the partnership relationship with crown agencies being offered to mana whenua.
A member of the Waipareira delegation, Dr Pita Sharples, said he was "dead scared we're reinventing the fisheries debate" - a reference to the protracted litigation to decide between iwi and urban-Maori models for allocating fishing assets.
Dr Sharples said 86 per cent of Maori were urban and half lived outside their tribal areas.
Lorna Dyall, a senior lecturer at Auckland University's division of Maori and Pacific health, urged that the term be replaced by a requirement for health boards to consult a wide range of Maori groups and iwi.
Maori groups decry 'mana whenua' term in health bill
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