Protesters target kapa haka festival

By SIMON COLLINS

Protesters occupying 20 houses owned by the Ngati Whatua O Orakei Trust Board are targeting next month's national kapa haka festival at Bastion Pt to gain wider support for their cause.

The trust board, which will host an expected 120,000 to 155,000 visitors at the three-day festival, wants to remove the 20 houses in adjoining Kupe St to make way for luxury townhouses.

The protesters say that the plan highlights the failure of the trust board system to represent Maori people - not just at Orakei, but nationally.

A spokesman for the Ora (Life) Whanau Housing Group, Steve Phillips, said the kapa haka festival, which is being held in Auckland for the first time, was "our biggest opportunity to get our point of view across".

"What is happening here is what is happening right though Aotearoa with trust boards," he said.

"It certainly shows that the trust board structure isn't designed for Maori, and that it has been thrust upon us. It's a corporate structure."

But he denied a suggestion by another objector to the Kupe St development that there would be "fireworks" at the festival.

"We have had some quite good discussions with the people organising the kapa haka festival," he said.

"We are not attacking the festival itself. We are going to use it to communicate information."

A festival spokeswoman, Tamar Howe, said the organisers were aware of the protest plans, but did not intend to let them disrupt the event.

"We need to face this one because it has been brought up, but I'm not going to be threatened by anybody," she said.

She said the 30-year-old festival would bring $20 million into Auckland from visitors from throughout the country.

The Auckland District Maori Council chairwoman, Titewhai Harawira, who spoke at the meeting, said protesters who came from all over New Zealand to support an occupation of Bastion Pt in 1977 did not want to see the land they saved at that time leased out now to the wealthy.

"Do we now talk about reoccupation?" she asked.

"There is a whole lot of community support out there who are opposed to our people playing the corporate game."

Mrs Harawira, who has family links to both Ngati Whatua and Northland's Ngapuhi people, is fighting the trust board's plan to sell the existing Kupe St houses to Ngapuhi groups.

But Mr Phillips questioned the value of reoccupying Bastion Pt. He said the trust board had assured him yesterday that the people occupying the Kupe St houses would not be evicted until after a planned hui at which all 2000 Ngati Whatua beneficiaries would have a chance to express their views.

The hui had been planned for today but was cancelled this week because of celebrations marking the return of the bones of the first Catholic Bishop of New Zealand, Jean-Baptiste Pompallier.

The trust board chairman, Sir Hugh Kawharu, did not return repeated calls from the Weekend Herald.