Editorial: It was a long time coming

The opportunity for Te Arawa to contribute to the Rotorua Lakes Council is a long time coming.

Te Arawa have a great opportunity to contribute in a much more meaningful way to the future of their rohe, and the Rotorua Lakes Council seem keen to allow this to happen.

Some may see this as race-based policy, some see it as something that should have happened more than 100 years ago.

After more than a year of iwi consultation, Te Arawa will present its preferred partnership model to the Rotorua Lakes Council on Thursday. They want to elect or appoint up to 14 people to sit on a new Te Arawa Board which would replace the old Te Arawa Standing Committee, which over the years has come in for much criticism, most of it from committee members. Having spent plenty of time in those committee meetings, most of that criticism was totally warranted.

What the council is doing is also legislated for under the Local Government Act, many unelected members already sit on council committees around the country, including Rotorua.

And, if the proposal goes through unchanged it will automatically trigger a public consultation process, as required by law, with no final decision being made until May next year.

Having a strong relationship with the iwi that gifted most of the land on which Rotorua city now sits also seems a sensible and pragmatic move.

Te Arawa, like many iwi around Aotearoa, have had their Treaty of Waitangi claims paid out and will be a future economic force in the region, so why not have them at the same table as the leaders of our city?

There is a small, but vocal, group in the city who claim to be the defenders of democracy and who believe the mayor is trying to side-step the democratic process and is moving far too quickly for their liking.

But, for how long have Te Arawa waited patiently while the powers that be muddle and mess their way through a process that will actually add to the vibrancy and knowledge of our council? In my opinion, far too long.