The Hauraki-Waikato MP is calling on the government to “honour the commitments it made – and written into legislation” after it imposed a six-year pause on Waikato Regional Council’s Plan Change 1 (PC1), with new plans expected under Resource Management Act reforms.
“The power of Te Ture Whaimana is that it can override other pieces of legislation. It sits at the heart of the Waikato-Tainui Treaty settlement and establishes a clear obligation to restore and protect the health and wellbeing of our awa,” said Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke.
The pause comes months after the Environment Court largely upheld the framework developed by the Regional Council despite numerous appeals from farming, industry and other interests over the past decade.
PC1 is the first step in an 80-year plan to restore the Waikato and Waipā catchments and give effect to Te Ture Whaimana, established through Treaty settlement to guide restoration of the river.
“Iwi and hapuu voices matter. Decisions about our whenua and communities must be made with the people who whakapapa to those places,” Maipi-Clarke said in a statement.
“We call on the Government to honour its commitments and enter into a new era of co-management and co-governance with Waikato-Tainui, as set out in the Waikato-Tainui Raupatu Claims (Waikato River) Settlement Act 2010.
“Our awa cannot wait for an election cycle. Our mokopuna cannot wait for political promises to be honoured.”
PC1 is ‘economic vandalism’
Over the weekend to a Taupō audience, New Zealand First Leader, Winston Peters, said that the party’s position was to pause PC1 before it became a “bureaucratic death sentence for farmers and growers across the region” that threatened to “strangle the very people who feed this country”.
“These rules were designed under a planning system the Government is already replacing. It is absurd to force Waikato farmers into costly consents, gold-plated farm plans, and layers of compliance just as Parliament is moving to scrap the very framework that created this mess.
“More than 4500 farms across the Waikato and Waipā catchments could be affected, with hundreds facing the prospect of needing resource consent simply to continue existing farming operations.”
He called PC1 “economic vandalism” rather than “environmental management”.
“We are in a cost-of-living crisis. And the last thing New Zealand needs is a planning regime that pushes food prices up.
“Cleaner rivers do not come from bankrupting farmers. They come from practical, workable rules that recognise the work already being done on-farm.
“And we are not going to allow, PC1, to continue to be the tool for Treaty of Waitangi claims that were not there when the Tainui settlement happened in the 1990s,” said Peters.
