The two leading contenders for Te Tai Hauāuru electorate have condemned the Government’s local council reforms at a debate in Hāwera.
About 100 voters filled Hāwera’s Senior Citizens Hall on Thursday night for a debate hosted by Climate Justice Taranaki.
Te Tai Hauāuru MP Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said Te Pāti Māori opposed the current local government reforms.
She said her starting point to transform councils would be Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
“Local government don’t recognise it, but having a commission appointed to monitor Te Tiriti means that the tēina (junior siblings) and the babies of the Crown have to behave as well.”
The Pāti Māori co-leader said all Taranaki councils wanted to retain Māori wards and Wellington shouldn’t dictate how local government works.
“They shouldn’t be telling us in our communities how we should be working together – because we generally already are,” Ngarewa-Packer said.
“Co-governance isn’t a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”
Labour candidate Te Pūoho Kātene said the Waikato River showed successful co-governance could bring environment and community benefits.
But Kātene said Labour had learned it couldn’t force transformation on people.
“We need to make sure that we bring people along.
“We need to make sure that the solutions that we put forward [are] enduring, that they can’t be flipped on their head as soon as … the government changes.”
The Government’s three-month Head Start deadline for councils to propose amalgamations was too far, too fast, Kātene said.
“That’s not giving due engagement. That’s not giving due consultation. That’s not letting our communities have their right say.”
“Councils voted and agreed in their local democracies to keep Māori wards, then the Government came over and smashed them for that as well.”
National’s Te Tai Hauāuru candidate and Rangitīkei councillor Coral Ruakawa wasn’t at the debate, leaving Whanganui MP Carl Bates to pitch for his party.
Bates said the council reforms were about making local government more effective.
“We have a small country with five million people, and currently we have three layers of government.”
He said South Taranaki would have its ideas heard by Cabinet.
“They’ve taken the proposal from this local community, who have had their local government say, ‘this is the plan that we want to see in our local community’.
“So they’re listening.”
As the two-and-a-half-hour debate came to a close, iwi agency Te Korowai o Ngāruahine tumu whakarae Te Aorangi Dillon told Bates his Government was the most anti-Māori in a generation.
“I don’t feel like you’re echoing what many of us think in here.
“Even my Pākehā whānau, actually, they’re embarrassed. Everyone’s embarrassed.
“There’s a minority of you who are okay with the anti-Māori stuff, but the majority are not.”
Bates said his Government was focused on better outcomes for Māori, pointing to more rangatahi leaving school with qualifications and more Māori housing.
Climate Justice Taranaki moderator Urs Signer took the panel through topics including agricultural reform, offshore wind generation, seabed mining, health, the cost of living and the place of Tiriti.
Visiting Dunedin MP Scott Mills represented the Green Party and said New Zealand politics had taken a unique swing and trust needed to be rebuilt.
“It’s like … when Trump took the states, took the presidency, he threw out just about everything that Obama and Biden had done, vindictively.”
“And that’s what we’ve seen with this Government. But that is unusual.”
LDR is local body journalism funded by RNZ and NZ on Air.
