Typical Iwi Objections to Development Proposals

Iwi throughout the country receive approaches from local and regional authorities to say that a company or a public authority (like a local Council) is proposing to create something that requires the approval of the local authority (ie: they need a resource or some other kind of consent). 

When this happens, the local authority is often required to consult with local iwi/affected Maori, particularly if the proposal is relevant to the Resource Management Act 1991.

Example proposals include:
  • A company or a council wishes to build a marina
  • A company wishes to exploit a natural resource
  • The Government wishes to build a new road
  • A company wishes to expand its aquaculture business
Unfortunately, when proposals of this kind arise, too often iwi are consulted late in the process (often ‘after the horse has bolted’) which means that their influence can only be minimal. When iwI are consulted in this way, this reflects either that in the minds of the Council and/or proposers, the iwi a ‘minor player’ and are of little importance, or the Council and/or iwi fear the iwi response to the proposal and wish to diminish the impact that iwi might have on it.

Now, I am not saying that this is case on every occasion. However, it is the case on many occasions.

When this happens, this produces resentment towards the Council - in the minds of iwi leaders - which leads to iwi having to lodge an objection to the proposal. When this happens, the objection may not actually be about the proposal, but rather about the way Councils continue to disregard or trivialise the local iwi interest. The purpose in lodging a proposal from the outset is tactical. It’s purpose is to raise the profile and increase visibility of iwi issues within a proposal.

It is so tiresome and corrosive on goodwill that iwi are still informed way too late in a process and it is imagined that iwi interests and issues are limited and minor and that iwi are a minor party in the affairs of a district or a region. On many occasions, I am sure, Council officers simply forget about a potential iwi interest or fail altogether to consider the question at all until it is pointed out to them.

The typical grounds upon which iwi object to development proposals include the following:

  • Lack of or limited involvement in decision making, lack of recognition of being a Treaty partner (overlooked, ignored, trivialised), poor consultation processes

  • ‘Cultural Grounds’ - meaning that the proposal either damages an iwi cultural tradition (or continues to damage) or inhibit the iwi from actively engaging with its cultural tradition and advancing it

  • ‘Economic Grounds’ - the proposal inhibits and prevents the iwi from seizing upon an economic opportunity that it has determined for itself, particularly where that economic opportunity makes use of or arises from things that uniquely belong to that iwi

  • ‘Environmental grounds’ - the proposal will either perpetuate ongoing environmental degradation and/or create new degradation and damage, when, particularly, viewed through the lens of the iwi views of environmental health and well-being (eg mauri, Kaitiakitanga)

  • ‘Social grounds’ - the iwi will be robbed of an opportunity to foster the unity, cohesion, identity and whanaungatanga of the iwi - particularly through being inhibited from interacting with their traditions and heritage - through the proposed activity

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