Professor Dominic O’Sullivan:“Māori political communities are as entitled as anybody to expect that government works in their favour.”
A National-led government introduced Mana Whakahono ā Rohe Agreements and now a National-led government is scrapping them, and undermining democracy, writes Professor Dominic O’Sullivan.
Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements are a mechanism that iwi and local governments use to manage their relationships.
They’re also about managing the big ideas in Te Tiriti o Waitangi — how to balance kāwanatanga (government), rangatiratanga (chiefly authority), and citizenship with equal tikanga, or right conduct.
The agreements were introduced by John Key’s National-led government in 2017, and were intended to:
“provide a mechanism for iwi authorities and local authorities to discuss, agree, and record ways in which tangata whenua may, through their iwi authorities, participate in resource management and decision-making processes . . .”
Now Christopher Luxon’s National-led government has unexpectedly announced that it will nullify these agreements as part of its resource management reforms.
Culture’s good for democracy
The government’s purpose is to reduce Māori cultural influence. The deputy prime minister, David Seymour, says the agreements are “inherently undemocratic”. He argues that they “say that some people have a greater purchase on the future of this country when it comes to urban planning”.
He used the same justification for earlier government policies that diminished Māori perspectives and experiences in the school history curriculum, repealed the Māori Health Authority, and removed section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. This last measure reversed steps to restore Māori influence and responsibility for the care and protection of children at risk — an area where the state’s record is one of considerable and long-standing harm.
His argument isn’t that Māori people can’t have a voice in public policy. But he seems to believe that democracy can’t cope with people thinking and speaking in ways that they decide for themselves. In this view of the world, another person’s culture and colonial experiences don’t count for much.
If, however, we think that they do count, and we think that democracy is there to protect people’s freedom to be themselves, then Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements are good for democracy.
They help with the democratic purpose of managing differences in respectful and orderly ways. Thinking and speaking through a distinctive cultural lens allows people to participate freely and supports the idea that we should try to understand each other before making decisions.
Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements give iwi a guaranteed voice in resource management. But it’s also true that they stop rangatiratanga from meaning too much in terms of iwi authority over the natural environment.
Councils have to negotiate agreements when iwi request them, but iwi can’t insist on their content. Councils still have the ultimate power to decide the scope and limits to Māori authority. The distribution of authority is it worked out according to a set of principles that everyone has had a say in deciding.
Nevertheless, for some people, the agreements have led to useful and meaningful Treaty partnerships.
For others, they appear to give iwi an unfair advantage over others. For example, Federated Farmers expressed concern that the agreements could mean that “a farmer wanting consent for a feed pad, a new effluent system or worker accommodation could end up facing extra costs, delays and bureaucracy”. But that’s only true if that’s what iwi want and if councils agree.
Perhaps, on the other hand, it’s reasonable to ask that feed pads and worker accommodation aren’t built over burial sites, or that effluent isn’t discharged into waterways without appropriate care and kaitiakitanga.
Federated Farmers argued that “there is absolutely a place for relationship agreements between councils and iwi, [but] they need appropriate safeguards”. The minister responsible, Chris Bishop, says replacement agreements under the new law will be “narrowly scoped” to prevent “scope creep”. He calls these “clear guardrails”.
But if a council’s view comes first, that’s a pretty tight guardrail and potentially one that isn’t consistent with Te Tiriti.
Context is important
As the Taupō District Council has explained, context is important to its agreement with Ngāti Tūrangitukua:
“The Crown acquired Ngāti Tūrangitukua land for the purposes of the Tūrangi township . . . [The terms were not] agreed to by Ngāti Tūrangitukua and was held to be a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi by the Waitangi Tribunal.”
This agreement is about restitution — or putting right the consequences of an event that the Crown itself said was a serious contravention of justice.
Making an arrangement to put things right is not one race taking the influence that rightly belongs to somebody else, as David Seymour and his coalition colleagues suggest. Ngāti Tūrangitukua is not a race. Rather, its members are as entitled as anyone else to benefit from the township and contribute to its governance for their own reasons and purposes. Just as Federated Farmers enters public debates for its own reasons. This is a democratic argument for the agreement to exist.
Diminishing the place of culture in policy-making and public service delivery makes culture a democratic disability. This contravenes Te Tiriti’s promise of equality with equal tikanga. It also positions New Zealand on the fringe of international political thought that upholds culture as an inherent political right.
This right is described in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which John Key’s government accepted as “aspirational”:
“Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions, while retaining their right to participate fully, if they so choose, in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the state.” (UN, 2007, article 5).
Whose culture counts?
The underlying political questions are who “owns” the state, and whose culture counts?
As I asked in my book Te Tiriti, Equality and Future of New Zealand Democracy, do Māori people, alongside everyone else (with the equal tikanga that Te Tiriti promised) also own the state?
Or does the state belong only to those Māori who are willing to minimise their culture, and to think and reason in public life according to someone else’s culture?
If the state is genuinely owned by everyone, then people’s experiences, values and ways of thinking about their place in the world matter to the freedom that democracy is intended to protect. Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements contribute to that. They support equal participation, which means everyone has the same opportunity for influence.
But they don’t necessarily do much for rangatiratanga. They don’t recognise, for example, that there could be areas of council authority that belong inherently to hapū and should be independently exercised.
Rangatiratanga is also good for democracy
Rangatiratanga protects people’s authority to make decisions for themselves. “Subsidiarity” is a similar concept and has long been influential in democratic thought. It says that policy decisions are usually best made at the point closest to delivery. It doesn’t mean that the rights of other people are disregarded, but it does make it harder for people to interfere from a position of self-interest rather than shared interest.
Subsidiarity is a useful principle for helping answer the basic political questions of who does what, why, where, how, and for whom. In other words, how decision-making authority is fairly and efficiently distributed between rangatiratanga (chiefly authority) and kāwanatanga (government).
Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements are often described as relationships between Treaty partners. But it’s very clear that iwi are the junior partner — merely stakeholders in someone else’s project.
If they re-emerge at some future point, in a different political climate, the agreements may better support a bridge between kāwanatanga and rangatiratanga. They could be instruments of substantive participation, grounded in Te Tiriti’s promise of citizenship with equal tikanga.
Dominic O’Sullivan (Te Rarawa and Ngāti Kahu) is a professor of political science at Charles Sturt University, and Adjunct Professor at Victoria University of Wellington and the Auckland University of Technology. Dominic is the author of nine books, most recentlyTe Tiriti, Equality and the Future of New Zealand Democracy.
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