an orange sign saying "bote" with a questionmark voice box doming out of it

(Image: Shanti Mathias)

PoliticsMay 27, 2024

The Māori wards bill, explained

Contributing writer

(Image: Shanti Mathias)

To fulfil National’s coalition agreements with Act and NZ First, a bill currently going through parliament is reversing changes made to increase Māori representation in local government.

National’s coalition agreements with both NZ First and Act include a commitment to “restore the right to local referendum on the establishment or ongoing use of Māori wards, including requiring a referendum on any wards established without referendum at the next local body elections”. Now, the legislation that fulfils that commitment is going through parliament: a very short submissions period is open now – more on which later – and the second reading is imminent.

There’s a longer history to Māori wards, and they’ve been contested, usually by a very small group of people, the whole way. Here’s some more context to understand what they are and why they matter.

What are Māori wards?

Māori wards work like Māori seats in parliament, but at a local government level; they’re a way for voters on the Māori electoral roll to be specifically represented on local councils. Just like many councils have seats assigned to geographic areas so those people can give that area a voice, Māori ward seats allow Māori to be democratically represented on council. Because the electoral rolls are the same as for national elections, Māori don’t have to vote for the Māori ward, and can choose which electoral roll to be on.

Māori are underrepresented in local government, and creating the option to have Māori wards was one way to guarantee a baseline of representation.

Which councils have Māori wards?

The Local Electoral Act (2001) created the option for Maōri wards, but there wasn’t widespread take-up. This was mostly because the creation of a Māori ward could be challenged by a petition: if 5% of the council’s population signed, a binding referendum on whether or not to establish a Māori ward would be held. Of the 24 councils that tried to create Māori wards before 2021, only two succeeded.

But in the 2022 elections, dozens of councils, including Wellington, New Plymouth, Hamilton and Gisborne, had their first Māori councillors elected. Dozens more have decided to create a Māori ward from the 2025 elections. Auckland, Dunedin and Christchurch are the major cities without Māori wards, and while Tauranga will have a Māori ward for its election in July, it can choose to have a referendum about it once under elected officials again.

Additionally, Environment Canterbury, a regional council, has no Māori ward, but a guarantee of Ngāi Tahu representation through a separate act of parliament.

a picture of a table labeled with 'maori ward', the mayor, albany ward, rodney ward, and a few other Auckland Council wards — Auckland Council doesn’t have Māori seats, despite a consultation period last year (Image: Archi Banal)

Why were so many Māori wards created in the last few years?

Because of the referendum provision, many early attempts at establishing Māori wards were voted down by a small (but vocal) majority of people – particularly because local government elections have notoriously low turnout, where older, home-owning Pākehā are the most likely to vote.

In 2021, then local government minister Nanaia Mahuta changed the rules so that councils could establish a new Māori ward for the 2022 elections without a petition being able to force a referendum. This meant that many councils created Māori wards in time for the 2022 elections, and many more created Māori wards for the 2023 elections.

So what is the government proposing now?

National, Act and NZ First – as well as lobby groups like Hobson’s Pledge – consistently opposed the changes made by the previous government. Reverting the Māori ward rules to restore the referendum mechanism – including for councils that have already established them – was part of the coalition agreements last year.

The proposed law would restore the old rules, meaning that if any council wanted to establish a Māori ward in future and a petition that had been signed by 5% of people was presented, a binding referendum would have to be held. Additionally, the bill requires that all the councils that created Māori wards since 2021 have to hold a poll about whether to keep them at the 2025 local elections, with the results of the poll to be binding and come into force in 2028. They could instead choose to disestablish the wards without a poll.

A handful of councils, including Wairoa and Bay of Plenty, that had Māori wards already wouldn’t need to go through the process of holding referendums.

NZ First leader Winston Peters said, “We campaigned on [Māori wards], that this democracy should be equal.” Local government minister Simeon Brown said the government was “restoring democracy” and called the earlier changes divisive.

a black and white picture of the beehive with a tino rangatiratanga flag — There are Māori seats in parliament, but representation isn’t guaranteed at the local government level.

What do people in local government think?

Many local government leaders think this bill is inconsistent, as other local government changes – like establishing rural wards for people in remote areas to have guaranteed representation, or just establishing a new general ward – don’t require referendums to create. “We made the same case last time this was changed. It’s not that we’re saying there should be Māori wards or that there shouldn’t be Māori wards. We’re just saying when that decision is made by council it shouldn’t be subject to referenda when no other ward or constituency decision needs to go to referenda also,” Local Government New Zealand president Sam Broughton told RNZ.

More than 50 mayors and regional council chairpeople signed a letter to the government criticising the bill, according to reporting by 1News’s Maiki Sherman. “There are bigger things to worry about with local government,” Palmerston North mayor Grant Smith told Sherman, citing water and infrastructure issues as more pressing concerns. “It’s such an overreach and I do think there’s no local in this.”

Are there other criticisms?

There are. An urgent Waitangi Tribunal report found the requirement to have a referendum was in breach of the Treaty of Waitangi. Kassie Hartendorp, from activist platform ActionStation, said that scrapping the rules would “purely advance an ideological agenda, instead of respecting what is best for local communities”.

In the debate about the bill at its first reading, opposition politicians were strongly against it. Labour’s Kieran McAnulty described it as “appalling”; the Green Party’s spokesperson for Māori development, Hūhana Lyndon, also criticised the bill, saying “Māori wards were created to help provide equitable representation in local government, and the aim of this legislation is to make establishing Māori wards harder than it is to establish general council wards.” Te Pāti Māori’s Mariameno Kapa-Kingi mentioned the example of the Far North District Council’s Māori ward councillors, who she said had helped Māori in remote areas of the district have greater confidence in their local councils. “Disestablishing Māori wards further undermines councils’ autonomy in their rohe,” she said.

While Brown has said the cost to ratepayers would be minimal, others have said it could be upwards of $100,000.

What can I do if I have an opinion about this law change?

As with most democratic processes, it’s possible to submit on the bill to give your direct feedback. But you’ll have to get in fast: the submission period while the bill is at select committee stage ends on Wednesday, meaning only five days have been given to submit on the bill. (Most submission periods are open for at least six weeks.). Opposition parties weren’t happy. “This is a blatant attempt at doing democracy in the dark,” said Lyndon.

Keep going!

OPINIONPoliticsMay 27, 2024

Could Ray Chung really be the mayor of Wellington?

Joel MacManus

Wellington editor

Ray Chung is running for mayor. Who is he, and does he have a chance? Wellington editor Joel MacManus talks to the city councillor for the second edition of Windbag, The Spinoff’s Wellington issues column.

Are we doing this already? The 2025 local body elections are 17 months away, but the race for Wellington mayor has already begun. Incumbent Tory Whanau has confirmed she will run for re-election and now rightwing councillor Ray Chung has officially thrown his hat in the ring too.

In last week’s Windbag, I looked at Tory Whanau’s mayoralty so far and her chances of re-election. So let’s have a look at who she is up against. Is Ray Chung a serious contender? Yes. Is he a serious person? That’s a harder question.

If you cast your mind back to the sunny days of 2022, the general media narrative was that the Wellington mayoral race was a three-horse race between Tory Whanau, Paul Eagle and Andy Foster, with Labour MP Eagle as the early favourite. The election day results proved that narrative wrong. Whanau received more votes than the other two combined. And it turns out there was a fourth horse all along. First-time candidate Ray Chung was only 113 votes behind Paul Eagle for fourth place in the final STV iteration. It’s an impressive result, especially because he admitted he wasn’t running a proper mayoral campaign. He just wanted to raise his profile as a council candidate in the Onslow-Western ward (which he won).

Chung’s electoral superpower is his inexhaustible energy. He replies to every email, knocks on every door, shows up to every local event, and asks questions about every public submission. He also feeds a lot of stories to media and does a lot of interviews. This makes him highly visible, which is valuable in local politics when most people barely know the names of their councillors. It could be a key advantage for him in a race against Tory Whanau, who isn’t as much of a natural extrovert.

He brings the same tenacious enthusiasm to the council table, but sometimes lacks the political awareness to do much with it. He hasn’t learnt some of the basic meeting processes, like when you can put up amendments and when you can ask questions. During the final District Plan meeting, he was caught giving a speech written by heritage advocate Felicity Wong, the chair of Historic Places Wellington (the email was still open on his screen).

Sometimes, he seems to speak without thinking, like his mouth is moving faster than his mind. He badmouths other councillors in a much more overt way than you typically see in local politics. In council meetings, he’ll sometimes repeat questions that have just been asked or ask about irrelevant things. Council insiders describe him as inconsistent; some days he is razor-sharp, picking apart minor details of documents, and other days he doesn’t seem to know what is going on.

In a phone interview, Chung said he thought other councillors didn’t listen to him, and that council staff were hiding information from him. “They’re not going to consider input from me. What’s the point of being here if I’m not going to be listened to?” He said he wasn’t enjoying his job as a councillor so far. “In my old job, 90% of my days would be good days. In council, I’m lucky I go through even 5% of the days feeling good. I finish the day feeling frustrated and annoyed about what I have achieved. I’m not getting that sense of satisfaction from a day in the council.”

(Chung previously worked in sales for international infrastructure and telecommunications projects. It’s easy to see why he was a successful salesman; he’s persistent as hell.)

If he wins the mayoralty, he hopes he will get his way more often. But he said he might stand down as mayor if he didn’t get the council he wanted. If he was in Andy Foster’s position as a rightwing mayor with a leftwing council he would “feel frustrated going to work every day. If you’re not happy doing what you’re doing, you shouldn’t do it. So it wouldn’t do me or the city any good if that was me.”

For his top issues, he thought the council needed to do a better job of consulting and listening to the community, and that he wanted to cut spending on “nice-to-have” projects (he likes cycle lanes but thought the council was “going mad on them”). He is basically a small government conservative who wants big cuts to services to save money, but he doesn’t hold that position particularly consistently. He voted to spend an extra $147m repairing the Town Hall, and campaigned to keep the heavily subsidised Khandallah Pool.

In fact, he doesn’t hold many positions consistently; he kicked up a fuss because he was left off the mayor’s diplomatic trip to Asia, but voted against deputy mayor Laurie Foon going to Singapore to accept an award on behalf of the council (even though the flights were not paid for by ratepayers). Earlier in the term, he complained about MPs giving political speeches at council venues, but then was in favour of allowing the anti-trans Inflection Point group to host an event at council-owned Tākina conference centre. Insiders describe him as malleable. His vote can swing based on who spoke to him last.

By announcing his candidacy so early, Chung has the chance to coalesce support and become the leading challenger on the right. He will probably run an extremely effective campaign for his base, but it’s more doubtful whether he can win over the centre. The question for the right-leaning donors and business groups is whether to get behind him, or hold on and hope for someone better.