Iwi-Crown Relations On The Line After Scathing Audit

Sharon
Brettkelly, for The Detail

A
new report from the auditor general found that every public
agency audited had difficulties meeting at least some of
their Treaty settlement obligations to iwi and
hapū.

The auditor general has put public
agencies on notice to do a better job of ensuring iwi and
hapū get what they are legally entitled to in their Treaty
settlements, after a scathing report on their
performance.

The agencies, from local councils to
government departments and state owned enterprises, have
been given a year by auditor general John Ryan after his
audit showed that many public organisations are failing to
fulfill their commitments on Treaty settlements.

Ryan
says that is unacceptable and he warns that the public
sector and the government face a greater risk of legal
action because they have failed to fulfill the
settlements.

He tells The Detail why this audit
is one of the most significant projects in his time as
auditor general.

“It’s significant financially, it’s
significant constitutionally, and it’s a big accountability
question for the public sector to deliver against its
commitments. And it’s about resetting its relationship with
iwi and hapū,” he says.

Many people think that when a
Treaty claim is settled with an iwi or hapū and the
government has made its apology, it’s done and dusted, but
the settlements are actually “massively complicated and span
a number of years”.

The report makes it clear that
since Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed, the Crown has not met
its obligations.

It says that about 150 public
organisations have about 12,000 individual contractual and
legal commitments under about 80 settlements, with about 70
groups.

To date, $2.738 billion of financial and
commercial redress has been transferred through
settlements.

The public organisations that it audited
are responsible for 70 percent of individual commitments –
more than 8000. The audit found that every one of the public
organisations had difficulties meeting some of their
commitments as the settlements intended.

“The types of
things we’ve seen and pointed out in our report is that the
government may have committed to relationship agreements and
those are not being put in place [and] to letters of
introduction which have not been put in place.

“But
probably the more significant ones we talk to are things
like rights of first refusal on particular properties where
either they were not put in place and they should have been.
Some properties we saw had been sold even though they should
have had a right of first refusal given to iwi.

“We
also saw Crown forest licensed land not being transferred
within the timeframe that was given, which is five
years.”

Ryan says the public sector started late on
the transfer and did not meet the five-year
windows.

Once the deed is signed, a new phase begins,
says RNZ Māori news editor Taiha Molyneux.

“It shifts
iwi from one phase of navigating a system that wasn’t
created or designed by them to another phase of navigating a
whole other series of processes, policies, acts to start
progressing forward.”

Many of the problems highlighted
in the report stem from the leadership of the government
agencies, most of whom are non-Māori and do not have key
performance indicators (KPIs) or responsibilities that align
with meeting the requirements of the Treaty
settlements.

Molyneux says iwi and hapū leaders are
pessimistic about the system changing, but the younger
Māori are giving them hope.

“There is a much more
powerful voice coming up because there’s these young ones
that are coming up through the kōhanga that are confident
in te ao Māori and te ao Pākehā that are using tools to
reach more people. That’s definitely something I haven’t
seen of this magnitude before.”

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