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Maori and the State: Crown-Māori relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000

Implementing Ka Awatea

Implementing Ka Awatea

Peters would quickly alienate himself from the Bolger Cabinet by publicly criticising its policies on privatisation, benefit cuts and market rentals for state house tenants, and he was soon dismissed from his ministerial position. But meanwhile the government, initially too preoccupied with developingpage 251 its own form of Rogernomics to give much independent thought to Maori matters, generally took up Ka Awatea’s advice. The Iwi Transition Agency and Manatu Maori were abolished, and out of their ashes the Ministry of Maori Development/Te Puni Kokiri (TPK) was created on the first day of 1992. The word ‘development’ was significant, designed to imply a new, post-welfare ethos. Programmes inherited from the past which needed to stay within the state orbit would be mainstreamed to other departments, while ‘services to Maori’, especially those assisting self-reliant development, ‘could be contracted from whoever provided best results’ (including corporatised iwi). TPK would be orientated towards policy advice, monitoring the effectiveness of mainstreaming and contracting-out, albeit also performing some operational tasks originally intended for ITA and franchised iwi authorities. While iwi organisations were not now to be part of the state, the government saw advantages in dealing with them, and the 1991 census included questions relating to iwi membership. But under Ka Awatea’s philosophy, Crown relationships with iwi would be public–private ones that lasted as long as the contracts on which they were based.3

The whole package was generally viewed as constituting only an extremely limited recognition of rangatiratanga, certainly far less than under Labour. Moreover, even a member of the its production team later acknowledged that Ka Awatea lacked strategies for implementation. In practice, mainstream government agencies that assumed primary responsibility for delivering services to Maori were often bereft of significant Maori knowledge or involvement. Under Labour’s public sector reforms, furthermore, departments had been tasked with operating as separate entities responsible to their ministers alone. Those which did not see much need to focus on Maori were largely unconstrained, however much TPK monitored them, for the new ministry lacked enforcement powers. Individual departments could choose whether or not to contract to iwi or other Maori agencies, and some found it easier (for cultural, accountability and practical reasons) to avoid dealing with tangata whenua. The emphasis was on the purchase of service delivery rather than on ‘developing scope for Maori to exercise their own authority in choosing who should provide such services’.

Many urban-based contracts with ‘Maori organisations’ were not with tribal groups, for obvious reasons. But numbers of dealings were transacted with institutions more resembling companies or corporations working on Maori issues (sometimes with only token Maori membership) than organisations with any Maori kaupapa. Yet these transactions were often depicted as ‘Treaty partnership’ and devolution in action. Even at its best, under the new arrangements the term devolution often amounted to little more than Crownpage 252 purchasing of health and other services off private Maori organisations, such as the Wanganui-based Te Oranganui Health Trust.

Essentially, there was now little state help to get iwi authorities into a position from which they could successfully compete with other providers to deliver services to their people. Meanwhile, the Maori socio-economic situation worsened in the wake of the announcement of significant fiscal cuts in December 1990. With National determined to intensify its predecessor’s efforts to phase out ‘welfare dependency’, social services were particularly targeted in Finance Minister Ruth Richardson’s ‘mother of all Budgets’, and Maori once again suffered disproportionately. While some Maori leaders, such as urban advocate John Tamihere, believed that a bright future for Maori did lay with public–private partnerships which could help remove them from the trap of welfare dependency, general Maori criticism of the government increased.4

Many individuals and organisations continued to argue for ‘a measure of Maori self determination’ which eschewed, in the words of a powerful Catholic group in 1990, efforts by the Crown to ‘define and restrict the concept of iwi to that of financial and administrative organisations’. The Race Relations Conciliator was just one of a number of observers who stressed that the politico-cultural gains for Maoridom under the fourth Labour government, reflecting ‘a recognition that Maori have as much right to exist as a separate culture as do Pakeha’, were now in grave danger of erosion. Many argued that, whatever its faults, the short-lived runanga iwi devolution system had offered practical means for moving towards some form of authentic Maori autonomy in ways that the new system did not. An eminent jurist involved in Treaty claims felt that ‘the most important thing in New Zealand today is to re-establish the Maori tribes … as full legal entities’ able to ‘handle their own affairs in their own way’. But, whatever the intentions of the authors of the multi-faceted Ka Awatea, this was not on National’s agenda.5

Labour had, however, left a legacy of a greater willingness to consult with Maori than ever before. While tangata whenua were no longer being promised devolved state functions, certainly not at iwi level or in a systematised way, TPK was tasked with facilitating Maori development. It was to do so in consultation with Maori, seeking to reduce the endemic inequalities between the two peoples of ‘the one nation’ of New Zealand. A significant degree of ethnically and culturally aware (or, in a phrase increasingly used, ‘politically correct’) rhetoric and activity had been incorporated into government departments, following socio-cultural movement in society, and the new government appreciated that it could not turn the clock back. It seemed to a number of commentators that Maori were still on the road to achieving some kind of consultative, perhaps even quasi-partner, role in matters of state.

3 Patete, Devolution, pp 25–7; Ministry of Maori Affairs, Ka Awatea, p 88 (for ‘Treaty based policy’ quote); Henare, ‘The Ka Awatea Report’, pp 50, 56–8 (p 50 for ‘not facilitate’ quote, pp 56–7 for ‘best results’ quote); Orange, An Illustrated History, p 208; Durie, Te Mana, p 55.

4 Henare, ‘The Ka Awatea Report’, p 50; Orange, An Illustrated History, p 208; Williams, The Too-Hard Basket, pp 23, 64, 73, p 139 (for ‘developing scope’ quote); Barrett, Mark, ‘Maori Health Purchasing – Some Current Issues’, Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 9, Nov 1997, pp 127–8; Espiner, Guyon, ‘Tamihere slams Labour welfare policies’, Sunday Star Times, 23 Feb 2003.

5 Laidlaw, Chris, Rights of Passage, Auckland, 1999, p 137 (for ‘a recognition that Maori’ quote), p 144 (for ‘a measure of Maori’ quote); Smithies, Ten Steps, p 45 (for ‘define and restrict’ quote), p 94 (for ‘the most important thing’ quote); Fleras, ‘Tuku Rangatiratanga’, p 189.