One mayor, one plan...

He's actually yawning his way through the filibustering on the weekend. He ended up calling his super city establishment bill (not online because the urgency to 1am etc. meant they have not had the time or energy to put it up) in the end a different name. The only thing said about Maori in the legislation too was the title:

Local Government (Tamaki Makaurau Reorganisation) Act.

Hide's municipal killdozer has been sparked into existence over the weekend by the super city super troopers against the tsunami of opposition amendments. Blitzed through the 'stag with all the decorum and care for the public of Auckland as has been shown to the suburban parkland and neighbourhoods now scheduled for a six lane motorway through the Mt Albert electorate - well, now they think they can't win it.


Very uptight, unnecessary and antagonistic. Very Nazional.

If Auckland has been defined as Tamaki Makaurau already - ahead of the Auckland Council bill then surely it is Maori who must decide the rohe - the boundary? Pakeha without any Mana Whenua input could never define anything as "Tamaki Makaurau" in a unilateral way could they? Can Rodney and Franklin flee from amalgam by attaching themselves to iwi with rohe not entwined in the Ngati Whatua Tamaki settlement area? They have to start finding some way of surviving starting now or else the Auckland Council will be running everything in Wellsford and Waiuku from Queen Street next year rather than just the transition agency controlling things as they will when this law gets signed. It is life and death for these councils.

The Crown wants a treaty agreement with Ngati Whatua first. They've gone piecemeal so far, and they want to wrap it up - and get a tree planted on the mountain to boot. But in rushing they have pissed off the potential cross-claimants who got the Waitangi Tribunal to rule that the process was flawed. However one of the positive consequences to that is we now know who the interested Mana Whenua iwi groups are. Add to that the Maori Party's repeated listing of Ngati Whatua o Orakei's submission to the Royal Commission and their list of iwi they recognise as having a rohe in the current Auckland Region and we get down to brass tacks.

The Orakei branch of Ngati Whatua were the ones who first gifted the original plot to the Crown that Captain Hobson then named Auckland (after his patron). As the capital of a new colony Hobson was enticed and convinced to set up a settlement on the Southern side of the Waitemata. The first agreement put the Crown boundary at the summit of Maungawhau - that Hoson then called Mt Eden (after his patron) - down to the Waitemata. This gave the Pakeha a stake in the mountain to which they could affiliate as people living under the direct rule of the British authorities in Tamaki, and under the protection of Ngati Whatua o Orakei. That much will be cognisable to the parties that signed the Treaty only a few months before. That is the origin of Auckland. But the origin of Tamaki Makaurau is different and predates the European - and by using that as the name of the Act it asks the Tangata Whenua to define it.