I have said a number of times recently that Luxon and National have been willingly blind and complicit in allowing Local Bodies and their biased bureaucracies slowly and incrementally to institute co-governance.

Another problem relating Co-governance and the dispensation and advantage afforded to maori under the guise of co-governance is the “Sites and Areas of Significance to Māori (SASM). Not many of the general public are aware of this issue that drops out of the RMA of 1991. More concerning, SASM Are still to be included in the coalition governments revamped RMA!

The revamped RMA will still explicitly recognises the relationship of Māori and their culture and traditions with their ancestral lands, water, sites, and other taonga as a matter of national importance. 

The local council must consider the relationship Maori have with “waahi tapu” (areas of cultural or traditional importance), their ancestral lands, waters and other significant sites.

These considerations can, in some cases, justify a resource consent being declined, or granted subject to conditions to address the effects on Maori.

Check out the array of places that would became SASM – https://ttpp.nz/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/FINAL-11-Nov-Te-Tai-o-Poutini-Plan-Information-Sheet-Sites-and-Areas-of-Significance-to-Maori.pdf

You may be surprised. It is no small wonder that landowners are concerned!

Is any private property able to be protected from a government sanctioned LAND GRAB?

This is how ridiculous the “Land Grab” has become.

Back in late 2024 the Gore District Council moved to clarify confusion in its proposed District Plan, which would designate the entire district as an area of significance to Māori, and instead proposed to introduce a new chapter called Ngāi Tahu Cultural Values.

The new chapter explained that while there were no mapped SASM sites in the Gore district, cultural values would still be applied to activities during the resource consent process.

Despite the Coalition Government’s stated opposition (but mostly inaction) to race-based preferential treatment in public services, it remains open to tribal control of public assets through new legislation, generous “Treaty settlements”, “Deeds of Acknowledgement/Redress” and local government’s ideology.