𝗔𝘄𝗮 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗻-𝘂𝗽 𝗮𝘁 𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗸 𝗮𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝘂𝗴 𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗹𝘀

Getting rid of regional councils will undermine progress on restoring Taranaki’s polluted waterways, say councillors and a mana whenua representative.

The Government on Tuesday announced it wants to do away with Taranaki Regional Council and ten others across the motu

TRC chair and deputy Craig Williamson and Bonita Bigham are worried Government changes will dilute local input into protecting the environment. (Te Korimako o Taranaki)

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Regional councillors will be replaced with a Combined Territorial Board of district council mayors who’ll have two years to reshape local government across Taranaki.

Resource Management Act minister Chris Bishop said he’s also about to announce changes to the planning and consents law.

“Regional councils will have a significantly reduced role,” said Bishop.

“There will be fewer plans, fewer consent categories, and fewer consents overall.”

Heavily degraded waterways are the main battleground at TRC, the region’s official environment watchdog.

The council’s own surveys show the community impatient for improvement but farmers fearing costs.

TRC’s deputy chair Bonita Bigham heads the powerful Policy and Planning committee and said the proposed changes would unravel relationships iwi, hapū and whānau have built with the council.

“Having to start again with people they don't know, and systems that are untested, just as we were starting to find some traction and achieve some good results.”

She said Treaty of Waitangi settlements and better relationships with mana whenua were essential.

“We can and must rely on those iwi relationships being maintained, treaty settlement provisions must be upheld, and our people must continue to be part of any conversations.”

Bigham was already set to lose her seat next term after referendums voted down Māori wards across Taranaki in October’s local elections.

Now fellow councillors also face the axe, including council chair Craig Williamson.

Williamson said local knowledge was vital and the council spent a lot of time liaising with the rural sector, engaging with farmers – and with iwi and hapu.

“We've got so many staff on the ground who actually know them and have built up fantastic relationships with all of those groups over many, many, many years.”

“They’re working in the field on biosecurity, on farm compliance, on the eastern hill country, everything that we do – how do you unravel that, how do you centralise that, how do they think they can make that more efficient?”

Tuhi-Ao Bailey sits on the Policy and Planning committee via Taranaki Iwi Treaty settlement legislation and previously served on the Operations and Regulatory committee.

Iwi rep Tuhi-Ao Bailey says much-improved relationships with mana whenua will be eroded if the regional council is abolished. (Te Korimako o Taranaki)

“This is our fourth term and when we first came in it was very white, and very farmer based, and the iwi and hapū were barely involved.”

“It's totally changed: we're having proper conversations now, we’re considered as partners, we're not just stakeholders when they feel like adding us in.”

The Department of Internal Affairs paper on the changes says Combined Territorial Boards would inherit all existing roles, functions, and obligations of regional councils and councillors.

This would include obligations under Treaty settlements and existing arrangements for Māori engagement and participation on council committees would continue.

Bailey is dubious: “How do we know if those committees will exist under these new boards that they're setting up?”

She’s also co-founder of Climate Justice Taranaki which has campaigned on environmental issues for two decades.

An outstanding issue remains the regional council’s outdated Freshwater Plan, which hasn’t been updated for quarter of a century.

“We've already been waiting for 25 years for the Freshwater Plan and this means things are really uncertain – who's going to do the cleanup?”

The Government is clear it’d prefer council numbers to shrink, with amalgamation cited among the examples in the proposal.

Combined Territorial Board will decide on new local government arrangements, but they’ll need ministerial approval.

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa Packer – a former deputy mayor of South Taranaki – says ministers will gain enormous control over regions, while councils, iwi, hapū and communities are pushed out of the way.

“This is not just tinkering with local government, this could rewrite who has power over our water, our whenua, our climate resilience, and our future,” she said.

Consultation on the proposals is open until February 20 with final changes to be confirmed by March.

nā Craig Ashworth craig@tekorimako.co.nz

𝙇𝘿𝙍 𝙞𝙨 𝙡𝙤𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙗𝙤𝙙𝙮 𝙟𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙢 𝙝𝙤𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙮 𝙏𝙚 𝙆𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙤 𝙤 𝙏𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙠𝙞 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙛𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙮 𝙏𝙚 𝙍𝙚𝙤 𝙄𝙧𝙞𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙞 𝙤 𝘼𝙤𝙩𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙤𝙖 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙄𝙧𝙞𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙞 𝙩𝙚 𝙈𝙤𝙩𝙪