“That’s been the challenge with the announcement,” she said. “We don’t know yet.”
Tapsell described the committee as advisory, saying it makes recommendations to the council rather than “binding decisions”.
The Te Arawa Vision 2050 Committee is a council-established partnership committee made up of all councillors and five independent Te Arawa iwi representatives.
Tapsell said the committee’s recommendations ultimately go back to the full council, with final decisions remaining with elected councillors alone.
She said Rotorua had already moved away from having non-elected members voting on many council committees, while continuing to involve iwi representatives and outside experts through “advisory groups, partnership committees and project steering groups”.
Rotorua Lakes Council Mayor Tania Tapsell. Photo / Andrew Warner
She said the expertise iwi representatives brought to committees was comparable to an auditing expert on an Audit and Risk Committee, who would lose voting powers under the change.
“For Rotorua, it’s incredibly important that we are including iwi moving forward, because they are significant landowners and have a long-standing role in the district.”
Rotorua councillor Robert Lee has frequently raised his view that unelected iwi representatives on council-created bodies have an outsized influence on decision-making.
He recently abstained from voting on the Te Arawa 2050 Vision Committee because of his “serious concerns” about its “validity and legality”.
Lee told Local Democracy Reporting the Government’s reforms were needed.
“In Rotorua, we’ve had multiple committees where unelected members participate alongside elected councillors,” he said.
Lee said councillors were elected to make decisions and that unelected people should not have voting rights on any council committees.
“The idea of a democracy is that ratepayers are compelled to pay their rates, and they get to choose who spends their money,” he said.
Lee said he had no issue with councils seeking specialist advice where expertise was required.
He pointed to independent Audit and Risk Committee members as a legitimate use of the Local Government Act’s co-option provisions, but believed losing their vote would not be detrimental.
“We don’t have auditing expertise amongst our councillors,” he said. “But it’s really their advice that we’re after.
“It’s not so clear what expertise iwi representatives are bringing.”
Lee said he believed the Te Arawa Vision 2050 Committee fell within the scope of the proposed law.
Rotorua Lakes councillor Robert Lee. Photo / Laura Smith
In his view, there was “no ambiguity” because the committee was created by the council rather than legislation.
“There is no statutory basis for it to exist,” he said.
He was also concerned about some of the council’s iwi protocol committees, which he said did not operate with the same visibility as other council committees.
“I’m not invited to them and not told when their meetings are,” Lee said.
Te Taru White is a Te Arawa representative on the Te Arawa Vision 2050 Committee and a former Bay of Plenty regional councillor.
He said the committee was built around a partnership approach between Te Arawa and the council.
It existed to improve the quality of information going to the council, not to replace elected decision-making, he said.
“This is our contribution to the conversation.
“We make decisions out of that, not just fall in line, but actually create value for our community.”
White said the committee did not have too much power as “ultimately, all decisions still go to council, and rightly so”.
Te Taru White, who is a Te Arawa representative on the Te Arawa Vision 2050 Committee. Photo / Andrew Warner
He said iwi participation strengthened council decision-making because it brought additional knowledge, lived experience and technical expertise across areas such as land use, engineering, law and environmental management.
“We are looking for the best information to come to the council for decision-making,” he said.
“Having iwi in that process brings knowledge and perspective. It makes sense to include that input; we add value, you want the best information available.”
White said the idea that unelected members should not be involved in council-linked processes missed the purpose of partnership arrangements in Rotorua.
“If someone wants to remove iwi participation in that feeder information and advisory process, that’s their argument, but I don’t agree with it,” he said.
Tapsell said statutory co-governance groups established through Treaty of Waitangi settlement legislation, such as the Rotorua Te Arawa Lakes Strategy Group, were likely to be exempt from the Government’s proposal.
The group included members from Te Arawa Lakes Trust, Rotorua Lakes Council and the Bay of Plenty Regional Council.
The proposed reforms would take effect six months after the bill is passed, allowing councils to review committee structures.
They come amid wider reforms for the local government sector, including a push to merge councils into larger authorities.
Mathew Nash is a Local Democracy Reporting journalist based at the Rotorua Daily Post. He has previously written for SunLive, been a regular contributor to RNZ and was a football reporter in the UK for eight years.
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.