{"id":578615,"date":"2026-08-24T08:20:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/578615\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T08:20:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:20:23","slug":"hana-rawhiti-maipi-clarke-calls-on-govt-to-honour-waikato-and-waipa-awa-commitments-te-ao-maori-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/578615\/","title":{"rendered":"Hana-R\u0101whiti Maipi-Clarke calls on govt to honour Waikato and Waip\u0101 awa commitments \u2013 Te Ao M\u0101ori News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hauraki-Waikato MP is calling on the government to \u201chonour the commitments it made \u2013 and written into legislation\u201d after it imposed a six-year pause on Waikato Regional Council\u2019s Plan Change 1 (PC1), with new plans expected under Resource Management Act reforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe power of Te Ture Whaimana is that it can override other pieces of legislation. It sits at the heart of the Waikato-Tainui Treaty settlement and establishes a clear obligation to restore and protect the health and wellbeing of our awa,\u201d said Hana-R\u0101whiti Maipi-Clarke.<\/p>\n

The pause comes months after the Environment Court largely upheld the framework<\/a> developed by the Regional Council despite numerous appeals from farming, industry and other interests over the past decade.<\/p>\n

PC1 is the first step in an 80-year plan to restore the Waikato and Waip\u0101 catchments and give effect to Te Ture Whaimana, established through Treaty settlement to guide restoration of the river.<\/p>\n

\u201cIwi and hapuu voices matter. Decisions about our whenua and communities must be made with the people who whakapapa to those places,\u201d Maipi-Clarke said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call on the Government to honour its commitments and enter into a new era of co-management and co-governance with Waikato-Tainui, as set out in the Waikato-Tainui Raupatu Claims (Waikato River) Settlement Act 2010.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur awa cannot wait for an election cycle. Our mokopuna cannot wait for political promises to be honoured.\u201d<\/p>\n

PC1 is \u2018economic vandalism\u2019\"\"New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters. Photo: file\/Te Ao M\u0101ori News. <\/p>\n

Over the weekend to a Taup\u014d audience, New Zealand First Leader, Winston Peters, said that the party\u2019s position was to pause PC1 before it became a \u201cbureaucratic death sentence for farmers and growers across the region\u201d that threatened to \u201cstrangle the very people who feed this country\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese rules were designed under a planning system the Government is already replacing. It is absurd to force Waikato farmers into costly consents, gold-plated farm plans, and layers of compliance just as Parliament is moving to scrap the very framework that created this mess.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than 4500 farms across the Waikato and Waip\u0101 catchments could be affected, with hundreds facing the prospect of needing resource consent simply to continue existing farming operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

He called PC1 \u201ceconomic vandalism\u201d rather than \u201cenvironmental management\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in a cost-of-living crisis. And the last thing New Zealand needs is a planning regime that pushes food prices up.<\/p>\n

\u201cCleaner rivers do not come from bankrupting farmers. They come from practical, workable rules that recognise the work already being done on-farm.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we are not going to allow, PC1, to continue to be the tool for Treaty of Waitangi claims that were not there when the Tainui settlement happened in the 1990s,\u201d said Peters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hauraki-Waikato MP is calling on the government to \u201chonour the commitments it made \u2013 and written into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[273,285014,111,43,139,69,283408,1524,285015,136],"class_list":["post-578615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-environment","tag-hana-rawhiti-maipi-clarke","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tainui","tag-waikato","tag-waikato-river","tag-winston-peters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}