Ngai Tahu Shareholders

No Democracy in Ngai Tahu Leads To Poor Governance and Lack of Accountability To IWI Tront, over the last four years, has not been functioning as it was planned it should do. The symptom and cause of TRoNT’s malaise in my view are poor communication with beneficiaries due to a lack of democratic process. This lies at the heart of the current tribal problems, and needs to be solved if the tribe is to go forward with the success New Zealanders, and our selves have come to expect from us In “The Press article dated 17 Oct 2006, I said the following: “The process by which the 18 representatives are appointed to Tront is not democratic. Few of the 37,000 eligible beneficiaries have the opportunity to vote directly for a person to represent them. A major problem is that voting is marae-based and sometimes through an electoral college. Only some marae allow fully democratic postal voting. All beneficiaries can trace their whakapapa to more than one marae and by right can vote on multiple marae, and therefore the system allows multiple votes. But implementing a full multiple-vote system would produce more problems than it would solve. It does not help in seeking the participation of beneficiaries that 55 per cent live outside the tribal area, in the North Island and overseas. Lack of democracy means that Tront is not truly accountable to the people.” In other words what I was saying was that, in general, Ngai Tahu beneficiaries have little idea of what is going on within TRoNT and many cannot participate fully in marae matters. This is not democracy. The gateway for communication exists, through marae. Detail, often commercially sensitive, is not required, but communication from the TRoNT table on important matters, is. The current lack of accurate information being available to all has nothing to do with a lack of beneficiary databases. There are full databases available. TRoNT has had about eight years to sort out this communication channel but has done little to engage beneficiaries. Without an involved and dynamic electoral base to report to and be accountable to, representatives’ jobs are much simpler. That said, some representatives report very well on the information given. My own representative, Matt Ellison, provides excellent reports, with his email reports taking on a sort of “blog” status; required reading to others, even outside his marae base, people eager to have news. But even Matt is increasingly limited to what he can report because so much of TRoNT’s deliberations are in committee. How often does your local body council go into committee? Rarely. It is a tool to be used for the most sensitive of commercial discussions, not to cloak dissent. Formal communication with beneficiaries is left to the monthly Te Panui Runaka and the quarterly Te Karaka. There is often scant detail on major tribal issues eg the demise of Ngai Tahu Development Corporation, and often, what there is, comes after the event. Obviously, not every beneficiary needs to, or would want to, make submissions on important tribal matters, but notification with or without the facility for input surely is part of democratic process. The tribe has a communications unit (which I was instrumental in setting up) with very skilled people but my current view is that TRoNT management has controlled the information outflow for political purposes. Recently, for example, two important events were, in my view, inadequately addressed- the Governance Review and its implications of which the first information was sent to marae 19 May 2006- and the midyear resignations of the NTHC CEO and Board. Further, there is the information TRoNT do not explain at all. (See the annual accounts). TRoNT spent nearly $5 ml over their budget in the current year 2005/06. Their budget was $15ml and they spent $19.9ml, that is, a third more than should have been spent. When I asked for an explanation, the answer I got was that TRoNT were anticipating making up the difference in the next financial year. At a basic level, would even a small household budget in this way? Who will bail TRoNT out if their optimism is misplaced? A personal history of the current electoral system. When the Ngai Tahu Bill was going through parliament in the 90’s, the select committee insisted that any voting system must contain a postal vote. There were no requirements as to how the postal vote should be used. So ‘voting’ was very flexible in interpretation and implementation. A second issue was about who could vote on which marae for the purposes of voting a representative on TRoNT. Virtually all Ngai Tahu can claim, correctly, they can vote (have a say) on any marae to which they have whakapapa connections. It seemed to me manifestly unfair that a person who for say, three generations, had had no affiliation to my marae, could have such an important vote in electing my representative. It was like a family who had lived in Auckland for two generations claiming a voting right in a local body election in Dunedin just because grandfather had lived there. I recall sitting at the Tront table putting forward the proposal that each eligible beneficiary (over the age of 18) should have one vote in the triennial election of a TRoNT representative. This was agreed by TRoNT. The Whakapapa Unit was tasked to find a solution. Theirs was to refer to the 1852 land allocations; each Kaumatua having been allocated land at that time. Descendent beneficiaries were allocated a “primary” marae where they could vote based on the 1852 allocations. This proposal was approved on legal advice from the law firm Bell Gully. My marae, Kati Huirapa, for example, near Karitane were allocated approx 7,000 beneficiaries. This pragmatic solution was a good shot at the time but the problem of beneficiaries being eligible to vote but maybe having little direct or indirect connection with the local marae, remained. Never-the-less marae were required to implement this system. For various reasons, to date only 6 of the 18 Ngai Tahu marae have done so. One of those who have not, is my own marae who, for example, communicate with only 375 beneficiaries, thus depriving 6625 of a vote. In hindsight the 1852 model- a marae based arrangement- had little chance of providing a democratic system and never will. This is because firstly, Marae constitutions limit the pool of possible candidates by requiring, for example, that a candidate must be on the executive committee, must attend monthly meetings, must report back verbally, must live within a certain distance of the marae, come from a particular village etc. These conditions restrict full beneficiary participation because mainly for economic reasons, the majority of beneficiaries no longer live near marae. Secondly, the postal vote at marae– mentioned above – if used at all, is a form of Electoral College. Marae use the postal vote to vote on a ‘selection committee’ who then selects the marae representative. For the same geographic reason as above, this limits those who can stand for the selection committee. Early this year the 1852 model was scrapped on legal advice by the same law firm that provided the original advice. Later Tront announced that it was suspending further marae representative elections pending a review. Apparently this review is likely to standardise the Electoral College model across all marae. This will do nothing to improve beneficiary voting rights- it will simply perpetuate the current flawed system. An Opportunity presents An opportunity to rethink marae representation has therefore arisen at this time. My analysis of this begins: *TRoNT representatives have three primary roles – Represent their marae – Act in the best interests of Ngai Tahu beneficiaries – Act as Trustees of the tribal assets The Governance Review said that representatives were not comfortable in the Trustee role and recommended that a separate Ngai Tahu Group Board be formed to take on the trustee of tribal assets role. This Board would sit between TRoNT and NTHC. The Board would consist of an Independent Chair, Kaiwhakahaere, two TRoNT Reps and two Independent Trustees. This Board has already been put in place –rushed in after the resignations of NTHC- and consists of Wally Stone (also Chair of NTHC), Andy Pearce (independent), and Mark Solomon and Te Maire Tau (representing the two factions in TRoNT), from TRoNT. *There is an opportunity here to manifest full representation for beneficiaries by them voting for the election of the Ngai Tahu Group Board to the above formula, hopefully attracting highly qualified and experienced candidates. * Selection of Ngai Tahu Group Board Candidates would be on a regional rather than marae basis. * Electing a separate asset trustee board takes pressure off Marae/Runanga who, under the current system are not representing all beneficiaries adequately. A major example of this deficiency was the demise of the NTHC Board where decisions were taken in committee. The implications of this demise are, I believe, far reaching not only in terms of democracy, transparency and accountability, but also in our commercial endeavours.