Te Upoko Taiao launch -- Fran Wilde speech
Tēnā koutou katoa me ō mihi mai ki a mātou ngā kaimahi me ngā mema ō te kaunihera ā rohe ki tēnei marae ataahua ō koutou.
Greetings and thanks for welcoming us the staff and councillors of the regional council to your beautiful marae.
He tino hōnore mātou ki a koutou te mana whenua o tēnei rohe;
ara ko Taranaki Whānui
Ko Ngāti Raukawa
Ko Atiawa ki Whakarongotai
Ko Ngāti Toa Rangatira
Ko Rangitāne o Wairarapa
rātou ko Kahungunu ki Wairarapa
mo ō tautoko ō tēnei rā hiranga, heoi anō tēnā koutou katoa.
We have been very honoured by the mana whenua in your welcome and support of this special day and so again greetings to you all.
Ki a koutou hoki ngā Rangatira o te iwi
me ngā tumuaki o ngā rūnanga mō te iwi, tēnā anō koutou katoa.
Ki ngā meia ko David Ogden raua ko Jenny Brash, tēnā kōrua.
Greetings to all of you here today.
And to Sam and June and the other kaumatua and mana whenua of Pipitea – on behalf of all of us, a very warm thank you for looking after us this morning.
It is wonderful to see here today so many members of the whanau and hapu of our new committee members, and also so many from Greater Wellington.
Over the past few days as we’ve been practising our new waiata at the council, I suspect that others like me have been reflecting on the changes we’ve seen during our lifetimes and that have brought us here today.
I suppose “Māori” issues permeated my consciousness jostling for position with other big things of the 1960s – significant global issues such as women’s rights and nuclear disarmament.
At that stage Māori land was still being alienated – as it had been by successive governments since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi - and in 1967 Parliament passed the Māori Affairs Amendment Act - the big land grab.
I well recall the anger and frustration of young Māori activists who formed Nga Tamatoa in 1970. Some of them were also involved in those other global movements of the time and it was they who educated my generation on what was going on in our own back yard.
In 1975 came the great land march and the same year, the Waitangi Tribunal was established.
1980 saw Mat Rata – with whom I had worked as a parliamentary staffer – establish the Mana Motuhake party, and then it just continued to be all on in the mainstream of our political and judicial system: treaty principles enshrined in legislation and later defined by the Court of Appeal, Te Turi Whenua Māori Act passed, treaty settlements of various kinds agreed.
And outside the official system, many, many protests culminating in the enormous Foreshore and Seabed hikoi in 2004 and the subsequent establishment of the Māori Party.
I’ve been only on the fringes of all this. For those of you whose lives it has been – every day of every year – the core of your existence - I imagine this has all been tumultuous and exhausting.
It would be good to think that our community is now maturing and is starting to move on. And maybe it is true – perhaps we are, in fact, moving, not always easily, into a new phase of our nation’s development.
Maybe there is growing recognition firstly of the appropriateness of the settlements that are being agreed and secondly of the partnership that is being forged as a result of the truly liberating effect of those settlements.
Today’s event is part of that new partnership. It’s an opportunity for all of us, Māori and Pakeha, for whom this region of Aotearoa/New Zealand is our turangawaewae.
As the people who have mana whenua of this region, and as the people elected democratically to represent the community, we stand here, within the treaty partnership, to nurture the natural environment in which we live, so it in turn will be able to continue to nurture us all and provide for our social and economic needs.
The symbolism of the new committee is in the name that we have just received for it.
He mihi nunui hoki ki a koe te tiamana e Te Waari me tō komiti matua ō Ara Tahi mō ō koutou koha whakamanawa ki a mātou nei ō te kōmiti hou.
Nā koutou te kaiarahi ō te hononga ō te tuakana me te teina, koina te kupu rangatira hei whakapakari ai te mahi ō ngā iwi.
Nō reira koutou mā ō Ara Tahi tēnei te mihi motuhake mō te aronga e ai ki tēnēi komiti hou, ara ko tātou katoa ō Te Upoko Taiao.
This name has layers of meaning far beyond the other version we have – the Natural Resource Plan Committee - and hopefully will not only inspire us in our mahi but will help position the committee publicly.
For this new committee is a trial blazer. There is much interest in the model which is viewed by some in regional and central government as a model for the future.
As we undertake our work, our objective will be to observe both the traditions that the committee brings together.
This will not be easy. There will be challenges and there will be frustrations for all of us, and I expect we will have some lively arguments.
On the one hand we will have to work within the constraints and parameters of the RMA and the Local Government Act. On the other, we want to also utilise Māori tikanga.
And as if this isn’t enough, we have also made a public commitment that in developing the plan we will also look at non-statutory methods, engaging deeply with other groups in our wider community in a way we have never yet achieved.
Yes we are ambitious. We are ambitious for our region, for our communities, and our mokopuna – the future generations who will not only inhabit our land but who will be in a position to judge whether or not we have succeeded.
To fulfil these ambitions, and to be judged approvingly by those future generations, we must go into this new manifestation of the treaty partnership with good will and honesty. As we reach for solutions for complex issues, we will need intellectual curiosity tempered by emotional tolerance.
For my part, speaking as a person who has been in central, local and now regional government, I regard this as one of those rare opportunities to make a real, long term difference.
We have a big wok programme that the committee will be looking at shortly. So before we get to the business end of the proceedings, I want to formally thank all who have made it possible.
Firstly Ara Tahi members, past and present, and all our mana whenua partners, who worked quietly and waited patiently, over the years educating us in your approach to kaitiakitanga.
In particular, I believe your contributions to our Regional Policy Statement were significant because they allowed us to see the degree of congruence in our thinking and thus make this committee seem a possibility.
To our CEO Dave Benham and his team, particularly Nigel Corry, thanks for your support and your positive and practical approach to this proposition.
To our kaitakawaenga, Lee and Mike – I guess you could be described as the midwives, seeing through the gestation and now today the birth.
To my fellow councillors - some of whom thought I had lost my marbles when I proposed this committee - thank you for considering and taking this leadership position. I think we can be proud of what we are doing.
And lastly, to our new committee members, on behalf of the council and the community, thank you for agreeing to give your time, energy and expertise. I am looking forward immensely to working with you and I know that the other councillors on the committee feel likewise.
This is just the first step but the journey will be exciting and the outcome infinitely worthwhile.
Nō reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.