Farmers in Gore are staring down a new reality that before they dig a silage pit, build a shed, fix a farm track, or dozens of other everyday farming activities, resource consents must be assessed against Ngāi Tahu cultural values like mauri (life force), wairua (spiritual connections), whakapapa (relationships between all life forms), and utu (restoring balance).
It is a fork-out or fail to get consents situation.
Remember when 'consultation' meant talking to your neighbours and the council?
Now it's pay Ngai Tahu to assess whether your earthworks harm the spiritual essence of the soil.
This will only mean costs ballooning, delays mounting, and uncertainty killing investment.
This is ridiculous and unfair. Farmers aren't anti-culture or anti-Māori, but they're anti-being squeezed by a system that turns cultural values into a revenue stream and a veto.
It's not partnership when one side can withhold approval until you pay up. Gore's Māori Cultural Values rules have turned routine consents into a paid consultation gauntlet district-wide, no escape, fees included.
How is a farmer meant to figure out the wairua of their land and why should they have to? It is private land! In New Zealand we have something called 'private property rights'.
Farmers have already been fighting and raised hell over the Gore District Council's original plan to slap a "Site of Significance to Māori" label on the entire district.
The council backed down following this initial feedback... sort of....
They scrapped the blanket 'Site of Significance to Māori' tag, but replaced it with a new Māori Cultural Values chapter that does basically the same thing.
This is a warning sign for farmers everywhere. District plans nationwide are layering cultural value rules on top of SNAs, biodiversity overlays, and hazards, creating a complex web where farmers lose real control over their own land.
Farmers aren't imagining it. They are being gaslit. One layer after another stacks up until ordinary land use needs multiple permissions. A single paddock can now sit under biodiversity overlays, cultural value provisions, landscape rules, hazard zones, and more. It's a slow choke on property rights.
Māori farmers won't be exempt either. They'll have to cough up for iwi assessments too. It is a mafia racket, not a matter of cultural respect.
He iwi tahi tātou / We are one people,
Elliot Ikilei is the spokesperson for Hobson's Pledge. This article was sourced HERE
Remember when 'consultation' meant talking to your neighbours and the council?
Now it's pay Ngai Tahu to assess whether your earthworks harm the spiritual essence of the soil.
This will only mean costs ballooning, delays mounting, and uncertainty killing investment.
This is ridiculous and unfair. Farmers aren't anti-culture or anti-Māori, but they're anti-being squeezed by a system that turns cultural values into a revenue stream and a veto.
It's not partnership when one side can withhold approval until you pay up. Gore's Māori Cultural Values rules have turned routine consents into a paid consultation gauntlet district-wide, no escape, fees included.
How is a farmer meant to figure out the wairua of their land and why should they have to? It is private land! In New Zealand we have something called 'private property rights'.
Farmers have already been fighting and raised hell over the Gore District Council's original plan to slap a "Site of Significance to Māori" label on the entire district.
The council backed down following this initial feedback... sort of....
They scrapped the blanket 'Site of Significance to Māori' tag, but replaced it with a new Māori Cultural Values chapter that does basically the same thing.
This is a warning sign for farmers everywhere. District plans nationwide are layering cultural value rules on top of SNAs, biodiversity overlays, and hazards, creating a complex web where farmers lose real control over their own land.
Farmers aren't imagining it. They are being gaslit. One layer after another stacks up until ordinary land use needs multiple permissions. A single paddock can now sit under biodiversity overlays, cultural value provisions, landscape rules, hazard zones, and more. It's a slow choke on property rights.
Māori farmers won't be exempt either. They'll have to cough up for iwi assessments too. It is a mafia racket, not a matter of cultural respect.
He iwi tahi tātou / We are one people,
Elliot Ikilei is the spokesperson for Hobson's Pledge. This article was sourced HERE
12 comments:
Co-governance has now become a cultural approval/veto fee..... so, control and profit. Did Ms Mahuta advise National on this strategy ?
New Zealand is destroying itself before our very eyes. As ANZAC day approaches, spare a thought for those that died in vain protecting something that is systematically being torn apart. Bureaucratic nonsense prevails through gross political weakness and ideological ineptitude.
You think Ngai Tahu owned farms will have to jump through the same hoops. Yeah right. Another inequitable outcome for “Maori businesses”
Such becons-nuh tahu,
Burnt the island, ate everything into extinction, sold it several times etc. (and that's before they become plastic murris)
Sack the council that supports this shite!!!
Once our personal property rights are gone we're well on our way to third world status, a la Zimbabwe. The smart people have already left the country, I'm not far behind them, just getting my personal affairs in order.
I was going to put my house on the market this month, but I see from Barfoot & Thompson's Auckland Housing Market update for February that Auckland's average house price dropped by 13% in one month! Too late, FFS.
I take deep offence to this statement by Rob Beechey; "spare a thought for those [fallen soldiers] that died in vain protecting something that is systematically being torn apart." That's an insult to their memory. Those who died, overwhelmingly in the two world wars, the most recent over 80 years ago, did not die in vain. They died protection our freedom and democracy which endures today, imperfect as it is. New Zealand is one of the most democratic and free countries in the world. Compare that to most of the world's population. Such ingratitude is hard to understand.
Good on Gore for following through on what the people voted for. Democracy survives another day. There is hope.
All this is so airey fairey stuff that resides only in the heads of a few "real" part Maori - without any proof or substance.
It's a racket dreamed up by radical part Maori to extort koha aided and abetted by gullible councilors who also need their personal accounts audited.
That a race of people has the veto over the use of private land can not be lawful - i want to see that contested in the Supreme Court.
This is the local Gore Council with their young Mayor (appointed at 23yrs, now in 2nd term) Ben Bell and what looks like a very woke group of elected councillors (and no doubt their unelected ngai tahu advisers). Gore voted their council in and this is the result. However there must be a case for our coalition govt to show leadership here. It surely goes against the spirit of property rights that is supposed to be embodied in the new RMA. If the govt doesn’t intervene, I for one will hold them effectively complicit. The fact that the govt so rarely takes a stand on maori issues is encouraging the proliferation of blatant grifting and cultural power plays. It’s like watching toddlers pushing boundaries to see what they can get away with. As long as the govt won’t say “No”, they’ll just keep on pushing. Ignoring it is making it worse.
Thank you for airing this problem Elliot. Hopefully it will support more local people taking their Council to task.
A huge issue is the fact that so many Mayors and Councils have gone woke and put unelected Maori (paid, of course) into positions of power on official local body committees .
That is not democracy.
I think Rob is trying to say that our fathers and grandfathers fought for an external enemy for a democracy that lasted about 60 years.
Then an internal enemy is determined to destroy democracy and establish an ethnocracy.
I am grateful for for the sacrifice of my parents generation who gave us the best generation ever.
Lest we forget.
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