If you haven't followed this, Chris Bishop is planning to replace the Resource Management Act shortly and his replacement law will not allow councils to sign any more of these agreements.
These agreements are called Mana Whakahono a Rohe agreements. In some cases, and certainly in the more extreme examples, they effectively cede significant decision-making power to iwi.
The new law will not allow any further agreements to be signed but it will allow existing agreements to continue. So, of course, what's happening is that councils are rushing to sign as many of these things as they can before the law changes.
The Far North District Council is trying to sign five of them, apparently without involving elected councillors in the process. They're reportedly not even allowed to see the detail.
I've had a letter today from the Mayor of Carterton drawing my attention to the fact that Greater Wellington Regional Council, which covers Carterton, is doing exactly the same thing, despite objections from two of its constituent councils: Carterton and Kāpiti.
Environment Canterbury tried to rush one through this week, then got busted and pulled it from the agenda.
The fact that councils are being cynical like this will come as no surprise to anyone because they did exactly the same thing with Māori wards when they knew that, in many cases, their own ratepayers did not support them.
But this gets much more difficult for the Government because it, particularly the National Party and ACT, said this co-governance stuff would end. Yet they are allowing it to continue under their new RMA laws by permitting these agreements to carry over.
They need to change that law. They need to change it before it becomes law if they really meant what they said.
Importantly, if they want to retain the faith of the voters who backed them to end this stuff, then they need to act when they have the chance next week, when the select committee report on the RMA reforms comes back. They need to say that these agreements will be rendered void under the new law and that whatever has been signed in a last-minute rush will count for nothing.
This is the Government's big test. It's the chance to prove that what it said about co-governance wasn't just hot air.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.
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