A scene on the 44 km Waikaremoana Walk in better days. (Department of Conservation)

from Maori for a United New Zealand

Eyes wide open… top feeders no different.

The following article poses a stark warning of what lies ahead under the Government’s “He Puapua 2040”, the plan for two governments of New Zealand, one by Maori for Maori, and the other, a bicultural version for everyone else.

You may not know that the entire Urewera park has been closed for months as the tribal authority which co-governs the former National Park demands more money to run their “guest service” , and facilities have fallen into a sad state of disrepair.

A Treaty settlement seven years ago netted the tribe, Tuhoe, $169-million in financial redress.

In the settlement agreement a co-governance board, called Te Uru Taumatua, made up of six Tūhoe representatives, and three from the Crown was set up to administer the Urewera park

All assets that were owned by the Crown pre-settlement – huts, campgrounds, bridges, boardwalks, the Lake Waikaremoana Holiday Park – remained in Crown ownership, but the board has day-to-day operational responsibility.

Tamati Kruger, the board chairman, said that the money given a year to Tuhoe via the Department of Conservation to maintain Te Urewera, was “overly miserly”. Tuhoe has been receiving $2.2 million a year as a “base amount” to maintain the Park. Additional funding is available for special projects – such as when new stoves were installed in many of the huts.

A Police Sergeant who had recently worked in the area described the shocking state of disrepair of facilities – huts vandalised, “with condoms and human waste left on the floor, gang slogans drawn on the furniture and slats from the bunks used as firewood… gutters pulled down or collapsed, empty water tanks… thousands of dollars’ worth of pest traps unused and rotting on the ground.”Tuhoe hasn’t allowed Department of Conservation staff to access the area for maintenance work and pest control, claiming instead that they would do it themselves. Those piles of rotting traps, however, reveal the truth that the lofty “kaitiaki” claims of Maori being the true ‘guardians’ of New Zealand’s natural heritage, are nothing more than a fabrication.

This current demand for money shows what’s wrong with setting up race-based co-governance boards with a tribal majority.

He Puapua 2040 is an evil, racist, separatist and divisive plan and should be scrapped.

All it takes for evil to triumph, to prosper, to flourish, to survive, to destroy a nation is for good people to do Nothing!

New Zealand, we must wake up, stand up, and take action.

Sent on behalf of
(a)”All for One” United New Zealand
(b) Voices for Equality
by Alfred Johns,
Lambton Quay, Wellington