Iwi-Crown relations on the line after scathing audit
Photo:
RNZ / Diego Opatowski
The auditor general has put public agencies on notice to do a better job of ensuring iwi and hapū get what they are legally entitled to in their Treaty settlements, after a scathing report on their performance.
The agencies, from local councils to government departments and state owned enterprises, have been given a year by auditor general John Ryan after his audit showed that many public organisations are failing to fulfill their commitments on Treaty settlements.
Ryan says that is unacceptable and he warns that the public sector and the government face a greater risk of legal action because they have failed to fulfill the settlements.
He tells
The Detail
why this audit is one of the most significant projects in his time as auditor general.
"It's significant financially, it's significant constitutionally, and it's a big accountability question for the public sector to deliver against its commitments. And it's about resetting its relationship with iwi and hapū," he says.
Many people think that when a Treaty claim is settled with an iwi or hapū and the government has made its apology, it's done and dusted, but the settlements are actually "massively complicated and span a number of years".
The report makes it clear that since Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed, the Crown has not met its obligations.
It says that about 150 public organisations have about 12,000 individual contractual and legal commitments under about 80 settlements, with about 70 groups.
To date, $2.738 billion of financial and commercial redress has been transferred through settlements.
The public organisations that it audited are responsible for 70 percent of individual commitments - more than 8000. The audit found that every one of the public organisations had difficulties meeting some of their commitments as the settlements intended.
"The types of things we've seen and pointed out in our report is that the government may have committed to relationship agreements and those are not being put in place [and] to letters of introduction which have not been put in place.
"But probably the more significant ones we talk to are things like rights of first refusal on particular properties where either they were not put in place and they should have been. Some properties we saw had been sold even though they should have had a right of first refusal given to iwi.
"We also saw Crown forest licensed land not being transferred within the timeframe that was given, which is five years."
Ryan says the public sector started late on the transfer and did not meet the five-year windows.
Once the deed is signed, a new phase begins, says RNZ Māori news editor Taiha Molyneux.
"It shifts iwi from one phase of navigating a system that wasn't created or designed by them to another phase of navigating a whole other series of processes, policies, acts to start progressing forward."
Many of the problems highlighted in the report stem from the leadership of the government agencies, most of whom are non-Māori and do not have key performance indicators (KPIs) or responsibilities that align with meeting the requirements of the Treaty settlements.
Molyneux says iwi and hapū leaders are pessimistic about the system changing, but the younger Māori are giving them hope.
"There is a much more powerful voice coming up because there's these young ones that are coming up through the kōhanga that are confident in te ao Māori and te ao Pākehā that are using tools to reach more people. That's definitely something I haven't seen of this magnitude before."
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All of our government institutions repeatedly fail to recognise this trauma that manifests not only in individuals but in generations of families and whole communities that have been infected by the virus of catastrophic childhood trauma. Instead the victims are blamed or labelled, ostracised and vilified, and the institutions then go about inflicting punitive measures that add further trauma. I've witnessed how victims try to get help from Corrections, Police, Health, Mental Health, Criminal Justice, MSD, Education sectors, only to be failed or turned away again and again. The ongoing consequences for the individual victims, their families, their communities and the country keep piling up because we have repeatedly failed to recognise the trauma that lives amongst us. I have heard people describe unspeakable acts that they suffered as children. I've seen the mask slip on gang members and people who have spent most of their lives in prison. When that mask slips I've caught a momentary glimpse of a frightened, hurt, traumatised child that hides behind that mask, a mask of aggression and hostility and distrust that many have worn so long they don't know how to take it off. They don't know how to take it off because no one ever believed them and they are trapped in a lie constructed by someone else. I have witnessed how that lie has been constructed, the ways people at the highest levels have deliberately gone about finding ways to absolve the Crown of the harm it has caused, while leaving the victims of this harm to carry the burden of those crimes. This narrative played out over decades and involved a total imbalance and abuse of power. That abuse of power brutally silenced the victims. Their evidence, their stories were deemed to be inadmissible because they shattered the image we'd constructed of ourselves as a country. And all the while we as a country have also been bearing the direct and indirect costs of the harm done to thousands of New Zealanders, while footing the bill for the Crown to cover it up. Redress cannot happen for victims until the truth we have been avoiding for decades is no longer an option. One aspect of that truth is that childhood trauma does not just live in the victims' past. It shapes every aspect of their present reality. But cracks have opened up in the Crown's impunity, even for those who work inside the institutions that have constructed it. Solicitor General Una Jagose copped heckling and verbal abuse at parliament when she gave an apology for Crown Law. Some stood up and turned their back towards Jagose while she spoke. It was made known loud and clear to the Solicitor General what survivors thought of how she and Crown Law had treated them. They had found their voice and it was heard in the corridors of power. This response was echoed by victims who had gathered at Pipitea Marae to watch the government apology on a large screen. When Jagose appeared on the screen the victims at Pipitea marae reacted the same way as those who were in Parliament. Badly. But a young lawyer from Crown Law was in attendance at Pipitea Marae, bearing witness to both the trauma of victims and the culpability of the institutions she worked for. In a transcript of an internal Teams meeting the young lawyer described what she saw and heard. And what she saw and heard in the raw reactions of the victims led her to question her own employer's behaviour and the lack of accountability. She referenced media coverage and said: 'There has been some very shady dealings and there has been cover-ups and survivors suffered immensely as a result. So I think something needs to be looked at here because the result, the trauma, does not go away and that was so clear today. The trauma from people who may have had things covered up by Crown Law 20 years ago, ten years ago, were still shouting and upset and saying things like liar at the event I was at at Pipitea Marae. There was loud booing, you could have cut the emotion with a knife. This is still a real issue for people, it's something that I think needs to be looked at further. I think to date the response to what has been done by officials of the Crown to try and limit liability for the state for abuse in care needs to be looked at under a microscope. And possibly, yes, people need to step down or be removed.'
