27 May 2019

Media: Rotorua Daily Post

Topic: Facebook post complaint

Enquiry

I'm just following up on the claims of hate speech by Tania Tapsell from Reynold Macpherson in the RDRR post and have a couple of questions regarding the council's response.

Why was the complaint lodged? Does the council believe this was hate speech?

Who specifically at the council has lodged the complaint with police or has it come from the council as an organisation?

When was the complaint lodged?

What is a confidential council committee and what is its role?

Who is on the confidential council committee?

What was the vote numbers to take the complaint to the police?

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Media: Rotorua Daily Post

Topic: Iwi on school board

Enquiry

Rotokawa School in Rotorua will be singing an MOU which will ensure the iwi is always represented on the school board of trustees. As the council has a partnership with iwi members, I was wondering if I could get some comments about the benefits of the partnership to see how that could relate to the school.

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How did the partnership affect the council? ie what benefits/drawbacks that came out of it, how was decision making affected? Was this a good or bad thing?

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With that in mind, why is it important to have a seat designated to an iwi representative instead of letting them get voted in?

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Ensuring an iwi representative is on the board, how could this help the community by getting into our tamariki?

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Will the council consider something similar?

I also wanted to clarify if the council had an elected seat for local iwi?

Asked to clarify the last question the reporter provided the following:

I was wondering if the council had a seat designated to an iwi representative or if it was just the partnership they had.

Response

Council responded as follows:

Mayor Chadwick, who would be the appropriate person to speak about the partnership and the benefits of it, is at a meeting out of town today unfortunately but can I suggest you try contacting the chair of the Te Tatau o Te Arawa board - which is the Te Arawa governance board of the partnership. This board is elected by Te Arawa to represent them in the partnership with Council.

The chair of Te Tatau o Te Arawa is Te Taru White who can speak about it from Te Arawa's point of view and can speak about the history behind it. Your colleagues will have his contact details.

There was extensive coverage of the partnership in the Daily Post so I presume you have background/reasons/how the partnership was established etc already and your council reporters should be able to explain how it works in terms of the committees etc but your questions are a bit confusing so to clarify: Under the partnership representatives from Te Tatau o Te Arawa sit on committees, with voting rights, but they do not sit on the Full Council which is the Mayor and Councillors only. The committees make recommendations to the Full Council which then makes the final decisions. Te Tatau representatives also provide input and advice on projects and other Council work.

Re the clarification you sought about if the council had an elected seat for local iwi - if you are asking whether we have Maori seats/Maori wards - no we don't, but we do have the Te Arawa Partnership with (as explained above) Te Arawa representatives on committees and involved in projects and Council work.