Waikato-Tainui gets extra payout
The latest $101.5 million Waikato-Tainui Treaty of Waitangi settlement relativity payment announced yesterday takes to $390 million the total the iwi has gained including its original $170m in 1995.
The relativity payments – pushed by the tribe’s principal negotiator the late Sir Robert Mahuta – were designed to ensure the iwi wasn’t penalised by being a first mover on settlements and to protect it against future government rule changes.
The Waikato 1995 Raupatu Settlement was negotiated at a time of the ‘‘fiscal envelope’’ concept – the idea that all historical Treaty settlements would be settled within a budgeted figure of $1 billion, updated for inflation.
The original $170m for Waikato-Tainui was 17% of the $1 billion. But the iwi (and the South Island’s Ngā i Tahu) ensured that if that cap was breached in 1994 present-value dollars they would get relativity payments to ensure their share of the total stayed the same.
It has meant Waikato-Tainui received two earlier relativity payments, one of $107m about five years ago and $12m soon after, and then the $101.5m announced yesterday.
The top-ups totalling $220m represent nearly 130% of the original $170m and 56% of the total $390m.
‘‘We are completely happy with the skill of the negotiators in 1995,’’ Tokoroirangi Morgan, the chairperson of Waikato-Tainui’s executive body, Te Arataura, said yesterday.
Praising Mahuta’s trailblazing, he said:
‘‘As a first mover, we would always seek to protect our position, as we couldn’t say what a future government would do.’’
However, he noted that $170m was still only about 0.3% of the assets Waikato-Tainui lost during the wars of the 1860s, including ‘‘some of this country’s most fertile lands’’.
The region continued to generate a huge chunk of the nation’s gross domestic product.
In that context, another $101m was a small price to pay given the land confiscations and deaths of Māori that occurred during the conflicts in Waikato, Morgan said.
On where the latest extra money might go, Morgan said ‘‘I never predict what our people want.’’
He was looking forward to a ‘‘comprehensive and wide-ranging debate in the tribal parliament’’ about where it should be spent.
Asked whether economic development and further protection of the Waikato River could be tar--
geted, Morgan avoided giving specifics. ‘‘This is a wide-ranging debate.’’ An earlier iwi statement said that its strategic tribal blueprint Whakatupuranga 2050 would form the basis of further decision-making, ensuring that the $101m ‘‘will be invested wisely for the benefit of this generation and future generations to come’’.
Meanwhile, Morgan also revealed the iwi was deeply concerned that current Resource Management Act reform breached the iwi’s settlement with the Crown over the Waikato River, which includes Crown-iwi co-governance of the awa.
Morgan said negotiations were ongoing over this but acknowledged matters could end up in court.
‘‘It’s an arrangement [the current settlement] that we will fight to keep.’’