Dunstan ward Otago Regional councillor Michael Laws claims payments totalling $5.3 million made to iwi through its partnership with local government have been kept secret from the public.

However the regional council disputes the claim saying there has been no secrecy - the payments came from a wide range of sources, including Government funding for various work carried out with iwi over the past five years. 

Following Official Information Act (OIA) requests, Cr Laws questioned on his The Platform show this week, why the regional council hadn’t included these payments in its annual plan or annual report.

“Each year I have gone through the annual plan process for a breakdown of the funding and became increasingly concerned about the financial information to make an informed decision,’’ he said.

Having been on the regional council for the past eight years, he described himself as “usually a voice in the wilderness,” but was pleased in recent months other councillors had started to support him.

Otago Regional councillor Michael Laws has questioned the transparency of local government’s partnership with iwi and its payments over the past five years. FILE SHOT

Chief executive Richard Saunders said the $5.3 million was made up of $3.48million ‘actual’ payments, including $1.5m of grant funding from the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and Department of Conservation (DOC) with the approximate balance of $1.76m being largely

proposed spending out to 2027.

For the $1.5m of grant funding there was no cost to the ratepayer, “this was for Jobs for Nature/Essential Freshwater funding across two key projects,” he said.

The payments weren’t visible to the public as they were part of the overall project costs across different business areas.

 “A number of these payments are for input to activities across the ORC’s business and coded to different projects, for example the Land and Water Regional Plan, biodiversity planning, consenting, cultural values inputs to natural hazards planning.”

In a statement released this week, Cr Laws said that he had always opposed the concept of the regional council entering a “self described partnership” with local iwi – calling them a small group of Maori folk provided with especial favours and influence as a consequence.

Cr Laws believed that the financial payments also suggested a clear conflict of interest relating to those iwi representatives being included on council policy-making committees.

But Richard said the funding deeds between MfE and DOC was for direct services to be provided by iwi such as planting, weeding and pest management.

“These deeds of funding were approved by council. We don’t provide detailed project level budgeting in our planning documents, which is why these payments aren’t visible. However they were budgeted for, and provided for as part of the overall project costs.”

The Long-term Plan 2021-2031 included a service level measure ‘’Build Mana Whenua participation in Council decision making through a treaty-based partnership approach in our engagement. With a measure of work done in partnership with iwi; increase the number of outputs and groups working together on projects'’.  

“We also include a summary of iwi activity in each year’s Annual Report. So while the line costs aren’t reported, we actively talk about the work we’re doing together in public and it’s not secret,” Richard said.