Te Arawhiti back to focusing on Treaty settlements

Tama Potaka writes:

To deliver on the Government’s plan to accelerate Māori development, it is clarifying the respective functions of Te Arawhiti and Te Puni Kōkiri to ensure each organisation has a clear focus on the important, but separate, roles they play in delivering for and with Māori.

“Te Arawhiti will remain a departmental agency and continue its core role of progressing long standing Treaty of Waitangi settlements and Takutai Moana applications.

“Te Puni Kōkiri will advise on policy to support the acceleration of Māori economic development, continue to support the revitalisation of Māori language and culture, and support Māori social development including through a social investment lens,” Mr Potaka says.

Labour expanded the remit of the Office of Treaty Settlements (which had a clearly defined tasl) to be responsible for all Crown/Iwi relations. During that time, race relations got massively worse incidentially.

No doubt TPM will label this move as genocide also, but the reality is that all this Government is doing is generally turning the clock back to 2017. And the reason for this is Labour embarked on a series of radical changes to policies without any electoral mandate, or even much public discussion. When people tried to engage with them, they would gaslight you on it. So all this Government has done is reverse some extremely recent policy changes.