With New Zealand's Māori economy valued at $126 billion, Andy Loader questions the continuing allocation of taxpayer funding, Treaty-related claims and the costs of iwi consultation in major infrastructure projects. Examining land ownership, resource consent agreements and co-governance, Loader argues for greater financial transparency, accountability and equal treatment under the law. His commentary challenges whether current arrangements serve the interests of all New Zealanders.
According to the latest figures that I have available from the March 2023 census New Zealand has 978,246 people registered as of Maori descent (19.6% of the total population). This shows an increase over the numbers in 2018, up from 18.5%.
Based on the Te Ōhanga Māori 2023 Report via Knowledge Auckland. I believe that the total Maori asset base is $126 billion (an 83% increase over the 2018 figure of $69 billion).
According to this report the total asset base consists as follows:
- Total Asset Base: $126 billion
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Asset Breakdown:
- $66 billion in assets held by Māori businesses and employers.
- $41 billion in assets managed by Māori trusts, incorporations, and collectives.
- $19 billion in self-employed Māori assets. [1]
- GDP Contribution: $32 billion annually, up from $17 billion in 2018. [1]
The so-called Maori Economy has in a very large part been kick started by the treaty settlement process and the actual Treaty settlements made with the various Iwi groups.
The Iwi groups controlling the settlement monies have in most cases managed to consolidate and grow their asset base on the back of these settlements and I loudly congratulate them for doing so.
But surely it is coming time to stop the constant claims for redress for issues which were never even thought of at the time the Treaty was signed, and for the Iwi to control and finance their own destiny rather than relying on the taxpayers of NZ to fund their every wish under some claimed right through the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
If we study the so-called “Maori Economy” we can easily see that with the total asset base attributed to Maori and a total registered Maori population of just under a million people, this equates to approximately $126milion per person.
If we look at this figure in the context of the extra annual funding that the government allocates specifically to Maori, we must ask the question: What do we, as taxpayers, get as a result of this annual funding which we provide?
The answer seems to be that we just get more of the same; the rich get richer and the poor get worse off.
I terms of their total asset base, this is their money to do with as they please the same as any other person or ethnicity in NZ but in regard to any allocation of specific funding based on ethnicity, then I firmly believe that the taxpayers of NZ have the unalienable right to question where this money is going and who is benefitting from it.
Prior to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, the average life expectancy for Maori was mid-thirties; the tribes were constantly at war with one another and the Maori practised slavery and cannibalism as a common effect of their warlike practices.
In 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, an agreement between the British Crown and Maori which established British law in New Zealand.
One of the main drivers behind the signing of the Treaty was to protect the Maori population from inter-tribal warfare, the threat of invasion by other nations and to bring an end to the musket wars.
The Musket Wars were a series of as many as 3,000 battles and raids fought throughout New Zealand among Maori between 1807 and 1837, after Maori first obtained muskets and then engaged in an intertribal arms race in order to gain territory or seek revenge for past defeats.
It is believed that as many as 20,000 Maori may have died as a result of the musket wars. Tribal boundaries were also changed by the musket wars
As a result of the signing of the Treaty, Maori and other immigrants have lived in a reasonably harmonious relationship since then, notwithstanding that there were complaints around the confiscation of lands by the European settlers.
We are currently hearing much commentary from some Maori in relation to ownership of land in New Zealand.
The fact is that land in New Zealand held under Māori Title is now approximately 6 per cent of the total land mass.
The commentary seems to be making the inference that this has come about because the land was taken from their ancestors and there was something untoward in the fact that Maori have ended up with only 6 percent of the land in New Zealand under Maori title.
So let’s actually look at the full facts of the issue in relation to Maori land ownership.
New Zealand has a total land area of around 26-million hectares.
About 1.3-million hectares were confiscated during the 1860s as a consequence of tribal rebellion; approximately 5% of the total land area.
There were complaints at that time, and the confiscations were investigated. As a result of those investigations a total of 646,774 hectares were returned, which left 651,793 hectares that remained confiscated (approximately 2.5% of the total land area).
To be quite clear, the confiscations were legal, a consequence of rebellion and had been carried out under two pieces of legislation passed in 1863 -- the Suppression of Rebellion Act and the New Zealand Settlements Act.
Fast forward to today. Approximately 1.47 million hectares are currently classified as Maori land, and this includes customary land.
So, since Maori owned most of New Zealand’s 26 million hectares in 1840 when the treaty of Waitangi was signed, 1.47 million hectares remain as Maori land, with around 0.6 million hectares remaining confiscated, what happened to the remaining 24 million hectares?
It was sold.
Maori vendors sold a whopping 92 percent of the land area of New Zealand for all sorts of reasons, but mainly, that it was more in their interest to sell than to hold on to it, which is much the same choice made by any ownership group of any asset.
A myth has grown over the years that since the 1800s, Maori “lost” most of their land.
But as we have seen, apart from the relatively small percentage of land confiscated, and apart from surplus land retained by the Crown, Maori vendors sold land at mutually agreed prices over a long period of time.
There is a world of difference between losing something and selling it.
While they say that the Maori position has been diminished by the loss of the large percentage of their land, but the fact of the matter is that this has come about by the actions of their predecessors who sold the majority of their land.
Though they may have sold it for what would be considered today, as a paltry amount, at the time of the sale they were receiving the going rates and it is not possible to expect any type of redress due to the increase in values since the time of sale.
On this basis it doesn’t matter how they would feel about only having 6% of the land under Maori ownership simply due to the fact that their ancestors sold the land of their own free will and if they feel somehow diminished because of that fact then blame their ancestors.
Those Maori, who are making the claims that they have lost their land and they should have it returned, should have to justify this claim. Explain why they believe that they deserve to have their land given back to them or even why they should be given first right of refusal on sales of surplus government land holdings.
Why should the taxpayers of New Zealand have to subsidise them to regain ownership of land that in the main their ancestors willingly sold.
If they are to regain ownership of the land then they should have to bid for that right in a competitive bid process where all bids are treated as equal unless they can produce irrefutable evidence that the land in question was in fact unlawfully taken from their ancestors.
The Waitangi Tribunal was set up in 1975 to hear claims related to issues around the Treaty of Waitangi and also the actions of the early European settlers to NZ.
What began as a well-meaning effort to settle all such claims and offer an apology to those affected has since that time developed into nothing more than an industry that is focussed on claimants’ getting every last cent they are able to extract from the Crown (read taxpayers of NZ) for any and everything they can possibly dream up to make a claim in relation to.
Over decades since the setting up of the Waitangi Tribunal, the so called Maori elite have gained positions of power and influence through division and deceit. The Waitangi Tribunal has morphed into an almost permanent commission of inquiry into contemporary breaches of the Treaty with jurisdiction extended to include already-settled historic claims and anything else that can be quantified, giving rise to what has become a multi-billion dollar Treaty gravy train.
What we have now is a system of ideological indoctrination which is cloaked in cultural empathy, enforced by social shame, and hidden behind a virtue signalling sea of Maori culture with many of our public servants scrambling to prove their cultural credentials and enforcing a cultural ideology across every aspect of national life rather than concentrating on delivering basic services.
We also have many local bodies signing off on co-governance agreements as if they are making some magical step towards implementing Treaty requirements when in actual fact all they are really achieving is to introduce a race based bureaucracy which is nothing more than turning democracy into Apartheid under the name of Co-Governance.
But elevating Maori spiritual Ideology to sacred, unchallengeable status, above science, above secularism, above democratic consensus might make some feel good but it does nothing to ensure the provision of effective public services to either Maori or non-Maori.
Insistence on a separate Maori government has built up over the decades since the formation of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975. The Tribunal has over time constructed and publicised a complete rewriting of history – the “retrospective recrimination” and “counterfactual history” of the Tribunal, quoting the words of historian Bill Oliver. This fundamental reversal of the message and meaning of the Treaty has been aided by a captive media and the crippling of free speech.
We have operated under a system of democracy which has been based on the principle that all persons are equal in the eyes of the law and entitled to equality in the political and governmental processes but now we have this section of the population which wants to divide the country based on ethnicity.
If we are to have unity/equality it won’t be through Co-Governance. Co-governance doesn’t unite us—it divides, inflames, and festers. We don’t need more committees and cultural vetoes; all we need is one law for all.
Against a backdrop of this high-profile push for co-governance, it is easy to overlook the positive statistics.
For example, 64 percent of Maori are employed as compared to the employment rate for all New Zealanders, of 68.4%. In excess of 400,000 Maori have jobs, provide products and services and pay tax and 97 percent of Maori aged 15 or older are not in prison or serving a community sentence or order. Over 99 percent of Maori are not gang members.
Yes there is a small number of the Maori population which create a huge number of problems by way of their personal choices in relation to their way of living and their attitude to the law of the land, and this affects the Maori population in general by influencing public opinion.
But it must be stated that the fact that although this small number are very much over represented in the criminal statistics and in the prison populations, this is not as a result of racism but a result of their own poor lifestyle choices.
No matter that the Treaty Grievance industry members may claim there is institutional racism within New Zealand, they mostly make these claims so as to prolong their ability to benefit from the gravy train that has developed around the Treaty of Waitangi and the Waitangi Tribunal.
In the 2025 budget, government proclaimed it had allocated over $700 million in funding for Maori.
It is this separate Maori funding that many New Zealanders are questioning in these difficult financial times and why we continue to allocate large amounts of government funds, specifically to one ethnic group.
Why is there Maori-specific funding and why should they be treated differently to any other ethnicity in New Zealand?
So where does the legalized extortion come in?
The Legalized Extortion in my opinion comes in under the Resource Management Act which allows persons and organizations to claim compensation payments for the effects of a Resource Consent Application (and its associated operations).
There are many cases where it is right that persons or organizations which are affected by the granting of resource consent should be compensated for those detrimental effects, but there are a huge number of cases where it has become nothing more than a source of income for those wishing to oppose the granting of consent.
Nothing more than legalized extortion in my honest opinion!
An obvious example of this happening is seen in the recent renewal of the consents for the Waitaki Hydro scheme run by Meridian Energy.
Meridian paid out compensation to DOC, Fish & Game and Iwi, rather than risk them blocking their renewals of these consents.
It’s an open secret that it is easier to grease the wheels rather than risk being held up for years in court appeal processes so they just agree to pay the rent seekers and add this cost to the bottom line which is then paid for by the consumer.
It may be frightening to the average person to realize just how much these compensation payments are. In this case with Meridian Energy and the Waitaki Hydro Scheme, Meridian has agreed over the 35 years of the consent, to pay $73.5 million to DOC; $2.8 million to Central South Island Fish & Game and an estimated “confidential” $104 million to Ngai Tahu.
Nothing is planned to change as a result of this renewal application being granted yet Meridian was effectively held to ransom with what I believe was the veiled threat of opposition to the granting and the associated delays and costs for court actions.
Local Iwi leaders stated that many of their sacred sites and sites of significance have been lost due to raised lake levels, and their connection to the land and river has been weakened.
They also stated that “Only by working together with the two generators as they continue their operations into the future can we begin to address these ongoing impacts.”
So my question is simply this: “How does the payment of approximately $180million achieve positive cultural and environmental outcomes for the local communities”?
Nothing is going to change; the lake levels will still be the same as under the previous consents; the water diversions will stay the same as under the previous consents and as such I cannot see any change to the environmental outcomes from the past operations of the schemes.
The only real difference that I can see as a result of this renewal process is that the end user (the power consumers) will pay more for their electricity so that Ngai Tahu, the Department of Conservation and other Iwi groups can put their snouts deeper in the trough, and a further rise in the costs of living for those at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Nothing more than legalised extortion in my opinion!
Another example of this type of extortion is in my opinion the current fiasco at Tauranga where the port company wishes to extend the port infrastructure to allow for more business operations and the consent application is being opposed by the small local Iwi, who are demanding approximately $400million dollars over a number of years before they will give their consent to this application.
Again nothing more than legalised extortion in my opinion!
Another classic example of how bad it can get is seen in the recent reporting regards the intentions for Port Otago and Dynes Transport to build what will be the Southern Link Logistics Park on forty hectares of land, adjacent to the railway line at Mosgiel, just south of Dunedin.
Port Otago, owned by the Otago Regional Council, operates from Port Chalmers, twelve kilometres outside Dunedin along a windy and narrow coastal road. There is a rail link but most of the freight to and from the port is transported by road.
Southern Link would be an inland port, a place where goods are brought to from their place of production to be loaded into containers and then transported to the ship - mostly by train. Inland ports are becoming a vital part of the country’s supply chain infrastructure because they’re not constrained for space by the often small narrow coastal strips around seaports.
The land that Southern Link is planned for was formerly a privately owned farm. Dynes Transport bought it with a view to building the inland port there. It would remove thousands of truck movements from the streets of Dunedin and the road to Port Chalmers each year meaning less traffic congestion and road damage.
The Dynes and Port Otago Southern Link JV have applied for consent to go ahead under the Fast Track Approvals Act.
The land has never been land owned by Maori interests for as long as land titles have existed in this country. It was freehold farmland before a zone change to make it commercial and industrial.
But there are roadblocks in the Fast Track Approvals Act. Section 11 says that any applicant for a fast track approval “must consult any relevant iwi, hapu and Treaty settlement entities.”
This Act was passed by the current Coalition Government, a government which pledged to “uphold the principles of liberal democracy, including the rule of law and property rights.”
Section 11 has given three Runanga in the Otago region, all members of Ngai Tahu, an opportunity to insert them into this development.
In a letter to Port Otago, it is claimed that they do not consider there to have been any meaningful engagement with the three Runanga in respect of the project to date and at this stage, the three Runanga have no choice but to oppose the referral application and the project more generally.
They have said that they want to open negotiations and set out a “Process Agreement” as how this should happen.
Part of that Agreement says that unless Southern Link JV provides support to the Runanga parties, any discussions and negotiations between the parties will not be fair and reasonable and that the Southern Link JV should provide reasonable funds to support Runanga staff, members and governance to engage with Southern Link JV on relevant matters, support Runanga parties to engage appropriate external parties to advise and support them and meet administrative, travel and logistical costs.”
This Runanga is part of Ngai Tahu which has assets of approximately $1.66 billion with extensive interests in forestry, fishing, property, tourism and agriculture and there’s every chance some of its businesses will use the Southern Link to move produce to Port Otago.
One of these Runanga is Moeraki in North Otago which is also part of Nga Runanga o Waitaki which received over a hundred million dollars last year from Meridian Energy in return for them granting water rights to generate electricity.
These three Otago based Runanga claim that the Southern Link JV has significantly greater resources but if Port Otago was listed on the share market it might generously be worth $300 million based on its property portfolio and most recent profit of $30 million. But the two JV entities together would not be worth anywhere near $1.6 billion and “do not have significantly greater resources compared to the Runanga parties.”
So for these Runanga to be demanding money to discuss and negotiate the project is yet example of what could only be described as legalised extortion.
We are constantly being told by a small portion of Maori that white people in New Zealand are privileged and that under the Treaty of Waitangi we are required to treat them differently to other ethnicities in New Zealand.
Most New Zealanders are willing to pay taxes to enable those whose life chances are challenged, to receive assistance where their personal circumstances require it, but those policies should advantage all sectors.
Government should govern for the good of society as a whole and not just for the benefit of a specific ethnic group as this is bound to lead to racial disharmony.
It is time we stopped accepting that there is any basis that political power should be based on ethnicity or that ethnicity is any type of qualification for Leadership of our country. The future of New Zealand doesn’t belong to tribes—it belongs to all of us, equally; we all matter the same.
We should be united in our support for democracy and ensure that those who make extreme and divisive comments are held to account.
New Zealand has had a democratic system of government that is the oldest in the world, going back to the emancipation of women under the suffragette movement when they were granted the inalienable right to vote regardless of colour or gender in 1893.
Yet here we are currently, with the self-appointed so-called tribal elite of Iwi trying to go back and reinstate a system of race based governance.
But there can be no mature discussion about our future as a country until everybody accepts that the Treaty provided for the government to have final authority, with all citizens - no matter their ancestry - having equal rights.
We can have co-governance without democracy.
We can have democracy without co-governance.
But we cannot have democracy and co-governance.
Democracy will only prevail if we oppose any moves towards legislated race based co-governance policies. We need to oppose co-governance for Democracy to prevail.