Does your mayoral candidate know the mana whenua in their council turf?

Joel Maxwell is a Pou Tiaki reporter at Stuff.

OPINION: For Māori voters, there is no better time than now to get to know your candidates in the upcoming council elections.

You see, there are two levels of government in Aotearoa. The gold standard, which is centred around the Beehive, parliament, various parties comprising our best and brightest vying for ascendency.

Here, people frolic on the grassy frontage to our legislative branch in downtown Wellington, celebrating on our Playground of Democracy, when it isn’t being torched. (Overseas they pull down statues of tyrants during civil strife, here we unsuccessfully immolate a slide.)

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Then there is the second tier of democracy. Local government. It is a civil rest home of sorts for some – those who have quit, retired or otherwise burnt out from national politics – and for others, it is a kind of compost mound on which they can tend the mushroom of their new political career. Some also want to make a difference.

In central government, the Press Gallery monitors the actions of the players in this upper tier: The best of journalism, holding the best of politics to account.

Sadly, when it comes to local government you’re stuck with the likes of myself who covered council events for years, between pumping out the type of stories that generally focus on the opening of new car washes, or the elderly gent who found a hilariously-shaped kūmara in his garden.

So you’re going to have to do a bit of work yourself, come election time.

Okay, I did a spell in the Gallery, but I left my heart in the council chambers. That’s why October’s election is exciting to me: this year our candidates are getting a bit of attention.

You see, back in the old days (admittedly about 2017) we believed the local council beat was important. Terrifyingly, it turned out we were right for once.

The very pipes under our streets might be collapsing because of our council’s decision-making; there are hundreds of millions of dollar’s worth of projects to be sorted, a stadium here, a convention centre there; there are housing shortages, the impact of climate change; and just as importantly for people like me: through and around all of the above, there is the way our councils deal with mana whenua and tangata whenua.

I know there are so many other issues catching our attention this election, not least of all the apparent bid by some to quietly sneak a destructive hidden agenda into local government. But as Māori, we should also seek to know what the candidates want for us.

Councils are not a law unto themselves, and they operate under the legislation set in Wellington.

It was under this legislation that Māori wards have blossomed in many councils recently. The wards are an excellent way to set a kind of bare minimum of involvement at council tables. This likely guarantees Māori councillors (barring the unlikely win of a non-Māori). But we shouldn’t let it become the only place where we direct our demands for progress. It is a starting point only.

Under the government’s laws, there is still plenty of wriggle room for how councils engage with mana whenua, and Māori in general.

Where do we begin when we want to find out more about this from our candidates? Local government inherited so many duties, it’s difficult to know what to ask about. Councils do everything from resource consents, to roads, to public recreational amenities, to water (for now) to, in some cases, social housing. We need to remember that all of these things undoubtedly touch on traditional Māori interests and areas of ongoing injustice, so it’s up to us to figure out how to get the best people for the job.

To me, the heart of local democracy is the word ‘local’. It is a crazy thought, but some candidates might have gone through their entire lives without interacting with the local Māori community. And let me tell you, there is a Māori community in every part of the country. If you don’t think there is, then maybe you haven’t been looking very hard.

So at the very least I’d like to know if candidates can actually tell me the mana whenua – iwi – of their territory. And for God’s sake, can they tell me the story of how they interacted with at least one Māori person to help the broader community.

Second-tier politics or not, there’s no shame in expecting a bit of homework from our candidates. I want to know I’m not invisible to my councillors, and to my mayor.