November 23, 2014
Jackson wins first round against mana whenua block
An urban Maori advocate says Auckland’s mana whenua iwi should leave it to mataawaka groups to say who should represent Maori from other tribes living in the super city.
A High Court judge had ruled that the process used to select one of the maataka representatives on Auckland’s Independent Maori Statutory Board was flawed and needed to be done again.
He said in picking incumbent member Tony Kake over Willie Jackson, the selection panel which only included mana whenua representatives failed to show it had considered mataawaka views.
Mr Jackson says he challenged the appointments because it was wrong that not only did matawaka have only two seats on the board but that those seats are chosen by mana whenua.
"It’s actually much bigger than me, it's about mataawaka rights, our rights to choose our own, and we were doing that anyway if you look at the applications, but they just ignored the evidence in front of them in terms of who had the most support and clearly chose to alienate myself." he says.
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