Forestry proposal will trash Tai Tokerau's Māori landowners
Monday, 28 March 2022
Penetaui Kleskovic is the commercial operation manager for Tai Tokerau iwi Te Aupouri.
OPINION: The Labour Forestry Minister is Stuart Nash, a Hawke’s Bay MP who has decided to trash Māori landowners.
His aim is to stop Māori from using their whenua for permanent carbon forestry purposes. He proposes, along with Green Party co-leader James (Himi) Shaw, to achieve this via changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme. (Editor’s note: The proposed change is to exclude future permanent plantings of exotic forests like radiata pine from the ETS.)
According to their public statements, it will be done and dusted before January 2023.
Quite bizarre, given that the Green Party is determined to drive us to net-zero carbon by 2050. Simultaneously they want to outlaw permanent carbon forests on our Tai Tokerau Māori land. Very inconsistent with the message from Matua Willy Jackson, who is encouraging owners to be imaginative and boost post-Covid Māori resilience.
**READ MORE:
* Government proposes banning pine carbon farms from the ETS
* Report calls for urgent changes to control carbon farm conversions
* Carbon farming land will be 'losing money in 100 years' – East Coast report
**
Multiple-owner Māori land is often an economic burden given one can’t raise putea (funds) to develop it. In fact, Māori Green co-leader Marama Davidson has often echoed such concerns in Waitangi when MP delegations attend February events.
She knows in Tai Tokerau our whenua is the remnant of a former tribal estate picked over by speculators and other parties, including the missionaries.
What Green voice do we listen to? Our kakariki wahine toa, Marama, who says Nga Puhi share with her a common colonial burden, or Himi Shaw, the globe-trotting climate champion?
Back in Muriwhenua we simply want to protect our options to use our whenua in a commercially rational way without too much red tape.
So why at a time when much of our whenua does not earn putea or pay rates is Stu Nash determined to deny us progress? Apparently he is concerned about the spread of pine trees. Given my whakapapa to Te Aupouri we are attuned to this, but he is wrong to prevent us using our land to economically survive and deliver for the multitude of owners.
Perhaps he should talk to his Tai Tokerau colleague, Māori Crown Relations Minister Kelvin Davis, our Ngati Manu high-flier. He created the government agency, Te Arawhiti, the Bridge of Collaboration (not to be confused with our popular Māori waiata, The Bridge, by Te Arawa bellbird Deane Waretini).
If the Forestry Minister is hell-bent upon stopping Māori carbon forestry, what is the value of all our Māori parliamentarians in the Government?
What is the point of an agency designed to assist the Crown to work collaboratively with Māori, if our land aspirations are a mere afterthought. What has become of the recipe, “right tree, right place”?
According to Nash, he wants us to plant our land in indigenous flora. He obviously has not been north, given we have loads of such cover – it is called scrub. It provides an abundance of habitat for pests and virtually nil income for the thousands of owners.
The Labour Government dis-established the Maori Affairs Department about when I was born. It formerly provided development putea for multiple-owner whenua. Our matua, however, were left to cope as best they could.
It is ironic that it is this current Labour Forestry Minister who is cheating our generation from using our land to commercially grow trees.
We know that the Federated Farmers are antagonistic about the spread of forestry. They say that it will destroy communities and the logs are sent to China as a basic commodity with very little value to the rural communities. Quite richcoming from them, given the basic dairy trade is commodity milk powder.
The proposal to ban Māori from using their whenua to grow permanent carbon forests should be abandoned. Does Himi Shaw believe it is a superior outcome for taxpayers to spend millions buying foreign carbon credits whilst denying Tai Tokerau Māori the homegrown option?
These ministers need to be reined in and counselled that friendly advice is better than friendly fire in the iwi. Perhaps Matua Willy Jackson can also teach them the lyrics from Deane Waretini’s 1980s hit song: “My concern is for the piles of the bridge, pounded by the strong tides”.
If the Himi-Stuey duo continue down this path, the Māori colleagues should grab lifejackets because there will be a king-tide of Tai Tokerau disaffection.
- Consultation on the Government’s planned removal of permanent exotic forests from the ETS is underway.