Flood of cash

The cost to taxpayers of settling Maori's Waikato River claims is now approaching half a billion dollars.

And the latest deals mean more money is going to iwi or into bureaucracy created by the settlements than into directly cleaning up the river.

The Waikato River claim signed off last year by the Government provided Waikato-Tainui with $100m for cultural redress and the establishment of a $210m river clean-up fund.

A letter from Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson's office obtained by the Waikato Times confirms a further $120m in payments have been agreed for the four iwi whose settlements have yet to be legislated.

Raukawa, Tuwharetoa, Maniapoto and Te Arawa iwi will each receive payments matching Tainui's $1m a year for 30 years to pay for their participation in environmental co-management of the river with local councils.

The payments will push the known cost to taxpayers of the river settlements to $430m, excluding the operating costs of an overriding 10-member Waikato River Authority co-chaired by iwi, which the Crown will also fund. It is not yet known how much it will cost to run this authority.

Waikato Federated Farmers president Stew Wadey said it was important that the funding was used appropriately, and there were concerns that upskilling iwi for resource management tasks currently performed by regional councils was "doubling up on skill sets for one job".

"I have no concerns about the ability of the people so long as the discipline is there with the use of the money and it is used for the purposes intended under the deeds of settlement.

"You don't give money to clean up the river and then go to the pub."

A Waikato-Tainui spokesman said "capacity building" funding let the iwi fulfil its role in the settlement and exercise its mana whakahaere - the authority to manage the river to protect it and ensure its wellbeing.

"In order to exercise its mana whakahaere this tribe needs to build its capacity to play a meaningful and credible role in stepping up to a co-management role. That means investing in developing the skills of people who can act as environmental commissioners, for example," the spokesman said.

"Focusing on these payments ignores the reality that Te Awa [the river] is little short of an environmental disaster - a stain on this country's claims to be clean and green. It is tiresome to have people with no understanding of the relationship between the river and its people, focusing on money," the spokesman said.

ACT spokesman MP David Garrett, whose party opposed the legislation, said he was left shaking his head: "This kind of money-gouging and bribery is an excellent example of why we were justified in voting against the Bills. One hundred and fifty million is an extraordinary amount of money. It's just another way to leverage money from taxpayers. Co-governance puts immense power in the hands of an elite group of Maori."

The payments are exempt from tax. The deals also have matching clauses for two-yearly reviews to determine if the funding is sufficient.

All the deals have been agreed since the Government signed the first deed of settlement with Waikato-Tainui on December 19, 2009. The latest deals have been struck while Environment Waikato battles to get the Government to pay its costs of implementing the river settlements. It says Waikato ratepayers will foot a $3m bill in the next three years.

A spokesman for Mr Finlayson said last week there was no money allocated under the Treaty Settlements budget to pay for Environment Waikato's running costs and it had yet to prove its claimed additional costs.

In a letter responding to a constituent's questions about the river deals' costs obtained by the Times, Mr Finlayson said no additional costs for any aspect of the settlement would be borne by ratepayers.

- © Fairfax NZ News