September 27, 2012
Trust at odds with government over 700MHz spectrum
The chair of Te Huarahi Tika Trust says Maori won’t accept the National-led Government’s view that spectrum is not a taonga.
The government starts switching off analogue television transmissions on Sunday, but Communications Minister Amy Adams refuses to hand over to Maori any of the 700MHz spectrums that will be freed up for the next generation of mobile services.
Daphne Luke says getting a share of that spectrum is important for Maori both for the development of the language and culture but also for their economic development.
But she says more than 20 years after Maori claimants won their first spectrum cases; the Government refuses to accept what the courts and the Waitangi Tribunal have found.
“The Government is dealing with it in chunks. Instead of dealing with spectrum as one whole matter, every time a new block of spectrum comes up they deal with it as an individual case – 700 is just one indication. There are other spectrum bandwidths that are going to come up and every time we are going to go back and back. As technology changes we need to be keeping up with what the bandwidth is,” Ms Luke says.
She says Te Huarahi Tika Trust has shown how effective it can be with even a small amount of spectrum in the way it brought Two Degrees into the New Zealand market.