February 27, 2014
Tech fund seen as endowment
A member of Te Huarahi Tika Maori spectrum trust, Antony Royal, says a $30 million information and communications technology fund for Maori can’t be seen as a treaty settlement, but it’s a good idea anyway.
Communications Minister Amy Adams offered the fund in lieu of allocating to Maori any of the 700 megahertz spectrum freed up by the shift to digital television.
She says the fund will go ahead once the sale of rights to the so called 4G spectrum is finished.
Mr Royal says promoting Maori involvement in technology is something the government should be doing regardless of any treaty claim, and the minister is on the right track.
"We don’t want to have it spread too thinly. It needs to be targeted. Typically what happens with government funding is they will announce a fund and set up all the processes where you’ve got to apply and write 200-page documents to get $5000 and a grant and it gets frittered away. We don’t want that to happen. I think it would be really nice if we had that $30 million fund and we though how we could grow that to a larger fund rather than spend it down," he says.
Mr Royal says the Maori position is the crown can’t assume it has property rights over spectrum, and the claims will be revived for each generation of the technology.
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