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Auckland mayor Len Brown says work is being done on streamlining consent processes so homeowners and developers aren’t sent to multiple iwi.
The mayor is trying to weather a storm over Maori provisions in the Draft Unitary Plan.
Labour’s Maori spokesperson Shane Jones says the plan shifts the consenting responsibility from the council to individual or multiple iwi, which was not the aim of the Resource Management Act.
Mr Brown says people need to take a deep breath, but concedes there have been cases where people have been told to get approval from several iwi.
"What I have asked our chief executive to do and what I know David Taipari, on behalf of the independent Maori Statutory Board and the Iwi Collective are doing, is ensuring that type of occurrence, isn’t something that’s part of our future, that we do respect the need to consult but that we define when that consultation happens and we streamline the level of consultation so there is one port of entry for iwi to give advice through and for applicants to apply into," he says.
Mr Brown expects a clearer and more streamlined process will emerge over the next few days.
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