Northland District Councillor Dover Samuels want the Department of Conservation to start paying rates on some of the land it controls in the region.
Mr Samuels, who also chairs the new Te Tai Tokerau Maori Advisory Committee, is trying to pull together Maori councils, government and the Maori Land Court to find some solution to the problem of unpaid rates.
He says his council is owed almost $3 million of unpaid rates and penalties on Maori land in the Far North District alone, and sizeable sums from the other two councils in its area.
Northland's ratepayers, who include many Maori landowners who do pay up, resent seeing other owners shirk their duty to contribute to the region's infrastructure.
"I think the biggest culprit of the lot is the Department of Conservation. Some of their properties are used for generating income but the buggers don't pay rates. The government has got to come to terms. If they are going to require the council and also Maoridom that have significant areas for conservation purposes and public use, then they themselves must be providing for in the law not unlike the Department of Conservation," Mr Samuels says.
He's not buying in to the argument that Ngapuhi don't have to pay rates because they never ceded sovereignty, and nor do the Ngapuhi hapu on his committee.
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