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Auckland’s Independent Maori Statutory Board is unhappy Auckland Council wants to purge almost 40 percent of sites where iwi approval is needed before development.
Chair David Taipari says only half the 7000 sites that iwi wanted included in the Unitary Plan made the initial list, and now officials want to trim another 1400 sites off.
He says as few of those may be duplicate listings, but there has not been sufficient consultation with mana whenua iwi to ensure the list is complete.
He’ll ask the meeting today to defer the decisions so his board and mana whenua can determine what’s being removed and why.
"If there are things we can tidy up now we should but we shouldn't be giving carte blanche thinking we are being cost efficient when really we won't be because if there are sites taken off, New Zealand Historic Places Trust and others will come in and there will be a lengthy process that could tie up developers for a long time, and Maori will lose their sites, so we need to do this properly," Mr Taipari says.
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