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Auckland Mayor Len Brown sees a council committee’s recommendation on Maori heritage sites as a step backwards, and he wants the full council to make a better show of the question.
The Auckland Development Committee last week attempted to shrink a list of 3600 places of value to tangata whenua on private land where a cultural assessment is needed before any development.
It recommended sites should not go on the list until they are accurately identified and mapped.
Mr Brown says the debate was untidy, and he has since asked councilors to reflect on the city’s history and their obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi.
"The history of Tamaki Makaurau goes back 900 years. It is critical for us to embrace all tat history, the archaeology of the land, the cultural and historical significance of some of those old residential sites and to embrace those as strongly as we do some of those sites that are 100 years old in Auckland," he says.
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