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The chair of Auckland’s Independent Maori Statutory board says removing the mechanism for triggering cultural impact assessments from the super city’s Unitary Plan doesn’t take away the obligation of developers to respect Maori heritage.
David Taipari is disappointed the Auckland Council opted to remove the schedule of more than 2000 sites of value, because he says council officials had collected enough evidence to justify their inclusion.
The impact on Maori will now be just one more thing to consider when preparing the assessment of environmental effects.
"People when they make their resource consent application need to have it included, have cultural impact assessment, included in that. The provision remains as it always has but it's just not labelled specifically as a cultural assessment in the Unitary plan. It has to be done on an application by application basis," he says.
David Taipari says there were actually only a very small number of resource consent applications which required cultural impact assessments, and there was no evidence it was being abused by mana whenua.
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