March 31, 2021
Consultation offer to counter climate white out
Independent Māori climate change commissioner Donna Awatere Huata is offering to collate Māori views for inclusion in the final report of the Climate Change Commission.
Submissions closed on the commission’s draft report this week, and Ms Awatere-Huata says the Māori voice was largely absent, both in the feedback and in the make up of the commission.
She says Māori thinking was revealed in the earlier process for the Zero Carbon Bill, which received 26 substantive submissions from Māori groups.
"We are all asking for the same thing, for a Te Tiriti partnership. We want to be at the table. We don't want to be talking to wall to wall white bureaucrats who have no capacity to take our thinking and translate it into policy. We actually want to sit at the policy table, and that did not happen," Ms Awatere-Huata says.
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