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February 02, 2026
Paora Crawford Moyle: Thames-Coromandel Floods Again: The Answers Are There, The Action Isn’t
Dale Husband
Posted On February 2, 2026
Download AudioOnce again, whānau in Thames-Coromandel are digging silt out of their homes, checking on kaumātua, and asking the same question they’ve asked after every major weather event: how is this still happening?
For Māori researcher and advocate Paora Crawford Moyle, the latest floods are not a surprise – they are a painful confirmation of what Māori communities have been warning about for years. Climate disasters are intensifying, yes. But the real crisis, she says, is not a lack of knowledge. It’s a lack of political will and a refusal to trust Māori-led solutions that already exist.
For Paora, this work is not abstract. Her own whānau have lived through repeated flooding events, watching water rise through communities that councils have long known are vulnerable.
Those experiences sharpen the urgency of her advocacy. The trauma doesn’t end when the rain stops – it compounds. Families lose homes, income, and a sense of safety, while agencies move on to reports, reviews, and consultations that often go nowhere.
Māori communities are not waiting to be taught how to respond to emergencies. Long before sirens and civil defence manuals, Māori had systems grounded in whakapapa, collective responsibility, and deep environmental knowledge.
These practices are lived, not theoretical. Marae become hubs for shelter, food distribution, and communication – often faster and more effectively than formal agencies. Yet time and again, these responses are treated as informal or supplementary, rather than central to emergency planning.
During Cyclone Gabrielle, Paora documented clear examples of institutional racism: Māori communities left without resources, marae bypassed in official response plans, and whānau forced to self-organise while waiting for help that came too late – or not at all.
Those patterns, she says, have not changed.
Decision-making remains centralised. Funding is slow to reach Māori-led initiatives. Councils continue to prioritise infrastructure protection over people – particularly Māori people living in flood-prone areas shaped by decades of planning decisions that ignored Māori voices.
Perhaps most frustrating is that many of these issues are no longer contested. Paora has presented Māori-led recommendations to councils – practical, locally grounded solutions focused on prevention, preparedness, and Māori leadership in emergency response.
Those recommendations were unanimously agreed to.
And then, nothing happened.
She believes the barriers are not technical but political and cultural: fear of shifting power, reluctance to fund Māori-led governance, and an ongoing preference for Western risk models over mātauranga Māori.
The consequences of that inaction are immediate and devastating. Each delayed decision leaves communities exposed to the next storm. Each ignored recommendation compounds harm.
The tragedy of Thames-Coromandel is not that disasters keep happening. It’s that they keep happening despite clear warnings, lived experience, and viable alternatives.
Māori are not asking to be included as an afterthought. They are demanding what Te Tiriti already promised: shared authority, respect for Indigenous knowledge, and decision-making that protects people before property.
Until that changes, the floods will keep coming – and so will the questions councils refuse to answer.
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