The Green Party has put one of the biggest Māori infrastructure proposals of Election 2026 on the table — a $2.4 billion permanent fund for marae. Te Kaupapa looks beyond the headline number and asks whether this is finally recognition that marae perform essential public functions, or an election promise that still has serious questions to answer.
For generations, marae have been expected to do extraordinary things with ordinary resources.
They are whare for tangihanga and hui. They are centres of whakapapa, reo and tikanga. They feed people, shelter people and connect whānau.
Then disaster strikes and another role emerges.
When cyclones arrive, roads close, power disappears or communities are cut off, marae frequently become emergency centres.
Now the Green Party wants the Crown to start funding them as though that role actually matters.
Its new Election 2026 policy, Te Waonui a Tāne: Thriving Marae and Thriving Communities, proposes establishing an enduring funding structure for marae, hapū and their communities rather than leaving them dependent on changing government programmes and annual funding rounds.
And the scale is significant.
The wider proposal is worth about $2.4 billion.
Two pūtea, two different jobs
The proposal is built around two funds.
The first, Te Rākau Whakarauora Restoration Fund, would provide funding for immediate priorities including upgrading marae buildings, emergency preparedness, climate adaptation and protecting taonga and wāhi tapu.
The second is the much larger Te Tōtara Haemata Intergenerational Fund.
That would be seeded with $2 billion and operate as an investment fund intended to generate returns that could support marae, hapū and iwi well beyond a single parliamentary term.
The Greens envisage a permanent trust owned and governed by hapū and iwi rather than another Crown agency administering grants from Wellington. Reporting on the proposal says the Crown would provide $1.22 billion annually for two years to establish the wider $2.44 billion structure.
That distinction is important.
This isn’t simply a promise to spend $2 billion fixing roofs.
The proposition is to create an asset.
Capital goes into the fund, that capital is invested, and over time investment returns provide an ongoing source of pūtea.
The Greens estimate the $2 billion investment component could grow to around $3.8 billion by 2039/40 under its modelling, eventually producing annual distributions estimated at between $47 million and $118 million.
Marae as infrastructure
Perhaps the most interesting part of the policy isn’t actually the money.
It is the definition of what a marae is.
Governments routinely understand hospitals as infrastructure.
Schools are infrastructure.
Roads are infrastructure.
Emergency management facilities are infrastructure.
The Greens are effectively arguing marae belong in that conversation too.
That case has become increasingly difficult to dismiss.
During earthquakes, floods, cyclones and other emergencies, marae have repeatedly opened their doors to entire communities, Māori and non-Māori alike. The Greens say climate adaptation and community resilience therefore require sustained investment in those facilities.
And climate change makes that conversation urgent.
The party says around one in three marae face flood risk, one in three are in landslide-prone areas and two in five are vulnerable to liquefaction during an earthquake.
Think about what that means.
The very places communities may depend upon during emergencies can themselves be vulnerable to the emergency.
Ending the begging bowl
There is another dimension to this policy that will resonate across te ao Māori.
Funding rounds.
Anyone involved with marae governance knows the cycle.
Identify the problem.
Find the government programme.
Fill out the forms.
Demonstrate need.
Wait.
Perhaps receive funding.
Perhaps don’t.
Then governments change, programmes change, criteria change and everyone begins again.
The Greens argue that system creates uncertainty for institutions that plan not for three-year electoral cycles but for generations.
A permanent investment fund fundamentally changes that relationship.
Instead of asking Wellington for pūtea every time the roof leaks, the ablution block needs replacing or climate resilience work is required, the policy attempts to create an enduring Māori-controlled funding mechanism.
That begins moving the conversation from grant funding towards rangatiratanga.
But $2.4 billion is still $2.4 billion
This is where Te Kaupapa needs to interrogate the proposal rather than simply admire it.
Because $2.4 billion is an enormous amount of public money.
National’s Māori development spokesperson Tama Potaka has challenged the Greens to explain how the proposal would be funded.
That is a legitimate question.
Every political party entering Election 2026 should be required to explain not merely what it intends to spend but where the money comes from.
If $2.4 billion is going here, what isn’t being funded elsewhere?
Is it additional borrowing?
Additional taxation?
Reprioritisation?
And how quickly can such a structure realistically be established?
Those questions don’t invalidate the policy.
They test it.
Who controls the money?
Then comes perhaps the most important Māori question of all.
Who controls the pūtea?
According to the proposal, governance would be developed through nationwide wānanga with hapū and iwi, informed by constitutional transformation work including Matike Mai.
The Crown’s role would essentially be to establish the trust and transfer the capital. It would not control investments, appoint trustees or determine individual funding decisions.
That is a significant proposition.
Because a $2 billion Māori-controlled investment fund would not merely finance repairs.
It would create economic power.
Investments could potentially support areas including renewable energy and housing, while generating returns for future distribution.
That makes this a conversation about Māori capital as much as marae funding.
Not a Treaty settlement
The Greens are also making an important distinction.
They say Te Waonui a Tāne would sit separately from the Treaty settlement framework and would not replace existing rights under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
That matters.
Otherwise a future government could potentially argue that funding marae through such a structure represented some kind of substitute for unresolved Treaty obligations.
The policy instead frames investment in marae as part of an ongoing Crown-Tiriti relationship.
The political challenge
The Greens now have to convince voters this isn’t simply a $2.4 billion Māori spending announcement.
Their strongest argument may actually be the most practical one.
When disaster comes, marae don’t ask whether the stranded family arriving at the gate is Māori.
They feed communities.
They provide shelter.
They coordinate volunteers.
They become communications hubs.
They look after kaumātua.
They support whānau.
They become, in effect, emergency infrastructure.
The policy therefore challenges New Zealand to put an economic value on something the country has often received without properly paying for.
Election 2026 puts the question on the table
There will be legitimate arguments about the size of the fund.
There should be scrutiny of its financial assumptions.
There should be detailed questions about governance, eligibility, distribution between large and small marae, urban marae and hau kāinga, investment strategy and accountability.
Those debates need to happen.
But perhaps the most important contribution of Te Waonui a Tāne is that it changes the starting point.
Instead of asking whether government should occasionally help marae repair themselves, it asks whether marae should be regarded as permanent pieces of Aotearoa’s social, cultural and emergency infrastructure.
That is a very different conversation.
And there is something else about a $2 billion intergenerational fund worth remembering.
Governments think in Budgets.
Political parties think in elections.
Marae think in mokopuna.
Election 2026 will determine whether voters — and potentially a future government — believe the way we fund them should start doing the same.
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