Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Whātua is optimistic after a day in the High Court at Auckland challenging the way Kaipara District Council scrapped its Te Moananui o Kaipara Māori ward.
Justice Neil Campbell reserved his decision in the case after hearing extensive arguments about whether the council breached the Local Government Act by failing to properly consult Māori.
Lawyers for the council said an email asking for feedback sent a week before the August vote met the council’s obligations.
Rūnanga chief executive Alan Riwaka says the rūnanga’s lawyer Mai Chen raised the question about whether the outcome was predetermined, and whether some councillors may have voted differently if they had been given the chance for a kanohi ki te kanohi discussion with iwi.
“I think along the way there were lots of opportunities to actually sit down with iwi and as Mai (Chen) said, they had a workshop, they could easily have sat down for a couple of hours, three hours with iwi and had a workshop and we would probably have better then understood what was going on and would have given a response,” Mr Riwaka says.
