"When you blame others, you give up your power to change"

This is the first post to Tu Mai te Toki for 2014.

I have waited until the first official meeting of the new Te Runanga o Ngati Awa (Trona) board before writing any blog post.

As always my need to remain objective must outweigh the desire to share information and so I wanted to wait until I had something concrete that I could write about.

Today, I want to share with you my experience when I attended the workshop that was held by Runanga management for board members last week.

The workshop was held on Friday at the TRONA building on Louvain Street in Whakatane.

Chief executive Enid Ratahi-Pryor had previously extended an open invitation for all Ngati Awa uri to attend the workshop at last year’s Annual General Meeting and I so decided to take up the offer.

On my way through the runanga, I stopped at the desk to make sure that I could attend the workshop. Two staff members assured me that it was fine and left me to find my way to the board room.

When I entered the room Te Tawera representative Pouroto Ngaropo was talking about the signing of the settlement deed that happened in 1994 at Wairaka Marae.

He said one of key focuses in signing the deed was to ensure unity among Ngati Awa.

After Mr Ngaropo finished his speech, Mrs Ratahi-Pryor stood to continue with the presentation.

However Ngati Hokopu ki Hokowhitu representative Maanu Paul said he wanted to address Mr Ngaropo’s statement.

Mr Paul said the perception of unity among the tribe depended on where you stood.

“From my point of view there cannot be unity until the return of the Ngati Awa block has been recognised.”

The Ngati Awa block referred to by Mr Paul is the Ngati Awa Historical Estate which is a sheep and beef farm situated in the hills behind the Ohope settlement (it was formerly known as the Ngati Awa Farm).

In the days before Government confiscation, the land in the “Ngati Awa farm” was populated by Ngati Hokopu, Ngati Wharepaia and Ngati Pukeko.

The land was included in the Ngati Awa settlement because the leadership at the time said that it was important to get the land back first and returning it to the hapu would be addressed after that. It was also seen as an asset that would allow the tribal organisation to continue operating until it received payment from the Government.

Mr Paul said his hapu (a sub-group of Ngati Hokopu) had commended him to seek the return of the “Ngati Awa farm” to the rightful hapu as it was no longer needed to prop up the runanga.

“The longer this goes unaddressed, the larger the bitterness of this nawe grows… You need to address it.

“However I’m not saying that it will happen in this year but it could happen in five years. And I think that we have the capacity on this new board to make the changes.”

However Pahipoto representative Tuwhakairiora (Conn) O’Brien said many of the hapu had “nawe” but he was unsure whether the board was the right place to address these issues or whether they could make a change.

Aubree Kohunui, who represents Warahoe, said he believed the new board had the capacity to make a real difference.

“However if it is moemoea stuff then I am not really interested in that. I want to make a difference where it is possible.”

Mr Ngaropo repeated his message of the importance of unity but said he agreed that a forum needed to be provided so that the issues could be addressed.

He said this was the first time that Ngati Hokopu had raised the issue of the Ngati Awa farm in the 20 years that he had been part of the runanga.

“The power of the Runanga rests with the marae… There will be an opportunity for the hapu to represent.”

Ngati Wharepaia representative Materoa Dodd stood up to disagree with Mr Ngaropo’s statement.

She said it was not the first time the issue had been raised.

“In fact I have raised it many times on behalf of Ngati Wharepaia… It has always been on the table, it has never been off the table.”

Stan Ratahi, who represents Ngati Hikakino, said issues among the tribe could not be dealt with until matter of the land lost by Taiwhakaea had been rectified.

“How are we ever going to address that? A lot of the land was taken away from the hapu, I am talking about Taiwhakaea here. Land was given away to other hapu and they sold it.

“We cannot do anything about it, it is too late. I get sick when this topic comes up. You cannot address Taiwhakaea, you cannot fix the rest of them.”

Mr Ratahi did not seem to accept that the Ngati Awa settlement had adequately compensated the Taiwhakaea hapu for the loss of their lands.

It was at this point that Mrs Ratahi-Pryor, who is the sister of Mr Ratahi, stood up and said the workshop was a closed session. She then directly addressed me and said I had to leave because she wanted the board members to feel as though they could speak freely without fear of their comments appearing in a public forum.

And while I can appreciate the need for board members to feel as though they can speak freely I write about this experience for two reasons.

Firstly, it was Mrs Ratahi-Pryor that invited people to attend the workshop in the first place. At the AGM, held at Wairaka Marae in November, she had said encouraged people to attend so that they could observe what was expected of board members.

She had not left instructions with her staff that the workshop was a closed session.

Rules are rules and I would have respected any decision from the board for the session to be closed however it seems as though the direction came from Mrs Ratahi-Pryor alone and the only reason she seems to have made it a closed session was to prevent the information ending up on this blog.

As a member of the tribe I am a beneficiary of the Runanga and shouldn’t the Ngati Awa uri have the right to hear information about the organisation that is meant to be responsible for administrating our tribal assets?

My intention is not to be a trouble-maker but to present the information that I have collected so that you can take from it what you will and make your own decisions about it. My hope is that many more people will be inspired to become engaged members of our iwi and therefore help boost our tribe.

Secondly, and more importantly, I wanted to take the time to remind people about the job of a TRONA board member.

While the TRONA board is ultimately responsible for the whole organisation it is not responsible for making money, that is the area of the financial arm, Ngati Awa Group Holdings (NAGHL). It is, however, responsible for the governance of the tribal entity.

And board members must remember that governance relates to processes and decisions that seek to define actions, grant power, and verify performance.

Therefore the TRONA board must define actions through a clear strategy, select people to oversee its interests in other subsidiaries such as NAGHL and verify that key members such as the chief executive are performing in their jobs.

One of their first jobs this year will be to select members to sub-committees including the executive, audit, and investment sub-groups. They will also need to select a chairperson and a deputy.

These decisions will be made at the first board meeting to be held in February and I urge all of the representatives to become very familiar with the TRONA charter and to think very seriously about who they will support in the key positions. I would hope that most will take the decisions back to their hapu and ask you what you think.

And finally, I want to sign off this post with a new rule: I will no longer allow the publication of comments without a name. If you would like to comment then you must do so using your real name, all other statements will be deleted.

Ma te wa.

Get up, stand up

This weekend is the Annual General Meeting of Te Runanga o Ngati Awa and I want to encourage you all to go.

It is our only chance to hear first-hand what TRONA has to say and be able to ask our own questions. Well at least this is what I’ve been taught to believe.

Last year’s meeting was my first TRONA AGM.

I went with a group from Wairaka determined to ask questions. We knew answers would be limited and, at some stage, we would be label radicals, activists, haters, wreckers, negative or nuances. But here’s the thing, we knew we had to go and do what we did.

We had all heard the stories about failing internet companies, luxury golf courses up north only that had crumbled at the first hurdles, castles being built in the name of men and a dysfunctional culture.

Some of our questions were answered, many were not.

It was this event that inspired this blog.

And as I look over the past 12 months I realise nothing much has really changed. I don’t expect to get too many answers out of this weekend and people are still labelling this blog as a part of a group of “negative nuances”.

But ten new faces on the TRONA board is a sign of what can be done by the people and I urge you to stand up and demand a change.

As always I begin with the warning that this is the information that I have collected, take from it what you will and make your own decisions about it. But always remember you can always go to this year’s AGM at Wairaka on Sunday if you want to ask our management and governors for yourself.

This week I picked up a TRONA annual report. After attending most of the board meetings this year I wasn’t expecting the bottom to have fallen out, but I still wanted to take a read before this weekend and on the first look things seemed good.

The document is sleek-looking with glossy pages and sharp images. It pumps up the Runanga and notches achievements from the past year including cutting costs “to bring the Runanga back into near positive cash neutral” and the restructuring of Development Ngati Awa.

But upon reading it again there are some glaring mistakes and concerning themes.

However rather than concentrating on spelling errors and minor details I wanted to start this post by reminding you of Jim Davies and the $3.8 million contract with the CO2 New Zealand Management company.

Mr Davies is a good, honest man who has worked in the area of forestry and farming for more than four decades. Up until July he was the chairman of the Ngati Awa Farm Committee.

However he was forced to resign after he received a letter from runanga chief executive Enid Ratahi-Pryor explaining the financial arm, Ngati Awa Group Holdings Ltd, had voted to remove him because he spoke to the media about concerns around the tribe’s carbon credit investment.

Since then NAGHL chairman Wira Gardiner has made himself Ngati Awa Farm committee chairman and Wilhelm Studer has been selected for the remaining spot.

And perhaps you agree that Mr Davies shouldn’t have spoken to the media but his forced resignation was quick, so quick he that he did not have time to give his last report.
But I wanted to share what Mr Davies had written in his report.

In it he said the report’s purpose was to state the “Farm Committee’s” position on the “CO2 Ngati Awa Farm Land Management Agreement”.

“Subsequent investigation by the Farm Committee revealed that a conflict in fact did arise because Graham Pryor was a NAGHL director as well as being General Manager at the Ngati Awa office. He was also an Iwi director at Tukia , plus having a vested interest and directorship at CO2 New Zealand Ltd, an Australian carbon trading company.”

As already outlined in previous posts Graham Pryor is one of five people on the board of Ngati Awa Group Holdings Limited (NAGHL).  The other members are Waaka Vercoe, Joe Mason, Brian Tunui and Sir Gardiner.

“In 2010, Mr Pryor, with NAGHL chairman Wira Gardiner, executed a $3.8 million contract with the CO2 New Zealand Management Company.

At the time Mr Pryor was a director of the CO2 New Zealand Management Company.

Sir Gardiner says Pryor did not become a director of NAGHL until after the contract with CO2 New Zealand Management Company was instigated. However a report from the NAGHL Audit committee says Mr Pryor was the one who received crucial legal advice about the deal before it had been signed on behalf of the tribal company.

Also identified in the audit committee report was that Mr Pryor had failed to disclose the potential conflict of interest and, more seriously, there was no policy to demand it.

Mr Pryor and Sir Gardiner had also executed the contract without prior approval from the rest of the NAGHL board.

At a meeting earlier this year Sir Gardiner said he had required Mr Pryor to resign as a director of the CO2 New Zealand Management Company when he became aware of the potential conflict of interest”.

Mr Pryor did so but he still remains within a stone’s throw of the deal as a director of a company called Tukia Group.

Set up by the six iwi involved in the Central North Island (CNI) forestry settlement, Tukia Group included Ngai Tuhoe, Ngati Tuwharetoa, Ngati Raukawa, Ngati Whare, Ngati Rangitihi and Ngati Whakaue.

In his report Mr Davies says Tukia Group is also tied up with two other companies, CO2 New Zealand Ltd and Carbon Energy.

 “This arrangement effectively places CO2 New Zealand and Carbon Enery in control of the group. In other words, a collection shell companies comprising a mere handful of principals. All names are readily available on the register, with one in particularly featuring throughout.

“CO2 New Zealand was designed to benefit from carbon opportunities that may arise from the Treelords deal, or any other Iwi management opportunities that may occur.”

And then there was also story in this week’s Beacon focussing on Mr Pryor and the Tukia Group.

For details sake the Companies Office lists CO2 New Zealand as having a 45 per cent shareholding in CO2 New Zealand Management Ltd company. The two companies have the same two Australian-based directors, Andrew William Thorold Grant and Harley Ronald Whitcombe but Mr Pryor is not listed as a director.

The story in the Beacon goes on to describe Mr Pryor as being the Tukia Group chairman and says the company continued to trade until June 30 2013, at which time shareholders agreed to cease operations and hand some assets back to the CNI iwi holdings.

It explains the settlement with the six central north Island iwi was worth $418 million and the story explains that Tukia Group was meant to be a joint venture that invested in natural resources. Each tribe advanced $550,000 to develop a geothermal opportunity at Tauhara. It does not mention the CO2 New Zealand Management company or its owner CO2 New Zealand Ltd.

But it does describe the failure of the Tukia Group and concerns from the other Iwi about its performance.

“Tuhoe Te Uru Taumatura chairman Tamati Kruger said Tuhoe advised other directors last year Tuhoe was no longer supportive of Tukia and advocated its early wind up,” the Beacon reports.

The story points to the company’s financial collapse as the reason for the concerns.

“Ngati Rangitihi is recorded as having a paid a further $85,000 according to its annual reports, but it is not clear why.

“Tuwharetoa paid an additional $1.25 million to bail out Tukia in 2011. Today Tukia still exists, but it is hard to determine in what form… Auckland firm Johnstone Associates is Tukia’s accountant but staff member Rupit Kshatriya will not comment on the state of the company, referring the Beacon to chairman Graham Pryor.

“Mr Pryor, also chairman of CNI signatory Te Mana o Ngati Rangitihi Trust, has not responded to questions from the Beacon.”

 A side bar said that according to an annual report that Te Mana o Ngati Rangitihi trust, which is part of the CNI deal and the organisation that Mr Pryor leads, Tukia had sold its 45 per cent in CO2 New Zealand Management Ltd.

Now, let’s not forget Mr Pryor was the man who facilitated the $3.8m deal between NAGHL and the CO2 New Zealand Management company. Described as “re-afforestation project" in the TRONA annual report, the contract was negotiated by Mr Pryor while he was still a director of CO2 New Zealand New Zealand Management and at least involved with the NAGHL board.

The TRONA annual report outlines that an agreement with “CO2 New Zealand Limited Partnership” was entered into on 20 October 2011.

“As part of this agreement along with the subsequent Carbon Sequestration Management services agreement entered into in July 2012 and variation agreement in January 2013, the group committed capital expenditure of establishment fees of $3, 186,177 through to 2017 and ongoing annual mangment fees of $164,749 per year for 2018-2020, $198,835 per year for 2021, $87,360 per year for 2022-2031 and $70,980 per year for 2032-2062.”

In other words, Ngati Awa will pay $6.6m ($6,630,150) to CO2 New Zealand Limited Partnership over the 50-year life of the project.  As at 30 June 2013 a payment of $1,912,527 has been made, despite a memo on 17 October, 2012, from NAGHL and Trona chief executive Mrs Ratahi-Pryor to Sir Gardiner that warned of conflict of interest concerning Mr Pryor.

The memo from Mrs Ratahi-Pryor also said that there was a “get-out-jail” clause because of the conflict of interest that could be enacted before December 2012.

Obviously the TRONA board did not remove Mr Pryor nor was he reprimanded for holding back crucial information at the time of the deal. In fact he was made chairman of the Investments Committee and Mr Vercoe, who wrote the first report to signal concerns in this area, was replaced as Audit Committee chairman by Brian Tunui.

So what I really want to know in this entire murky saga is: What exactly does Ngati Awa get from the $6.6 million contract with CO2 New Zealand Ltd?

Other questions on my mind are also:

- Why did the Runanga decide to write-off $181,000 owed by Ngati Awa Development Trust and $188,000 owed by Ngati Awa Research and Archives?

- Was the decision to pay the members of the new Ngati Awa Development Trust, that now includes members from Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi, Ngati Awa Social and Health Services (NASH), Te Reo Irirangi o Te Manuka Tutahi and Ngat Awa Tertiary Training Organisation, to attend meetings included in the budgets?

- What do amounts do the NAGHL board members receive in fees or honorarium including the chairman and deputy chairman?

- Ngati Awa have committeed to a $6m ($6,281,000) mortgage from ANZ to pay for the Tumurau farm, which was bought last year - have any other partners been found for the 49 per cent, that NAGHL has identified that it does not want to own, apart from Rotoehu Forest Trust and Kiwinui?

- What services do Mataatua Quota ACE Holdings Ltd provide Ngat Awa?

However, do you reckon I will get to ask all of these questions at the AGM? And even if I do, do you reckon I will get any answers?

I don’t hold out much hope, so this weekend I am going determined to get an answer for one question: How is Te Runanga o Ngati Awa going to help with the fight against the proposed marina and protecting Opihi Whanaunga-Kore?

Ma te wa