Iwi Have Influence (IHI) Action Group today are calling the decision by National and the Act Party to reject the call for Maori Seats in the Super City as typical of a party that is out of touch with modern metropolitan Auckland.
” Thousands of people from across the Auckland region marched in the Hikoi for Maori seats, ninety percent of oral and written submissions to the select committe confirmed suppport for a new way of working with tangata whenua by including Maori seats at the Governance level of the new supercity” says a spokesperson for IHI, Helen Te Hira.
” At the end of the day the decision to ignore the recommendations of the Royal Commission and the confidence cosmopolitan Auckland has in Maori potential is a sign that Don Brash’s neo-colonial attitudes have not left the National Party”
IHI Action Group believe the task at hand now is to regroup and acknowledge the pledges of support that have come in over the last 24 hours from Iwi and New Zealanders across Auckland and the Country. This issue is one of democracy and a maturing nation. ” We will not allow the antiquated attitudes of a business elite to hold back our progress, our voice and democracy”
For further comments
Contact : Helen Te Hira 0210554969
IHI : Iwi Have Influence 
Posted by Georgina Pakau on August 28, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Tena Koe
Yes this is urgent we must act no time to sit back. In great need of all tribes to unite, if
Auckland get their way with no maori seats we will start losing everything in the whole of New Zealand,
Our ancestors did not sign a treaty to be pushed around.