15 A Māori Capacity for Integrated Long Term Planning and Policy

There is a tenth point. A glaring gap in Māori capability is the lack of a sustained capacity for long term integrated planning and policy. While various Government Departments have an eye to the future, their planning fields are limited by sectoral interests and do not usually start from a Māori view. Indeed their mission is to give expression to Government policy. And because of the three year electoral priorities, their political masters are not always easily persuaded to go too far beyond a three year cycle. Various Iwi have also developed long term plans but, rightly, have done so with their own territories and people in mind and seldom engage in inter-tribal planning. Nor do other Māori authorities go beyond their own visions.

There are a number of problems with these approaches to planning. First, although Māori people are highly diverse, belonging to different iwi, associating with different groups, living in different places, they share commonalities that bind them. Second, given that most Māori enjoy many - not single - affiliations, Māori networks are close and intersecting. It makes no sense therefore to pretend that there is no such thing as a Māori collective - a Māori nation - or that planning for collective Māori futures can be met by adding together the separate efforts of tribal groups. Fragmented effort will simply leave a vacuum that others will fill. Despite the diversity there is a reality that all Māori share. But the stark truth is there is no national forum where Māori might set policy directions, plan for the future, and enter into agreements with the State and other groups. If there were, then the discussions about the allocation of fishing quota would not have been so protracted.

From time to time a national hui has been called to address a particular issue or resolve a particular problem. The Hui Taumata Mātauranga was an example. The Hui to formulate a `Forty Year Plan' called at short notice to fill a gap at Waitangi earlier in February was another. But one off events will not produce a sustained capacity to plan for the future.

The pressing need is for a Māori capacity, broadly representative and outside the Government, to take an integrated approach to planning so that sectoral limitations are circumvented and longer term plans can be hatched. That is not a criticism about the potential of the Hui Taumata Mātauranga to chart a meaningful course but it is a note of caution about the distance the course will run.

A Māori Education Authority was an obvious point of interest at the Hui and it was seen as a way to fill a valuable role in planning and policy. But if it were established to whom would it be accountable? Would it quickly become just another department of state? And how would it relate to the other Māori planning groups that many sectors boast?

More than simply duplicating the sectoral approach of the State, Māori achievement would be better served by a holistic approach to policy development, and an approach that celebrated Maori consensus, and Māori commonalities. The prospect of that approach was favourably considered at Turangi in 1989. And before that at Waipatu in 1892. And well before that at Pukawa in 1858. Is the beginning of the 21st century a time to re-examine the notion of an independent Māori Assembly for formulating policy and planning well into the future? Until that capacity exists then Māori control of the broad directions for Māori advancement will be more illusionary than real and Māori educational progress will suffer from the absence of a plan that integrates education into the wider arena of Māori ambition.