6 The Deliberations: Schedule 3 Responses

A number of recommendations were deemed not to be a matter for government initiative but for action by Mäori. Rightly, these have been referred back to Mäori for further consideration. They include all of recommendations in the Authority and Partnership cluster (such as the establishment of a Mäori Education Authority) and a number of other recommendations that are dependant on Mäori aspirations for te reo, whänau development, Mäori participation in the global society and Mäori designed and written educational programmes.

There are relatively few opportunities for Mäori to discuss issues of that nature. While Mäori sectoral and professional groups are often involved, and provide leadership, most of the recommendations in Schedule 3 require broader discussion since their impacts go well beyond the education sector to embrace more fundamental concerns about the directions and the vehicles for Mäori advancement. The Hui Taumata Mätauranga have been important to Mäori, not simply because they have created an agenda for Mäori education but because each has provided a national Mäori forum conducive to future planning and outside the parameters of the state.

However, it has also become clear over the past nine months that Mäori opinion is not unanimous and that collective planning and decision making will require greater opportunity for working together, for sharing aspirations and for forging consensus. The Tuwharetoa initiatives, not only in education but previously in relationship to constitutional change, and to the establishment of a Congress, and well before that to the anointment of a Mäori king, have demonstrated a process for the promotion of Kotahitanga that will be essential if the questions raised in Schedule 3 recommendations are ever to be addressed.