A proposed plan to compulsorily take 172 hectares of land under the Public Works Act for a new cemetery in Auckland faces rising opposition from the landowner and local hapū.
Waikūmete Cemetery in Glen Eden is at full capacity and Auckland Council is urgently working to find a new location for burials.
The sizeable land block in Waimauku — a small township 30km from the city’s CBD — has been identified as the most suitable site for land acquisition under the Public Works Act 1981.
The landowner told 1News the council wanted to take the best part of his farm where all the silage was made. He called the plan ill-considered and short-sighted and has taken his case to the Environment Court.
Luann Tapu, trustee of Whiti Te Rā o Reweti Marae, or Reweti Marae, said the land belonged to Te Taoū prior to its confiscation. Their ancestral mountain was part of the proposed land block up for acquisition.
“We are a part of the whenua and that is our maunga that we can’t access, so it is important to our community and our marae that we’re able to access the maunga and that we’re a part of the kōrero.”
Marae chairman David Mercer said the lack of communication from the council was a source of consternation. The marae inadvertently found out through a social media post.
“We received it in a way that was almost hard to believe, like all Facebook posts, and so it says something about the disregard for our role as kaitiaki, but also as tangata whenua, and as hapū within this area.
“It’s not something that’s far removed from us, it’s literally just across the tracks here.”
The tracks he referred to were a 25km stretch of railway between Helensville and Kumeū. Historically, the tracks ran 5km further to Riverhead.
Mercer said the hapū had already given up parcels of land for the greater good of the public, which included the land for the railway tracks, the nearby Woodhill Forest and Woodhill School.
He said the community would find that a 25,000 burial plot cemetery to help Auckland would be “a step too far”.
“Yes, we need places to lay our loved ones, but this whole greenbelt through here is designated as productive whenua, it’s part of a greenbelt that’s protected under unitary plans.
“So, we see this as an imposition of, not only as a central government and the Public Works Act, but also the mechanisms through local government, and that’s who we’re dealing with.”
Taryn Crewe, Auckland Council’s parks and community facilities general manager, said the council’s mana whenua forum process was used to engage with Māori, but admits the council could have done better.
“When [the marae committee] raised their concerns, I fully acknowledge there could have been more detailed discussions with them, with iwi, with hapū in the area, and including Reweti Marae.
“Those conversations are underway at the moment and we’re in a position, at the moment, where we just want to hear their concerns, understand how we can work through that.
“But fully intend to ensure we engage appropriately.”
Tapu said she was pleased the council would continue to consult but “the Reweti community here are not happy, so we’ll just wait until the outcome of the Environment Court and then reset and then take it from there”.
Search for a new plot
Crewe said the council team started the process for locating a new cemetery site in 2022 when approval was granted to assess land in the area.
“We had, originally, 45 sites that we looked across the north-west region. There was quite an extensive review done of suitable sites that would enable us to purchase a piece of land that would be able to look after generations of burial capacity.”
A selection process looked at the suitability of land in terms of historical, cultural and ecological significance, as well as soil quality and water tables.
“There’s a lot of work that goes into the process of assessment and no site that we purchase will be fully developed so we take that into consideration,” said Crewe.
Public Works Act — ‘brutal tool of land acquisition’
The Public Works Act 1981 gave central and local government power to acquire land from a private owner for public works such as roads, schools, police stations and railways.
A review of the act was currently underway, led by Minister for Land Information and local Waimauku MP Chris Penk.
Green MP Hūhana Lyndon sought to amend the law via a private member’s bill to give Māori land further protection by requiring the consent of the owners, kaitiaki and “any other persons with an interest in the land”. The bill was voted down last week.
“It’s always been a brutal tool even at the best of times,” Mercer said. “I’m not sure there were really any best times, but this is a resurgence of an old tool, an old brutal tool of land acquisition. It applies to Māori land and so-called general land, but what we know is, historically, it’s been Māori that have been disproportionately affected by those land taken.
“So to revisit that by way of an inadvertent Facebook post is pretty much on the nose for the community and the hapū because, as I say, we’ve got a long history of giving whenua, and there’s not a lot of Māori title land left around.”
He said a small block of Māori land was included in the council’s proposed plan and the trust that owned it was lodging its own opposition.
