Maori Fisheries restructure starts as funding, fairness questions begin

Plans to restructure Te Ohu Kaimoana (TOKM), including giving iwi control of Aotearoa Fisheries and its $543 million fishery assets, will be consulted over the next year to find a fair way to evenly distribute power between tribes and fund the fishery trust body.

Under the Maori Fisheries Act in 2004, TOKM was set up to manage the fishing quota awarded to Maori in the 1992 fisheries settlement. Last month, iwi rejected recommendations from the 2015 independent review of the fisheries settlement, written by Wellington barrister Tim Castle, to totally disband TOKM, in favour of keeping the pan-iwi entity while taking control of the voting and income shares held in Aotearoa Fisheries.

As plans for the restructure begins, which is expected to be presented to Parliament in September 2016, consultation on how to best structure and fund the remaining body have begun, TOKM chairman Matiu Rei told Parliament's Maori Affairs committee.

"Three (funding) models have been promoted," Mr Rei said. "One is a mandatory levy, one is a voluntary levy and the other one is to use the cash Te Ohu has at the moment as an endowment fund.

"In this current environment I would have thought that mandatory levies would have been difficult to pass and voluntary levies would be sporadic and, operationally, the only viable option that really remains is for Te Ohu to retain its funds that it has now," Mr Rei said.

A new working group, negotiating how to best implement the proposed changes has been set up, and is chaired by Maori Trustee Jamie Tuuta. Iwi also voted to abandon the electoral college, which means a new system for electing directors to TOKM and Aotearoa Fisheries also needs to be established.

"It would be true to say if we'd just followed a typical model of shareholding, then probably the three larger tribes would control maybe 40%, quite a large percentage of the shares," Rei said. "It is a fundamental change. The electoral college was a way of widening out the search for directors. Even though the reviewer made the point, he didn't think that was going to happen. That was more of hoping rather than what's in fact the reality."

The Labour spokeman for primary industries Damien O'Connor asked Mr Rei and TOKM chief executive Peter Douglas why Aotearoa Fisheries and TOKM hadn't gone down the path of a shareholders' council, similar to Fonterra Cooperative Group, which oversees a large portion of New Zealand's dairy sector.

Douglas said the sector didn't want to create another layer of service and expense and the preference was for more director control over the company.

"The process for determining who the directors are going to be on AFL [Aotearoa Fisheries] is going to be a new one for all of us to go through," Mr Douglas said. "We want to make sure the little tribes aren't going to be locked out as small shareholders are in other companies. So we need to design a model that is not going to be cumbersome but is still going to serve the sort of responsibilities that the larger shareholders say that they have toward the smaller ones."

Consultation will continue with a hui to be held in March. Meanwhile, legal and finance issues will also be explored, although that is likely to wait until iwi decide on a final structure and process for the proposed changes.

(BusinessDesk)