Seeking apology
The small east coast township of Wairoa is still waiting for an apology from the Hawke's Bay Regional Council (HBRC) following the devastating floods which hit the town in June and damaged hundreds of houses.
That's the view of Hayden Swann, who holds a range of governance roles on various Māori trusts and incorporations in Tairawhiti - including the famous Whangara farms, north of Gisborne. His day job is principal of Gisborne's Makaraka school, as well as being on the executive committee of the Federation of Māori Authorities (FOMA), whose role is to promote and foster sound management for Māori business.
Māori landholdings in Tairawhiti are huge and Swann points out that many of the farms are hill country blocks which are very steep and prone to erosion. He says the weather events of the past year have been pretty horrendous and impacted severely on Māori farms.
"This flood event has caused more significant damage, particularly to the steeper slopes on the lower class land," Swann told Rural News. "Some of the soils are on rock and soil tends to fall away, which is not unexpected."
He says some of the Māori trusts and incorporations, such as Whangara, operate large-scale farming operations and can cope better with events like the recent storm. But he points out that some Māori farms are small, undeveloped and at the best of times they struggle - let alone without being faced with a disaster such as the recent storm.
Swann says farming on the East Coast is far from easy at present and points to the added challenge of getting stock to the freezing works where there are delays caused by Covid. He says at Whangara farms they were still cleaning up from the last event in November, which wiped out tracks and fences and now they have more work to do.
