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31st
JAN
No Maori flag for Rotorua this year
Posted by karere under Maori News
A member of the Maori advisory group at Rotorua District Council says there will be no Maori flag flying alongside the New Zealand flag this Waitangi Day.
In 2011, the council’s Te Arawa Standing Committee raised the idea of flying iwi and hapu flags alongside the national flag on the council building.
In October, it appeared a hui-a-iwi or tribal meeting had voted to fly the Tino Rangatiratanga flag.
But Deputy Mayor Trevor Maxwell, who is also a member of the Te Arawa committee, says some iwi descendants weren’t happy with that idea.
Instead, he says, they wanted a tribal flag but could not decide which one.
Mr Maxwell says it was best to continue talks about which Maori flag should fly in future.
This is completely false actually, the Te Arawa Standing committee recommended that the Maori flag be flown next to the NZ flag (in a 4-3 decision), and this was reported in TASC minutes on 5 December. What actually happened was that several Rotorua District counsellors (including the mayor and deputy mayor) actually had issues with the flying of the Maori flag and said because there was not a unanimous decision that it shouldn’t fly. Sorry, but that is how democracy works (i.e. by majority) – you ask Maori to play that game and when they do and do it well, you change the rules and say oh now we wanted “absolute” consensus!
Complete BS actually.