Te Kahui o Taranaki Trust chair Jacqui King Photo: SUPPLIED
An iwi trust chair is optimistic conversations about Māori wards can happen civilly, despite a councillor saying his ute was shot at because of his opposition.
New Plymouth councillor Murray Chong said a gun was fired at his ute, indicating it was due to his opposition to Māori wards. He abstained as the council voted to retain its Te Purutanga Mauri Pūmanawa Māori Ward.
Chong said he would not be fronting any resistance to a Māori ward next year because he feared for his safety.
Te Kahui o Taranaki Trust chairperson Jacqui King told Morning Report said she wasn't even aware Chong still opposed Māori wards.
"I condemn any violence towards anyone, let alone a local representative, or any representative.
"To be frank I think its a long bow to string to imply that it was because of his position on Māori wards."
She was optimistic discussions about the wards could be had civilly.
"There will always be fringes of behaviour, the extremes, but on the whole I believe we've come a long way as a country."
King said it was good to see earlier this week that most of the councillors believed Māori wards had a significant benefit.
"I left that session very hopeful."
Chong decided to abstain from the Māori wards vote months ago not wanting to be branded "as the racist councillor" as happened during debate on introducing a ward in 2019.
"But at the end of the day you shouldn't be subject to abuse if you're outspoken on an issue which has a lot of support from voters."
Chong said he could not be 100 percent sure the slug-gun attack on his car was related to the Māori ward issue, but threats to himself, his dog and family members he outlined in council on Tuesday coincided with the earlier debate on Māori Wards.
"It could be someone angry at rates rises, greenies upset about my stance on cycleways. Who knows?"
King said iwi leaders were no strangers to vocal opposition to positions they took on issues.
"We are not unfamiliar with that kind of behaviour in our community when we are representatives ourselves.
"As you're leading a particular area of your community you'll have others that may disagree with you and overtly do so, but in terms of the violence that Murray Chong says he's experienced that's just really sad to hear."
Te Kahui o Taranaki Trust chief executive Wharehoka Wano took a swipe at the coalition government for opening the door to "race-bait rhetoric".
"That thinking is being emboldened by the way our central government, our current government, is repealing all these gains we've made and Māori wards are a good example of a positive gain.
"It's not been anything like the fear mongering that was trolled out the last time we went to a referendum on Māori wards and we're going to get a little more of that."
Wano could not understand why local bodies were being asked to relitigate the Māori ward issue.
He acknowledged the New Plymouth District Council for the way it had embraced its first ever Māori ward councillor Te Waka McLeod and valued her contribution.
Wano condemned the attacks on Chong.
"That's totally inappropriate and none of us condone that sort of response. We certainly don't condone any of that in terms of shots being fired at Murray's car, of course we don't condone that."
But he was not convinced it was in response to the Māori wards issue.
"I don't know who it was and I'm sure Murray doesn't. Is it a response to this particular kaupapa or something else? And to sort of imply that it may be the result of this Māori ward debate, I don't know the details around that."
Wano said former mayor Andrew Judd, who had championed the introduction of a Māori ward, had paid a heavy price for that.
"Andrew was totally crucified by this community so that's all the result of people's ignorance about what we are trying to do as tribal and mana whenua here in our own place, in our own tribal place."
Wano feared the likely direction the Māori ward debate would take.
"This is essentially as [current] mayor Neil Holdom acknowledged will become a race debate and it won't be about who are the best elected members to sit at our council it will get dragged back into this Māori versus the wider community sort of debate which is just unfair."
