Gisborne council to include iwi input in installing Endeavour replicas
Gisborne Mayor Rehette Stoltz has admitted she regrets voting in favour of installing two new replicas of Captain Cook’s ship, Endeavour, in the city without consulting local iwi, and will now allow them to have their say.
Good to see Rehette Stoltz has changed her mind and will support councillors Tony Robinson, Meredith Akuhata-Brown & Josh Wharehinga in facilitating community and iwi input on how the Endeavour models could be displayed publicly.
Unfortunately Gisborne District Council still doesn’t prioritise citizen-led processes for deliberation on complex issues, consultation is down the lowest end of public engagement processes – we need our democracies to mature a lot so we can move on from the outdated representative model that should’ve been left behind long ago.
Deliberative Democracy is a step on from Participatory Democracy which is a step on from Representative Democracy and the low-level expectations of citizens to be informed/consulted rather than having a direct role in issues we care about.
C’mon Local Government New Zealand – help our communities improve the way we organise ourselves instead of pandering to the vanities and select interests of elected representatives.
Manu Caddie is Kaihautu of Innovation & Regulation at Rua Bioscience
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