Special General Meeting Wrap-up

On behalf of the Board and our CE, I would like to thank everyone who attended in person or who attended online our Special General Meeting that was held at the East Pier Hotel on 28 May 2022. It was an excellent turnout where (56) people were at the hui a-kanohi and (6) people attended by Zoom.

The holding of a Special General Meeting held six months after our Annual General Meeting was introduced last year, following feedback that we received from Iwi members at our 2020 AGM that they would like to be kept informed of developments. The feedback from our Iwi was that people did not want to wait until our AGM to know what was happening. So, while not a requirement of our Trust Deed, our Board thought it was fair that we should make sure to update our Iwi members on how we are performing with implementing the 2021-2025 Strategic Plan. This was the purpose of last week’s SGM – to update:

Status Report of the 2021 – 2025 Strategic Plan
Update by the Hineuru Education Committee on the 2022 Hineuru Grants Scheme
Proposed Amendments to the Hineuru Iwi Trust Deed

A copy of the PowerPoint presentation that was presented and spoken to will be provided for people to access on our website. I acknowledge the passion and interest that a number of our people had:

In wanting to understand the commitment to getting the Te Haroto Marae development progressed. I confirm that Hineuru Iwi Trust has budgeted and dedicated $1.5m for Te Haroto Marae, and we remain committed to this development on the basis of accountable and transparent processes set by our Trust Deed. We worked earnestly to broker an agreement with Te Haroto Marae Trustees including bringing in an independent mediator Wi Pere Mita to help us with this. Unfortunately, the mediation agreement we thought we had amicably reached on 1 February 2022 was later overturned and so the Marae development is in limbo.
On the work underway on the Hineuru Iwi register. The Iwi register is our reason and purpose for existing and I want to give everyone assurance that we are undertaking this work to ensure that we are working in alignment to our Trust Deed as well as trying to anticipate and front foot new and emerging contemporary issues like identity theft etc. As announced on Saturday since doing this refresh of our Iwi register our numbers have increased from 2,876 as reported in the 2021 annual report to approximately 4,900. Being able to accurately obtain the current contact details of all our Iwi members is crucial to keeping you all informed of Iwi developments. I am certain that this will help you understand not only what has happened but also what is coming up and the areas that you may want to participate in.
The proposed Trust Deed amendments were shared at the SGM to explain the rationale for wanting changes. The issue is around trustee rotation and trustee terms as the current Trust Deed states is an ‘all on, all off’ system. There are no staggered terms allowed for which the Board would like to introduce in the lead up to the election of Hineuru Iwi Trust trustees in 2023. This process will be rolled out and overseen by an independent organisation ElectionNZ later in the year with the results of a postal voting ballot of Iwi members announced at this year’s AGM on Saturday 19 November 2022. The purpose of raising this matter at the SGM was to let Iwi know that this would be coming up.

I want to thank and acknowledge Maria Rahui for her presentation at our SGM about the Hineuru Education Grant scheme for 2022. She has made a worthy and valuable contribution as our grants administrator this year together with the Education & Training Committee (Mereana Brown (Chair), Erena Bruce, Mei Winitana) who distributed grants of $220 to our primary students, $440 to our secondary students and $925 to our tertiary students received $925. A total of 106 of our registered tribal members benefitting from just under $50k of Iwi funds. I wish all of you a successful year with your educational pursuits.

Coming Up:

To celebrate the first Matariki public holiday and in commemoration of the Waipunga Falls Handover that we were unable to do in 2020 due to COVID19 we will be having a Hineuru Matariki Hautapu on 25 June 2022 at 5am-ish at Te Haroto Marae. To RSVP for this event please let us know if you will be attending to pc@hineuru.com

I hope you have all had a nice restful Queen’s Birthday weekend.

Mai Hineuru, mo Hineuru

Renata Bush

Chair