Appendix: Methodology

Our main audit question for this work was: "How effective are the public sector arrangements that support the delivery of Treaty settlement commitments?"

To answer this question, we developed three lines of inquiry:

• How well do the Crown and public organisations understand their Treaty settlement commitments?
• How well do public organisations' internal accountability and reporting arrangements, resourcing, policies, systems, and processes enable them to meet Treaty settlement commitments?
• How well do public sector arrangements provide assurance, transparency, and accountability for meeting Treaty settlement commitments?

We wanted to provide insights to assist with:

• strengthening the way that individual public organisations are set up to meet their settlement commitments, including through their internal accountability and reporting arrangements, resourcing, policies, systems, and processes; and
• strengthening system-level oversight, monitoring, and reporting arrangements for settlement commitments.

What we did

To answer our audit question, we spoke with three post-settlement governance entities:

• Te Kawerau Iwi Settlement Trust, the post-settlement governance entity for Te Kawerau ā Maki;
• Te Uru Taumatua, the post-settlement governance entity for Tūhoe; and
• Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira, the post-settlement governance entity for Ngāti Toa Rangatira.

We spoke with and collected information from two public organisations that had key leadership roles for settlements, which we explain further in Part 2. These were:

• Te Arawhiti (which had the third-largest number of commitments – more than 2100),⁶² as the government agency with roles and responsibilities for overseeing and supporting other public organisations' fulfilment of settlements; and
• Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission because of its role supporting the Public Service Commissioner, who is named in the pathway for resolving issues with providing redress (see paragraph 2.41).

We spoke with and collected information from six further public organisations that are responsible for commitments to the post-settlement governance entities we spoke with, and for commitments more generally. They were:

• the Department of Conservation, which has the largest number of commitments – about 3400 – that encompass both one-off and ongoing commitments of all types, including cultural and relationship, financial and commercial, regulatory, and custom redress;
• Land Information New Zealand, which has the second-largest number of commitments – about 2900 – and is largely responsible for transferring significant land redress, including Crown forestry licenced land and properties from the Treaty Settlement Landbank;
• Auckland Council (a local authority with commitments to Te Kawerau Iwi Settlement Trust);
• Bay of Plenty Regional Council (a local authority with commitments to Te Uru Taumatua);
• Hawke's Bay Regional Council (a local authority with commitments to Te Uru Taumatua); and
• Greater Wellington Regional Council (a local authority with commitments to Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira).

The table below shows the number of commitments that the public organisations we looked at are responsible for, as recorded in Te Haeata.

Number of commitments that the public organisations we looked at hold

We also spoke with and collected information from eight other public organisations (six core Crown agencies and two Crown entities) to provide a broader picture of how the public sector manages, monitors, and meets settlement commitments. We did not audit these organisations' performance specifically.

We interviewed a range of staff from post-settlement governance entities and public organisations. We also reviewed documentary evidence that post-settlement governance entities and public organisations provided to us, and publicly available information about settlements and meeting settlement commitments.

We looked at information about public organisations' progress in meeting a range of settlement commitments, including both transactional and relational commitments. We also looked at the tools, oversight, and guidance that supports these commitments, their reporting and accountability arrangements, and the effects of delayed or unmet commitments.

62: The actual number of commitments held by each core Crown agency is likely to be higher as Te Arawhiti’s list is not exhaustive, as we explain in Part 6.