Auditor-General's overview
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karangarangatanga maha o te motu, tēnā koutou.
The modern Treaty settlement process was set up to acknowledge and settle the Crown's historical breaches of te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi and provide redress for the injustices that the Crown perpetrated against iwi and hapū.
Redress is set out in deeds of settlement and settlement Acts, which also include the Crown's acknowledgement of the iwi or hapū group's grievances and the Crown's apology. Together, these set out the government's aspirations for the settlement.
Fulfilling settlement commitments is a significant responsibility. The redress that settlements provide is intended to acknowledge the past, and settlements as a whole look ahead to a renewed relationship between the Crown and iwi and hapū.
For a settlement to be durable and the Crown's apology to be meaningful, public organisations need to move beyond transactional ways of working with iwi and hapū. They need to work in the interests of a long-term and enduring relationship.
The number of settlements has effectively doubled each decade between 1989 and 2020, and this has increased the volume and complexity of public organisations' responsibilities.
Today, about 150 public organisations have about 12,000 individual contractual and legal commitments under about 80 settlements with about 70 groups. To date, $2.738 billion of financial and commercial redress has been transferred through settlements.
In December 2022, the then Minister for Māori Crown Relations said that "agencies were struggling to meet their settlement commitments" and that this risked "undermining a number of the settlements that [have] been negotiated".1
After this, Cabinet approved the implementation of He Korowai Whakamana, a framework to strengthen the oversight and monitoring arrangements for settlement commitments. At that time, Te Arawhiti was the agency responsible for implementing the framework.
I wanted to know whether the public sector's arrangements effectively support public organisations to fulfil their settlement commitments as intended. I also wanted to provide assurance about whether public organisations are well positioned to meet their legal and contractual commitments and about how well they understood any associated risks.
What we found
Public sector arrangements do not adequately support public organisations to meet commitments or fulfil settlements' overall intent
Deeds of settlement and settlement Acts explain each settlement's purposes and functions, the commitments that have been agreed to, and which Ministers and public organisations are responsible for meeting them. Despite this, many public organisations still have a mixed understanding of their commitments.
Many public organisations do not properly plan how they will meet their commitments, nor do they prioritise sufficient resources to do so. Many do not have effective processes for monitoring whether they are meeting their commitments. Some public organisations also have limited access to support and advice.
Every one of the public organisations with commitments that we audited had difficulties meeting some of them as the settlements intended.
He Korowai Whakamana prompted core Crown agencies to improve how they monitor their responsibilities.2 It sets out what is expected of core Crown agencies with settlement commitments and requires them to regularly report the status of their commitments through a centralised database, Te Haeata – the Settlement Portal.
This has improved transparency of how these agencies are performing and helps identify and resolve issues with providing redress. However, although we saw isolated examples of good practice, the public organisations we audited were not yet consistently meeting their commitments or supporting settlements' overall intent.
Post-settlement governance entities told my staff that, in their view, public organisations tend to see settlements as a series of transactions rather than as supporting a broader and more strategic relationship between iwi and hapū and the Crown.3 However, one of the main intentions of settlements is to forge this new relationship.
Although Te Arawhiti had a monitoring and oversight role, there is no framework that guides public organisations to consider a settlement holistically – for example, by ensuring that they co-ordinate their work on meeting commitments with other agencies to understand and manage interdependencies, make it easier for post-settlement governance entities to engage with them, and fulfil settlements' overall intent.
The government does not fully understand the risk to durability of settlements
Failure to provide redress as intended has created a risk of litigation for the public sector and the government. The government has already paid tens of millions of dollars in financial compensation to post-settlement governance entities for significant issues with meeting settlement commitments.
Parliament and the public should rightly be concerned about any failure by the public sector to meet its contractual and legal commitments. Failing to provide redress as intended also means that post-settlement governance entities, iwi, and hapū miss significant economic and social opportunities to benefit from the redress.
The reputational damage from such failures can also make it harder for the public sector to achieve the intent of settlements and improve the Crown's relationship with iwi and hapū.
There is still not enough visibility to Parliament and the public of these kinds of problems.
Although He Korowai Whakamana has led to some improvements, critical gaps remain. Crown entities, local authorities, and other non-core Crown agencies are not included in He Korowai Whakamana's scope, even though they are responsible for about one in five of all settlement commitments.
This means that these organisations have less access to advice or support than core Crown agencies. There is also no central monitoring of the status of their commitments.
The adequacy of core Crown agencies' internal systems for monitoring their commitments affects the quality of the status updates they report through Te Haeata. Core Crown agencies were also required to report on their progress in meeting settlement commitments in their 2023/24 annual reports. However, in my view, these reports did not provide enough detail about what progress had been made.
The lack of adequate monitoring means that there is not enough information for Ministers, Parliament, and the public to fully understand the risks associated with failing to provide redress, whether for an individual settlement or for settlements generally, or its impact on the Māori–Crown relationship.
There has been little effective accountability
The lack of adequate monitoring also means that Ministers, Parliament, and the public do not have enough information to hold public organisations to account for their settlement responsibilities.
Every Government has continued the settlement process since it began more than 30 years ago. Public organisations have often been directly involved in negotiating settlements, and a significant body of knowledge has been developed about individual settlements and the different types of redress that they provide. Historically, settlement legislation has received cross-party support.
Therefore, in my view, it is unacceptable that public organisations have not fully appreciated Treaty settlements' complexity or adequately recognised the importance of meeting their commitments consistently and promptly.
I consider that this reflects a tolerance, over many years, of a lack of accountability and transparency for a system that – aside from the significant public money invested in it – has constitutional importance.
What I recommend
This report focuses on the performance of eight public organisations. Collectively, these public organisations are responsible for about 70% of the total individual commitments recorded in Te Haeata.
However, my staff also spoke with other public organisations. These discussions indicated that the challenges that we identify in this report are common in the wider public sector.
Public organisations need to make a significant shift in the way they manage settlement commitments to realise the potential and purpose that Cabinet and Parliament stipulated in deeds of settlement and settlement Acts.
The public sector needs to understand that settlements are the basis for long-term relationships with iwi and hapū, and that it needs to manage them accordingly. As Te Arawhiti told its Minister in a 2020 briefing:
When settlement commitments are not upheld, any trust and confidence in the Crown built through the settlement process is jeopardised, and relationships between partners are undermined. In short, if the Crown does not honour its commitments, settlements risk not being full and final.
I have made nine recommendations aimed at strengthening the settlement system's leadership and improving its integrity.
This report's findings are based on evidence that my staff gathered from Te Arawhiti during 2024. In late 2024, the Ministers for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations and Māori Crown Relations decided to transfer responsibility for many of the functions of Te Arawhiti to Te Puni Kōkiri. These changes were implemented on 24 February 2025.
This included responsibility for monitoring and reporting on the Crown's fulfilment of settlement commitments. For this reason, I have directed several of my recommendations to Te Puni Kōkiri.
Te Puni Kōkiri has been given significant responsibilities that are crucial to strengthening the Crown's relationship with iwi and hapū. A critical step will be to build constructive relationships with post-settlement governance entities.
My Office intends to follow up on the progress that public organisations have made on my recommendations in due course.
Acknowledgements
I thank the many public sector staff who spoke to my audit team.
I also acknowledge and thank Te Kawerau Iwi Settlement Trust, Te Uru Taumatua Trust, and Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira for agreeing to participate in this work. I greatly appreciate their insights.
Nāku noa, nā
John Ryan
Controller and Auditor-General | Tumuaki o te Mana Arotake
10 April 2025
1: Te Arawhiti (2023), "Proactive release – He Korowai Whakamana – Enhancing oversight of Treaty settlement commitments", paragraph 12, at whakatau.govt.nz.
2: When we say "core Crown agencies" in this report, we mean public service departments and departmental agencies, the New Zealand Defence Force, and the New Zealand Police. When we say "non-core Crown agencies", we mean all other public organisations, including Crown entities, local authorities, State-owned enterprises, and Crown-owned companies.
3: Post-settlement governance entities are private trusts that act on behalf of iwi and hapū who have settlements. They are responsible for holding and managing the settlement redress transferred to the claimant group under the deed of settlement.