'I'd be delighted to leave': Councillor ejected during reserve land debate

Rotorua councillor Robert Lee was ejected from a council meeting today after a heated exchange with Mayor Tania Tapsell over the future administration of reserve land occupied by the Rotorua Thermal Holiday Park.

Lee was ordered to leave this morning’s meeting after questioning a proposal for the Rotorua Lakes Council to relinquish its role as administering body for the Crown-owned land.

Lee argued the council was giving up more than $200,000 in annual lease revenue, while supporters said the proposal concerned the administration of Crown land, not a council asset.

Councillors were considering a Department of Conservation request for the council to relinquish its role as administering body for the reserve.

That would pave the way for Pukeroa Oruawhata Trust, a Ngāti Whakaue entity, to take over, with the land retaining reserve status and public access arrangements. The council first backed this idea in 2017.

The decision followed the council’s approval last month of a similar transfer process for Tarawera Landing Reserve (Waitōharuru), while the Thermal Holiday Park proposal was deferred pending further discussion.

Representatives of the Pukeroa Oruawhata Trust at Wednesday's council meeting. Photo / Mathew Nash

“We are proposing to surrender nearly a quarter of a million dollars in revenue,” Lee told the meeting.

He questioned whether ratepayers would ultimately have to make up the shortfall from lease revenue generated by the holiday park.

Chief executive Andrew Moraes said the decision before councillors was not about who would ultimately administer the reserve, but whether the council should relinquish that responsibility.

He said future funding decisions would be considered through the council’s long-term planning process.

Lee remained unconvinced.

“The ratepayers will have to take up the slack,” he said.

Lee said councillors were likely to be grappling with double-digit rates increases through the long-term plan process.

“So don’t come running to me and say, ‘How are we going to get the rates down?’ ... because we keep on giving away our revenue to our mates,” Lee said.

Tapsell immediately challenged the comment and asked Lee to withdraw it and apologise.

Lee then questioned whether any elected members were beneficiaries of the Pukeroa Oruawhata Trust.

Tapsell responded by ordering Lee to leave the meeting, saying he had failed to act “within the order and also the respect that is expected of an elected member”.

Councillor Robert Lee packs up after being asked to leave a Rotorua Lakes Council meeting Wednesday. Photo / Mathew Nash

Lee said he would be “delighted to leave” as it was “chairmanship gone wrong”.

After he departed, Tapsell said there were “no conflicts of interest” and “certainly no financial conflicts”.

It was not the first clash between the pair. Lee had been threatened with ejection just minutes into the meeting, after questioning whether elected members connected to Ngāti Whakaue should declare a conflict of interest, a suggestion Tapsell rejected.

Supporters of the proposal argued the council was giving up an administrative role, not a council-owned asset.

Under the Reserves Act 1977, revenue generated from reserve leases must generally be applied to reserve purposes rather than treated as unrestricted income.

Councillor Ben Sandford said any lease income generated from reserve land was required to be reinvested into reserve purposes.

“So, it’s not a net loss to the community,” he said.

“It’s actually just a more specific investment into the reserves that are going to be administered.”

Councillors supporting the proposal said it would return administration of the reserve to mana whenua while protecting public access and its reserve status.

Councillor Merepeka Raukawa-Tait said she hoped the Department of Conservation (DoC) would pursue similar arrangements elsewhere, describing the move as “a growing up period for Aotearoa” and calling on government agencies to consider stepping back.

Councillor Te Rika Temara-Benfell said there was “absolutely no evidence” the decision would not benefit Rotorua, arguing iwi and Māori land entities had been significant contributors to the city’s economic, social and cultural prosperity.

The motion was carried after Lee’s removal.

Lee was later invited back into the meeting by Tapsell after the morning tea break.

Mathew Nash is a Local Democracy Reporting journalist based at the Rotorua Daily Post. He has previously written for SunLive, been a regular contributor to RNZ and was a football reporter in Britain for eight years.

– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.