Jonathan Milne

I talked to Shane Jones, the Minister for Regional Development, about this a few months ago.

He says, actually, I'm getting together all the chiefs of all the public sector agencies that deal with the Chatham Islands just to add up how much the taxpayer is investing in the Chatham Islands because we don't even know the total number yet.

It's so much.

NZTA is probably one of the biggest funding agencies because it puts money into the roads there.

which is still in pretty terrible shape, I have to say.

I'm sorry I answered to you.

I asked the Minister that question on the ground in Chatham Islands, at Waitangi in the Chatham Islands a year ago this month.

I said, how much can the taxpayer invest to maintain this community when clearly the young people of this community are voting with their feet, they're leaving, and they're not coming back because there are no jobs, there are no houses to come back to.

They've got their own housing crisis there on the Chathams.

I asked the minister, and he was very adamant then, you know, we will not turn our back on a community like this.

We will continue to support them.

I asked him the same question again earlier this year, and he was a whole lot more equivocal.

And I think he's looking at them, and possibly, you know, he's heavying them a little bit.

to, as he sees it, get their house in order.

And he's kind of leaving open the question as to how long and how much the government can continue to support them.

And that's why we're now at a position where he's been having some very robust conversations with leadership of the islands, with the new mayor who was...

more or less elected on an anti-Shane Jones platform, and anti having to do compromise deals with the government, at least, platform.

Shane Jones wanted two key bodies on the island to merge, to amalgamate.

One of them is an independent endowed trust, the Chatham Islands Enterprise Trust.

It's actually relatively well off.