NZ First to campaign on scrapping Auckland's Independent Māori Statutory Board

New Zealand First has confirmed it will campaign on disestablishing the Independent Māori Statutory Board, describing the body as an unelected layer within Auckland Council that lacks democratic legitimacy, according to RNZ.

The IMSB was established under the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009 as part of the amalgamation architecture that created the supercity. Its statutory function is to assist Auckland Council in making decisions by promoting issues of significance for Māori in Tāmaki Makaurau. Members are appointed — not elected — through a process involving mana whenua and mataawaka representation. New Zealand First's objection centres on precisely that structure: the party argues that bodies influencing council decisions should be accountable through the ballot box, not appointment.

The policy sits within a broader suite of NZ First positions targeting what the party frames as co-governance arrangements — structures that, in its view, create parallel or preferential tracks in public institutions. Disestablishing the IMSB would require amending or repealing the 2009 legislation, a parliamentary process that could not be achieved by Auckland Council acting alone regardless of any mayoral view.

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown responded sharply, calling the policy "dumb racist stuff," a phrase that will ensure the debate runs well beyond local government circles heading into the campaign. Brown has generally positioned himself as a manager-mayor focused on infrastructure and finances rather than identity politics, which makes the directness of his language notable — though it also reflects that the IMSB sits in his operational environment in a way it doesn't for Wellington-based MPs.

The IMSB has been a recurring target for parties on the right since its creation. Arguments against it have followed a consistent line: that appointed bodies with a statutory role in council decision-making undermine the democratic chain of accountability. Defenders of the board, including successive Auckland Council administrations and iwi representatives, counter that the IMSB addresses a structural gap — that Māori interests in Tāmaki Makaurau were historically underrepresented in local government and that the board's appointment process has its own form of community accountability through mana whenua mandates.

None of that constitutional back-and-forth is new. What changes the calculus now is the electoral context. NZ First is a party that re-entered Parliament in 2023 after missing the threshold in 2020, and it is now building its 2026 policy platform. Policies targeting specific statutory bodies — concrete and nameable — tend to perform better in direct voter communication than abstract co-governance arguments. The IMSB offers NZ First a specific, bounded target rather than a diffuse critique.

Whether the policy lands as a vote-winner or a liability will depend partly on how it plays in Auckland, where the board actually operates, and partly on how other coalition partners — ACT and National — respond. Neither party has campaigned for the IMSB's abolition, though both have expressed scepticism about co-governance frameworks in various forms. A post-election negotiation in which NZ First holds the IMSB's fate as a bottom line would put National in an awkward position: opposing the policy risks losing NZ First's support, while backing it carries its own costs.

The 2009 Act can be amended by a simple majority in Parliament. If a right-leaning coalition with NZ First holds a majority after the 2026 election, the legislative pathway is straightforward. The political question is whether coalition partners will treat this as a priority or a concession.

For practitioners watching the campaign, the announcement signals that NZ First intends to make Māori-specific statutory architecture a live issue again — not just at the national level through Treaty Principles legislation, but now explicitly at the Auckland local government tier. The framing of the IMSB as "unelected" is a deliberate echo of arguments made against the Māori Health Authority before its disestablishment in 2024, suggesting a consistent rhetorical strategy the party intends to prosecute across multiple institutions.