South Auckland’s Ihumātao purchase funding finalised

The Government has fixed an error that led to the money approved to buy Ihumātao – the site of Aotearoa’s oldest settlement, taken from Māori by the Crown in the 1800s – being declared unlawful by the Auditor-General, Stuff reports. Initially, the government said it would use $29.9 million from the Land for Housing Programme to purchase the disputed land in South Auckland from Fletcher Building. But that budget was only approved for buying land for “the acquisition, construction and provision of KiwiBuild dwellings”.