Invercargill City Council mana whenua representatives had their remuneration set for the triennium, more than the previous year, but less than the base level recommended for a councillor.
During the last council meeting of the year, the council’s governance and legal manager, Michael Morris, presented a report giving elected members options to set the level of honorarium for the mana whenua representatives for the 2022-25 council term.
He said he conducted a survey throughout the country but noticed there was a wide variance of councils’ practices.
With this in mind, he drafted three options — status quo of $34,667, the current Remuneration Authority base level for a councillor of $38,642 or a flat fee of $750 per council meeting/workshop/hearing.
Most councillors indicated they would vote for the first option to acknowledge the difference of workload between a councillor and a mana whenua representative.
An extensive debate took place which included a suggestion from deputy mayor Tom Campbell the amount should be adjusted in line with the consumer price index to reflect inflation and the rise of living costs.
That option would mean a salary of about $37,091 yearly, he said.
Cr Lesley Soper said she was "horrified" by the discussions, while Cr Alex Crackett made a plea for councillors to vote on the second option.
She said the Remuneration Authority did an extensive amount of work on determining the payment levels of councillors and she believed both mana whenua representatives fulfilled the workload of a base elected member.
"Gradually paying them substantially less for a similar workload to our base level is not in good faith."
However, Cr Ian Pottinger said their remuneration had "nothing to do with" the Remuneration Authority, saying this amount was conveniently chosen by the council last term.
Cr Campbell believed the "fourth" option was the most fair as councillors had to be part of more subcommittees and had a greater workload.
Cr Soper was part of 11 subcommittees, he said.
"The rules and duties are very similar. As said, there are no differences on how they arrived at this table, but the workload is clearly different."
With the exception of Crs Crackett, Soper and Darren Ludlow, all the present councillors voted in favour of the fourth option which was the previous remuneration readjusted with the CPI.
Cr Peter Kett abstained as he did not support any of the options presented.
