Dear Office of Treaty Settlements and Takutai Moana—Te Tari Whakatau,

Please provide the records, assessments, analyses, correspondence and decision-making documents relating to Crown consideration of WAI 1896 in relation to overlapping settlement negotiations, mandate recognition processes, and territorial interests identified within the Statement of Claim.

Yours faithfully,

Mark

Tēnā koe Sonya,

Thank you for your email and for outlining the scope of my request.

After considering your suggestion, I do not wish to narrow the request.

The purpose of this OIA is not simply to locate a small number of documents concerning particular settlements. Rather, I am seeking to understand the complete administrative history of Wai 1896 over approximately eighteen years.

My request is intentionally broad because I am trying to establish:
how Wai 1896 has been considered across successive Treaty settlement processes;
what assessments, if any, were undertaken regarding overlapping interests;
how the Crown considered the descendants of Eruera Maihi Patuone throughout those processes;
what decisions were made regarding the appropriate settlement pathway for Wai 1896; and
whether those matters were considered consistently over time.

At present, I do not know where the relevant documents are located, or indeed whether they exist.
Narrowing the request risks excluding documents that may be central to understanding how Wai 1896 has been administered since it was filed in 2008.

Given the age of the claim and the importance of understanding the Crown's handling of it over that period, I consider the full scope of the request to be both reasonable and necessary.

If the volume of material requires additional time under the Official Information Act, I am prepared to accept that. My priority is completeness rather than speed.

If it assists with the practical administration of the request, I am happy for documents to be released progressively as they become available, rather than waiting until every document has been collated.

Ngā mihi,
Mark Thomson

Dear Wynne, Sonya,

Thank you for Te Tari Whakatau’s letter dated 23 July 2026 regarding OIA88720.

I acknowledge Te Tari Whakatau’s decision to partially refuse parts of my request under section 18(f) of the Official Information Act 1982, while indicating that Te Tari Whakatau will respond to parts one and six of the request and provide documents within the narrower categories set out in the letter.

For clarity, I do not accept that the broader request should be treated as unreasonable or unnecessary. The purpose of the request remains to understand the complete administrative history of Wai 1896 from 1 January 2008 to the present. The request concerns one identifiable Waitangi Tribunal claim, not multiple unrelated subjects. Its breadth reflects the fact that Wai 1896 has remained unresolved for approximately eighteen years while successive Treaty settlement, mandate and overlapping-interest processes have proceeded.

I continue to seek the full administrative and decision-making record concerning Wai 1896, including how the claim was assessed, administered, classified, considered, included, excluded, deferred or otherwise treated across the Crown’s Treaty settlement processes since 2008.

I note that Te Tari Whakatau has stated that responding to parts 2–5 of my request as framed would require substantial collation and research. However, that position reinforces the importance of the request rather than reducing it. If the relevant record is substantial, spread across multiple settlement processes and capable of numbering in the thousands of pages, that is precisely why the full record is necessary. Without it, I cannot determine whether Wai 1896 was substantively considered at the time relevant settlement and mandate decisions were made, or whether parts of the claim are now being retrospectively attributed to processes in which the descendants of Patuone had no clear participation or representation.

I also note that, before the partial refusal was made, I indicated that I was willing to accept a staged release and an extended timeframe. My priority is completeness, not speed. I remain willing to receive documents progressively, by chronology, workstream, settlement process, file category, or any other practical method that allows the complete administrative record to be produced without unreasonable operational disruption.

I therefore ask Te Tari Whakatau to reconsider whether a staged or phased release of the broader request can still be undertaken, rather than maintaining the partial refusal in its present form.

In the meantime, I request that Te Tari Whakatau proceed with the documents it has agreed to provide by 24 August 2026.

I also require clarification of the scope of the agreed release.

The 23 July letter states that Te Tari Whakatau will provide:

“Overlapping interests reports, briefings and correspondence relating to Ngāpuhi, Patuone and Wai 1896 overlapping interests with other groups in the Tāmaki/Hauraki/Kaipara/Mahurangi areas since 1 January 2008”; and

“Internal customary interests reports on Ngāpuhi or Patuone interests in the Tāmaki/Hauraki/Kaipara/Mahurangi areas since 1 January 2008.”

Please confirm that the phrase “other groups” includes, at minimum, the settlement processes and settlement entities specifically named in my original request, including:

* Te Roroa;
* Ngāti Pāoa;
* Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei;
* Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara;
* Ngāti Manuhiri;
* Te Kawerau ā Maki;
* Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki;
* Te Ākitai Waiohua;
* Ngāti Tamaoho;
* Tāmaki Makaurau Collective;
* Marutūāhu Collective; and
* Pare Hauraki Collective.

I particularly require express confirmation regarding Te Roroa and Ngāti Pāoa.

Previous material released by Te Tari Whakatau records Patuone’s Te Roroa connections and Ngāti Pāoa connections. It also appears to rely on the Ngāti Pāoa Claims Settlement Act 2025 in relation to aspects of Wai 1896. For that reason, I need confirmation that the agreed release will include all reports, briefings, correspondence, claimant-definition material, overlapping-interest assessments, customary-interest reports and internal advice concerning Wai 1896, Patuone, Te Roroa and Ngāti Pāoa.

This clarification is necessary because the concern is not only whether Te Tari Whakatau holds documents that mention Wai 1896 by name. The concern is whether Wai 1896, Patuone, and the descendants of Patuone were properly considered when relevant settlements and overlapping-interest decisions were made. Documents relating to Te Roroa and Ngāti Pāoa may be directly relevant even if they do not contain the phrase “Wai 1896” in their title or heading.

For clarity, I am not asking to narrow my request further. I am asking Te Tari Whakatau to confirm the scope of the material it has already agreed to process and release.

I also request that, when Te Tari Whakatau provides the release by 24 August 2026, it clearly identifies:

1. which parts of my original request each released document responds to;
2. whether any documents relating to Te Roroa and Wai 1896 / Patuone were located;
3. whether any documents relating to Ngāti Pāoa and Wai 1896 / Patuone were located;
4. whether any documents were located showing that Wai 1896 was considered during Te Roroa, Ngāti Pāoa or other overlapping settlement processes;
5. whether any documents were located showing that the descendants of Patuone were treated as represented, included, excluded or otherwise accounted for in those processes;
6. whether any documents were located explaining whether parts of Wai 1896 were considered settled, preserved, excluded or left for a later pathway; and
7. whether any relevant documents are being withheld, refused, treated as out of scope, or not held.

I reserve my position in relation to the partial refusal under section 18(f), including my right to seek or continue review by the Ombudsman. The partial release now proposed does not resolve my concern that the complete administrative history of Wai 1896 remains necessary to understand how the claim has been administered since 2008.

Please confirm:

* that the agreed release will proceed by 24 August 2026;
* whether Te Roroa and Ngāti Pāoa are expressly included within the phrase “other groups”; and
* whether Te Tari Whakatau will reconsider staged or phased release of the wider administrative record.

Ngā mihi,

Mark Thomson
Wai 1896 claimant