In a last-minute coup for Ōpihi Whanaunga Kore Trustees, barrister and campaigner Max Harris, pictured, has offered his help as they head to the Environment Court next week to protect land they consider wāhi tapu from development.

Dr Harris, a Rhodes Scholar, barrister, political advocate and author, will present the group’s legal submission at an Environment Court hearing at REAP House on Tuesday.

He has offered his services pro bono (without fee) to the trustees, who have been trying to prevent the Ōpihi Block at Piripai being developed for housing for several years.

The current appeal is against a decision by Heritage New Zealand to approve an archaeological authority consent for a large residential development on the 26.9-hectare site.

Whakatāne District Council entered into a sale and purchase agreement with the developers in 2017 for the Ōpihi Block and granted resource consent for the 240-lot residential development in 2021.

The Ōpihi trustees group believe the area, situated at Piripai Spit, directly across the river from Whakatāne township, to be part of one of the most significant and oldest burial sites in New Zealand.

Dr Harris gained his PhD in constitutional law from the University of Oxford, and has worked as an economic policy adviser in the United Kingdom Parliament, as a judge’s clerk to former Chief Justice Sian Elias at the New Zealand Supreme Court, and in former Prime Minister Helen Clark’s executive office at the United Nations Development Programme in New York.

Author of The New Zealand Project (2017) on the state and future of New Zealand politics, he is also a New Zealand Herald and Stuff columnist.  

He was unwilling to discuss the case in depth in the lead-up to the hearing, so as not to cause any issues in court.

However, he told Local Democracy Reporting that after reviewing the background and having seen the site in question himself, it was very clear to hm that Ōpihi Whanaungakore was a place of “immense historical, cultural, and spiritual significance”.

“Following conversations and considering the evidence, there are real concerns that Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga misfired in granting an authority in this case, and I was very happy to attempt to progress these concerns in the Environment Court,” he said.

“It’s an honour and privilege to represent the Ōpihi Whanaungakore trustees in this important case.”