Waikato-Tainui, one of Aotearoa New Zealand's largest and wealthiest iwi (Māori tribal nations), has signed a letter of intent with Indigenous Business Australia to invest across the Tasman, an alliance representing more than A$4.4 billion in Indigenous-owned assets.

Key points

• "Thousands upon thousands of our families have intermarried with First Nations people"
• Their fathers worked New Zealand's mines. Their children work the Pilbara's.
• Why Tuku Morgan says a $4.4 billion alliance is about family first

For Tuku Morgan, Chair of Te Arataura, the executive management board for the Waikato-Tainui tribal iwi, the agreement rests on family.

"This is more than doing business," Mr Morgan told the Indigenous Business Review (a National Indigenous Times publication).

"Many thousands upon thousands of our families have intermarried with First Nations people, and that makes it even much more personal. We are inextricably bound together by lineage, and we share common values, of looking after the environment, of looking after each other."

The letters of intent, signed on Tuesday, commit the two organisations to investigating opportunities in managed investment funds and special purpose vehicles, including the Indigenous Prosperity Fund and the Indigenous Real Estate Investment Trust, along with Australia's mining and critical minerals sector and long-term infrastructure spanning energy, water, transport and logistics.

The timing follows the Māori Queen's call last year for a collective Māori investment fund. The Kotahitanga Fund, announced at a national economic summit in December with around NZ$100 million in seed capital pledged by iwi entities, is due to launch next month, Mr Morgan said.

"This is perfect timing. There has never been a better time than now for us to formalise a working relationship with an entity like IBA that provides scale, that provides infrastructural opportunity, in an important country like Australia," he said.

Mr Morgan said hundreds of Waikato-Tainui people work in the mines of the Pilbara in Western Australia, part of a larger Māori workforce spread across the country's resources sector.

"We have hundreds of our people working in those mines up in the Pilbara," he said. "All over Australia our people are working in mines. Our fathers worked in the mines in our country. Many of those ones have since left New Zealand to come to Australia for bigger and more purposeful opportunities."

His ambition for the partnership is ownership.

"The days of First Nations people, including Māori, standing on the sideline while big motorways are being built, while water treatment plants are being built, while power stations are being constructed, are over," he said.

"We have to be meaningful players, not just clipping the ticket, but actually substantial players. That means taking equity. That means ownership. And that certainly doesn't mean just working at the coalface. No, those days are gone."

Waikato-Tainui holds NZ$2.4 billion in assets, built over the three decades since the Waikato Raupatu settlement of 1995, in which the Crown compensated the iwi for colonial land confiscations with NZ$170 million in cash and land. Waikato-Tainui was the first iwi to reach a comprehensive settlement with the Crown, and the deal seeded a commercial arm, Tainui Group Holdings, whose portfolio now reaches across retail, hospitality, logistics and land development.

The iwi owns The Base in Hamilton, one of New Zealand's largest shopping centres, built on Te Rapa land returned under the settlement and co-owned with listed property group Kiwi Property. Its hotel interests include the five-star Te Arikinui Pullman at Auckland Airport, opened in late 2023 in partnership with Auckland Airport and operated by Accor, alongside the Novotel Auckland Airport and the ibis Tainui in Hamilton. The tribal estate also takes in office buildings, residential subdivisions, thousands of hectares of farmland and forestry, and fishing quota, and annual distributions to the iwi's 96,000 registered members run to about NZ$70 million.

The centrepiece is Ruakura Superhub, a 610 hectare logistics precinct on the eastern edge of Hamilton anchored by a 30 hectare inland port with rail connections to the ports of Auckland and Tauranga. In April last year Tainui Group Holdings signed a joint venture with Brookfield Asset Management to develop the precinct's next 70 hectare logistics stage, with a forecast completion value beyond NZ$1 billion. Every hectare remains in Waikato-Tainui ownership, with buildings developed on long-term ground leases.

"It's been a fabulous partnership with Brookfield," Mr Morgan said. "Fantastic."

That model, keeping the land and leveraging it, sits behind the experience the iwi believes it can offer Traditional Owners in Australia: decades of convincing banks to lend against communally owned land.

"You can demystify native title," Mr Morgan said. "So long as people understand the nuances of native title, it can be used to benefit the native owners, the First Nations people who own those lands."

"After years of working with banks, we're able to use multiply owned land as security for the things that we want to do on those lands. That's a major mind shift for banks and funds who don't understand our culture. The challenge for us is to take these people on a journey, to demystify Māori land, native title, and convince our partners that actually we can work with whatever the nuances are."

"It's been a long journey for us, and we've got some learnings. Those are the learnings that we will bring to the table when we're talking to First Nations mobs around Australia."

IBA Chairperson Darren Godwell said the agreement would result in a significant new source of Indigenous capital entering Australia from offshore.

"The interest from Waikato-Tainui shows how Indigenous-owned capital is being mobilised from outside Australia for investment alongside IBA into Australian Traditional Owners and First Nations investment opportunities," Mr Godwell said.

IBA Chief Executive Officer David Knights said IBA's role would be "to provide the institutional bridge between those investors, Traditional Owners and the broader Australian capital market."

Mr Morgan and Mr Godwell have already begun discussing prospective investments.

"I don't think that we will lack for opportunities," Mr Morgan said. "It's actually trying to be selective, making sure that we can pick the right ones."

He said any partner will be measured against the values that frame the agreement itself.

"There is no point in working with a partner who doesn't share the same values, of environmental protection, sustainability, of cultural understanding, of mutual respect. If we don't have those bottom lines done and dusted with a potential partner, there's no point. There is no future to that kind of superficial, tokenistic partnership."

"Everything that Waikato-Tainui has done, everything that we've owned, has come as a result of partnerships. Partnerships make the world go around. But you've got to pick the right partner."

A formal agreement between the two organisations is expected to be signed in Aotearoa in the coming months, and Mr Morgan said the horizon beyond that is measured in generations.

"We're in it for the long haul. This is a marathon. It has to be a long journey because we have to build momentum. We've got to trust each other, on the basis of shared values."

"The key message for me is that this is more than doing business with each other. This is about family. This is about leaving no one behind. It's about strengthening those bonds of kinship amongst our two peoples, and for me that is where the opportunity lies. I just think that tomorrow is going to be a fruitful and prosperous one. We've just got to get on the journey now."