Mataura Marae will receive $4 million from the Government's Regional Infrastructure Fund to finish a complex that the local community has been working towards since the 1980s.

Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson and Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka announced the grant on Friday 23 October, alongside $150,000 for Takitimu Marae in Wairoa.

The money will allow the marae to complete its wharekai, or dining hall, and its ablution facilities, and to carry out accessibility improvements, structural strengthening, drainage work and parking upgrades.

The ministers said that once complete, the marae would be able to expand its existing role in health services, social programmes, community events and local service delivery, and would act as a key piece of emergency infrastructure in a flood-prone part of Southland.

Mataura, on the banks of the Mataura River south of Gore, was badly flooded in February 2020, when residents were evacuated as the river rose.

Four decades of effort

Potaka said the grant would realise the vision of the Mataura and Districts Marae Charitable Trust, which has been working on the project since the 1980s.

The grant "will bring 40 years of public, philanthropic and community investment" to fruition, he said.

Patterson said the marae had a long record of service to whānau and the wider community. "Completing the marae will enhance its role as a focal point for strengthening cultural identity," he said.

The trust is chaired by Clifford Waihepe. The Otago Daily Times reported this week that the funding had been described as deeply meaningful for the marae community.

Marae as emergency hubs

The Government framed both grants as investments in marae as community hubs and places of refuge during emergencies.

The Wairoa grant will repair damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023, which flooded both the wharenui and the wharekai at Takitimu Marae. The wharenui was built as a memorial to Sir James Carroll, the Wairoa-born Māori political leader.

For Mataura, the emphasis is on finishing a building that has served the town for decades without ever being completed, and on making sure it can function when the river rises again.

The marae grant is the second large Regional Infrastructure Fund commitment to the town. The fund has also lent $10.8 million to Environment Southland towards an $18 million flood protection upgrade along the Mataura River through Mataura and Gore, involving rock walls, new and strengthened stopbanks and riverbed gravel works, on which physical work got under way in May. Environment Southland is contributing $7.2 million, and the work is intended to protect more than 7000 people, 1500 hectares of productive land and about $803 million worth of homes and businesses.

On the same day as the marae announcement, the fund also confirmed $6 million towards replacing the Monowai suspension bridge in western Southland.