The term 'social licence to operate' (SLO) is relatively new to public discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is increasingly being used in the aquaculture, dairy and mining industries due to their rapid intensification and consequent impact on natural resources. For Indigenous New Zealanders, Māori, there has been contestation about land and water usage since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Māori have struggled to have their voices recognised. However, since 1975, the country has been developing a process that recognises Māori rights. For Māori, the Treaty of Waitangi is the prime 'social licence'. In this paper, we contextualise the notion of SLO in light of the Treaty of Waitangi, specifically in the case of mineral extraction. We examine the extent to which Māori values, as expressed through Māori resource management plans, cultural impact assessments and submissions on legislation, articulate the Māori SLO and what, in turn, this offers the wider field of impact assessment.

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This article considers Indigenous people as political actors in their quest for sovereignty within the liberal democracies of Canada, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the USA (the CANZUS nations). I aim to show that, despite the structures of settler colonialism that both resist and then co-opt dissent, seeking sovereignty is, as political philosopher Jacques Ranciѐre outlines, an act of Indigenous politics that challenges and shifts these structures. While the fundamental colonising logic of the nation state does not change, through the Indigenous sovereign voice, a reframed understanding of democracy is revealed which in turn creates an enlarged space for Indigenous peoples.

This research examines trust at the government, industry, community nexus, as mediated by media, and its effect on social licence. We attempted to understand levels and importance of trust in New Zealand's natural resource sectors by examining ways of building, maintaining and assessing public trust in a post-truth society. We surveyed 128 New Zealand public and held a stakeholder forum about perceptions of trust in relation to natural resource sectors. The results provide indications of novel advances around trust and trustworthiness. Honesty was highlighted as the top influencer of trustworthiness and trust, and dishonesty as the top influencer of distrust. In contrast to other literature, we find a nuanced understanding of trust among respondents in relation to the mediarespondents distrusted actors cited in media more than the media outlet or platform itself. Further, our findings suggest there is no discernible change in trust levels in the post-truth era, in this context.