Electric Marae Review

Reframe reviewNarrative and framing

Reviewer role: reframing and narrative strategist. Read: BRIEF.md, marae_clean.txt (85 pages), gdoc_planning_notes.md. Date: 2026-10-06. For the Steering Rōpū and the Rewiring authors. Everything here is a proposal for the Rōpū to accept, adapt or reject.

1. What the draft is currently saying

As a reader experiences it, the draft says: "Electrification is cheaper, cleaner and more resilient, as our earlier reports showed for homes and farms, and here is the same case run again for marae." The structure is the Electric Homes template with a marae skin: background and mātauranga preface, then the generic electric opportunity, then a long "Benefits" chapter sorted by category (economic, environmental, resilience, mana motuhake, national), then a six-step how-to, then financing and policy. The reader meets the marae-specific truth of the report (the tangihanga spike, the tariff trap, the marae as refuge in the floods, fuel from the other side of the world) only after 20 to 60 pages of material they could have read in Electric Homes.

2. Frame diagnosis

(a) Technology and economics lead; the strongest material is buried. Section 3.2 restates efficiency ratios and price curves from the Homes report before the reader knows why marae are different. Meanwhile the lines that only this report can say sit in 4.1, 5.2.3, 6.3 and 6.4: "a single weekend of manaakitanga can set the tariff rate, and the bill, for months"; "Marae are not businesses"; "two-thirds of marae are exposed to at least one significant hazard"; "the very events that make marae so essential are also the events most likely to cut their power"; "controlled by others, priced by others, and shipped in from the other side of the world." These are the thesis. They should be on page one, not page 66.

(b) "Benefits" positions marae as recipients. A benefits chapter answers "what do marae get?" The foreword, 3.1 and 9.3 all say something stronger: marae already are infrastructure (refuge, feeding, civil defence, trade) and the energy system has never recognised them as such. The report should be written from the marae outward, with Government, retailers and installers as the parties that need to change, not as the givers of benefits.

(c) The mātauranga section is a preface, not the spine. Section 3.1 is the best writing in the report and it carries the organising ideas: people and atua are one; marae as refuge "when nature puts us back in our place"; marae as sites of tauhokohoko; "science asks us to test and prove, mātauranga asks us to watch, to listen, to remember." Right now it is a beautiful room off the hallway. It should be the hallway. Each later chapter can open from one of its ideas (reciprocity for the economics, refuge for resilience, kinship with Papatūānuku for emissions, on our own terms for sovereignty).

(d) The six profiles are an engineering grid. Smaller/Larger by Low/Medium/High is correct for the model and wrong for the reader. The planning tab wants marae to "see themselves somewhere in the report." Nobody recognises themselves as "Larger, Medium use." They recognise "staffed Monday to Friday with a kōhanga, full every second weekend." The three naming systems in the draft (Quiet/Active/Constant; Quiet/Average/Larger; Low/Medium/High) also conflate size with usage. See section 4 for fixes.

(e) The executive summary is one sentence. For the Iwi Chairs Forum audience, the executive summary is the report. It must carry the thesis, the headline number, the ask, and the voice. Draft provided in section 5.

(f) "Fully Electric Marae" purity versus "make your next decision an electric one." Section 5 defines the destination as a marae with no fossil fuels at all and says "we believe every marae in Aotearoa should have the opportunity to become a fully Electric Marae." Section 5.2.5 and 9.2 say the realistic path is one replacement at a time. Both are true, but the report leads with the purity definition and tucks the real ask at the end. For a volunteer committee with a dying califont, the purity frame reads as "not for us." Lead with the decision; keep "fully electric" as the horizon.

(g) Deficit versus strengths. The draft repeatedly describes marae as ageing, volunteer-led, under-funded, mis-sold to and mis-classified. All true, and all necessary for the policy case. But stacked together without the counterweight, the marae reads as a problem to be fixed. The counterweight exists in the text: marae mobilise "faster than centralised agencies and without waiting to be asked"; marae have fed hundreds at short notice for generations; marae already hold the land, the roof, the parking, the connection and the people. The resolution is to put the strength first and name the deficit as a mismatch between the marae and the system, not as a flaw in the marae. "The system was built for steady demand. Marae were built for manaakitanga." The problem belongs to the system.

(h) The title. Three observations for the Rōpū and a reo expert to rule on; I am not the authority here. - "Whakahiko Ngā Marae" reads as a verb followed by a plural noun with no object marker. The draft's own text in 3.1 uses "Whakahiko i te marae," which carries the particle "i" marking the object and is the form a reader of te reo would expect. If the plural ambition matters, "Whakahiko i ngā Marae" keeps both. - "Electric Marae" as the English title has the series value (Electric Homes, Electric Farms) and should stay as the subtitle or English half. It is a noun. The reo title is a verb. That is a good pairing: the action in te reo, the state in English. - Whatever is chosen, use it consistently. The draft uses "Whakahiko Ngā Marae" on the cover and in the acknowledgements, "Whakahiko i te marae" in 3.1, and "Electric Marae" everywhere else.

3. Three alternative frames

Frame A: "Built to hold everyone" (marae as the first infrastructure)

Thesis. Marae were Aotearoa's first public infrastructure: the place that feeds, shelters and holds a whole community at once. The energy system was never built for that load. Electrification is how we power marae for what they actually do.

Emotional journey. Recognition (that is my marae) → grievance with a target (the system does not fit us, and we are paying for it) → possibility (what an electric marae makes possible) → agency (our next decision) → mandate (what we ask of Government and iwi).

Section order with existing content mapped in. 1. Foreword (Marama Royal) and Steering Rōpū. 2. Executive summary (new, section 5 below). 3. He marae, he manaaki: what a marae is and does. Pulls 4 (Marae in Aotearoa), the refuge and tauhokohoko passages of 3.1, and the resilience narrative of 6.3 (Gabrielle, Te Tai Tokerau, Vaianu, two-thirds exposed). This chapter establishes marae as infrastructure before any kilowatt is mentioned. 4. Why the system does not fit marae. Pulls 4.1 (energy practices, "energy profiles differ"), 5.2.1 to 5.2.6 (fixed charges, irregular demand, tariff misclassification, gas, ageing buildings, navigation). The tangihanga load curve is the centrepiece figure. 5. Energy from your own whenua. Pulls 3.2 (the electric opportunity, condensed to a third), 6.4 (from the other side of the world), the "almost always sunny" map, and the "stacking savings" logic from 6.1.3. This is where efficiency, solar cost curves and the Aotearoa-made energy idea belong, framed as "the way out." 6. What an electric marae makes possible. The modelled results. Six profiles with human names (section 4), bills and emissions before and after, per-machine results, vehicles and taiao machines, the three case studies interleaved. Pulls 5 (definition), 5.3 to 5.5, 6.1.5 to 6.1.7, 6.2. 7. What it frees up. Pulls 6.1.3 (savings reinvested), 6.1.4 (kaupapa Māori installers, rangatahi trades, public charging, SMEs), 5.1 (papakāinga and kōhanga), 6.5 (contribution to Aotearoa). This is the rangatiratanga chapter: money and capability that stay in the hapū. 8. Your next decision. Pulls 7 (six steps, reorganised around the moment of replacement), 5.2.5 "overcoming this challenge," and the "find your marae" device. Includes a one-page "when X dies, choose Y" table. 9. What we are asking, and of whom. Pulls 8 (financing) and 9 (advocacy, direct support, investing), restructured as asks addressed to Government, to the Electricity Authority and retailers, to funders, to iwi and rūnanga, to installers. 10. Conclusion, glossary, methodology, references.

Headline. "Built to hold everyone. Powered like a corner shop." (Or, gentler: "Marae are infrastructure. It is time we powered them like it.")

Risks. "Infrastructure" is a Pākehā policy word and can flatten what a marae is; it needs the Rōpū's own language around it. The frame also leans on grievance against the system; if overplayed it reads as a complaint rather than a plan.

Frame B: "The tangihanga problem" (organised around the spike)

Thesis. Everything that is wrong with how marae are powered, and everything that electrification fixes, follows from one fact: a marae sits quiet for weeks and then runs flat out for three days. Size it, price it, fund it and build it for that, and the rest follows.

Emotional journey. Instant recognition (every committee has lived the tangihanga bill) → technical clarity (now I understand why the bill looks like that) → relief (there is a design that fits) → confidence (I know what to ask an installer and a retailer for).

Section order. 1 Foreword. 2 Executive summary. 3 Three days in fifth gear: the marae load profile (4.1, 5.2.2). 4 What the spike costs you today: fixed charges, demand charges, three-phase, misclassification, mis-sized systems, generators that cannot be refuelled (5.2.1, 5.2.3, 5.2.4, 5.2.6). 5 What the spike means when the lights go out: resilience (6.3, 6.4). 6 Designing for the spike: grid-connected solar and batteries sized for the quiet months, electric machines that run on your own generation, tariffs that fit (5, 5.2.2 "overcoming," 6.1.3, 3.2 condensed). 7 Six marae, six spikes: the profiles and modelled results (5.3 to 5.5, 6.1.5, 6.2). 8 One machine at a time (7, 5.2.5). 9 Fixing the rules for the spike: the asks (8, 9). 10 Mātauranga and the longer view (3.1, moved to close rather than open, as the lens that makes sense of all of it).

Headline. "A single weekend of manaakitanga should not set the bill for months."

Risks. It is a brilliant organising insight for committees and for the Electricity Authority, but it is narrow for the Iwi Chairs Forum and for funders, who need the sovereignty and resilience story up front. It also makes tangihanga the recurring motif of the whole report, which the Rōpū may feel is not the right tone for the cover and headline, even if it is the right example inside.

Frame C: "From the other side of the world to your own whenua" (sovereignty first)

Thesis. The fuel a marae burns to care for its people is priced by others and shipped from the other side of the world. The energy it could run on falls on its own roof. Electrification is rangatiratanga over the thing that makes manaakitanga possible.

Emotional journey. Dependency named (the LPG bottle, the tanker count, Hormuz) → the alternative seen (your own whenua, your own sun) → the economics that prove it is not a dream → the plan → the asks.

Section order. 1 Foreword. 2 Executive summary. 3 Mātauranga, atua and energy (3.1 in full, as the opening argument). 4 Controlled by others: imported fuel, gas decline, rising prices (6.4, 5.2.4, 5.2.1). 5 Made on your whenua: the electric opportunity (3.2, 6.1.1, 6.1.3). 6 What it means for a marae: profiles and results (5, 5.3 to 5.5, 6.1.5 to 6.2). 7 Holding your own power: resilience (6.3). 8 What stays in the hapū: savings, jobs, trade, energy precincts (6.1.3, 6.1.4, 5.1, 6.5, 9.3). 9 Your next decision (7). 10 What we are asking (8, 9).

Headline. "Energy from your own whenua."

Risks. It is the frame most aligned with the foreword and with the Iwi Chairs Forum, but it is the least specific to marae; the same argument is made in Rewiring's national work. It can drift into a national energy-security essay and lose the committee reader. It also puts the geopolitics (Ukraine, Hormuz) higher than the marae's own lived experience.

Recommendation: Frame A, with the spike (B) as its engine and sovereignty (C) as its closing chord

Frame A is the only one of the three that is about marae and nothing else. It starts where the foreword starts (marae as the beating heart, as refuge) and where 3.1 starts (marae as the place of reciprocity, caring and mobilisation). It gives the deficit material a target that is not the marae: the system was built for steady demand and the marae was built for manaakitanga. It gives the benefits chapter a verb ("what an electric marae makes possible") and the policy chapter an addressee ("what we are asking, and of whom"). It can carry Frame B whole, as chapter 4 and as the centrepiece figure, and it ends on Frame C's note in the "what it frees up" and "asks" chapters, which is where the Iwi Chairs Forum and Government readers will be when they finish.

The one change I would make to Frame A as sketched: open chapter 3 with 3.1's own words, not with Tapsell's definition of marae. Let the Māori authors define the marae in their voice first and the academic citation support it second.

4. The six profiles, reframed

Keep the model mapping exactly: Smaller/Larger footprint by Low/Medium/High use, each with North Island and South Island heating. Change only how they are named and described. Name them by the rhythm of the week, because that is what a committee knows without looking at a bill.

Notes for the authors. - The names are deliberately English and descriptive. If the Rōpū wants reo names, they should come from the Rōpū, and ideally be tested with a few committees for instant recognition. - Every description should end with the same reminder: "and three days flat out when there is a tangi." That is the shared truth across all six and it stops the High-use profiles from reading as "the real marae" and the Low-use ones as the poor cousins. - Drop the three competing label sets (Quiet/Active/Constant, Quiet/Average/Larger, Low/Medium/High). "Average marae" and "Larger marae" in 6.1.6 are a size and a usage label mixed together and will confuse the charts. - Section 5.5.3.1 to 5.5.3.3 (Low/Medium/High usage descriptions) currently sit under "Larger marae" but describe usage in general. Move them to the profile introduction and make them the six descriptions above. - The profile figure asked for ("x axis of usage vs y axis of footprint") should plot the six names, not the six codes, with a dotted line through the middle labelled "Where is yours?"

"Find your marae" device (three questions, on one page, before the profiles).

1. How many days in a normal week is someone working, learning or being cared for on your marae? None or one: Low. Two or three: Medium. Four or more: High.
2. How big is your kitchen's biggest job? One commercial hob and a wharekai that seats up to around 100: Smaller. Four or more hobs, three-phase power, feeds several hundred: Larger. (Authors to set the cut-off that matches the model's 200 and 400 square metre wharekai.)
3. Which benchmark region is closest to your winter? Tāmaki Makaurau (mild), Waikato (average), Waitaha (cold). Colder means more heating and more to save.

Then: "Turn to your marae on page X. If you sit between two, read both; your savings will be between them."

5. Executive summary (recommended frame)

Full version (about 420 words)

Whakahiko i te Marae: Electric Marae

For as long as there have been marae, they have done the work that the rest of Aotearoa later built institutions to do. They feed hundreds at a day's notice. They house the grieving and the travelling. When the river rises or the lines come down, they open their doors before anyone asks. Marae were our first infrastructure of care, and they still are.

The energy system has never been built for that. It is built for steady demand: a home that uses a little every day, a business that uses a lot every day. A marae does neither. It sits quiet for weeks and then runs in fifth gear for three days of manaakitanga. The system punishes that rhythm. Marae pay commercial fixed charges for capacity they use a handful of days a month. A single tangihanga can set the demand tariff for months. Installers size systems for households. Retailers put marae on the wrong plans and nobody notices for years. And the fuel that keeps the wharekai cooking and the water hot is priced on the other side of the world and shipped here in a chain that breaks more often each year.

Two-thirds of marae are exposed to at least one significant natural hazard. The same events that make a marae essential are the events most likely to cut its power and its gas.

This report shows that an electric marae, one that heats, cooks and heats water with efficient electric machines, generates its own energy from its own roof and stores it on site while staying connected to the grid, fits the marae rhythm in a way fossil fuels never could. Across six composite marae, from the weekend marae to the seven-day marae, in the North and South Islands, electrification saves between [$X] and [$Y] a year on energy bills, cuts energy emissions by around [Z] per cent, and keeps the wharenui warm and the wharekai cooking when the grid is down. For the machines marae already own, the electric replacement is cheaper over its life in [almost every] case we modelled.

That saving is not the point. It is what the saving makes possible: money that stays in the hapū for reo, for kaumātua, for the roof that has waited ten years; rangatahi trained in the trades that build it; a marae that can share power with its papakāinga and charge the whānau's cars from its own sun.

None of this needs to happen at once. The most powerful thing any marae can do is make its next decision an electric one: when the califont, the hob, the heater or the van reaches the end of its life, choose the electric option. Made consistently, those decisions electrify a marae without a single large outlay.

What marae cannot do alone is change the rules. We ask Government to fund the machines and not just the roof, to sustain the platforms that have already electrified more than sixty marae, and to set fair prices for the power marae export and share. We ask the regulators to recognise that marae are not businesses. We ask iwi and rūnanga to bring their marae's next decisions forward, and, where they can, to own a stake in the system that serves them.

Marae have always held everyone. It is time the energy system held marae.

60-word version

Marae were Aotearoa's first infrastructure of care, and the energy system was never built for them. Electrification fits the marae rhythm: quiet for weeks, full for days. Across six composite marae it saves [$X to $Y] a year, cuts emissions and keeps the lights on in a crisis. The ask: make your next decision electric, and change the rules so every marae can.

One-sentence version

Marae have always held everyone; an electric marae, powered from its own whenua and priced for what it actually does, is how the energy system finally holds marae.

6. Section-level reframes

• Foreword. Keep as is. It already carries Frame A. Consider pulling one sentence ("During times of crisis, marae have always stepped forward") onto the cover or contents page as the epigraph.
• Executive summary. Replace the single sentence with section 5 above once the numbers land.
• Introduction. Cut by half. Remove the recap of previous Rewiring reports to a footnote. Open with the marae, not with "Energy affordability, energy hardship, climate resilience and energy security are increasingly important issues."
• 3.1 Mātauranga. Promote to the opening chapter and let its ideas title the later chapters. Also recover the lost line: "Put simply, running the machines that power your…" on page 7 is unfinished and the thought deserves finishing in this voice.
• 3.2 The electric opportunity. Rename "Energy from your own whenua" and cut to a third. Keep only what a marae reader needs: efficiency means less energy for the same manaakitanga; solar on your own roof is now the cheapest energy in the country; prices for everything else are rising. Move the full cost-curve material to an appendix or to the Rewiring website.
• 4 Marae in Aotearoa and 4.1. Merge into "He marae, he manaaki" and "Why the system does not fit marae." The page 16 passage on energy profiles is the heart of the report and should be a full-page spread with the load-curve figure.
• 5 What is an Electric Marae. Rename "What an electric marae makes possible" and lead with the horizon as a picture (the labelled watercolour), then state plainly: you do not have to get there in one step.
• 5.2 Current energy challenges. Rename "Why the system does not fit marae." Each sub-heading currently ends with "Overcoming this challenge," several empty. Either fill all six or restructure as "The problem / What fixes it" pairs so the empties are not visible.
• 5.3 to 5.5 Profiles. Rename "Find your marae." Apply section 4.
• 6.1 Economic benefits. Rename "What it costs, what it saves, what it frees up." Lead with 6.1.3 (stacking) and the reinvestment paragraph, then the per-profile charts, then machines. The ATV and chainsaw material is good but long; box it as "Taiao machines."
• 6.2 Environmental benefits. Rename "Kaitiakitanga: what you stop burning." Lead with the sentence about the diesel truck that delivers the gas bottles; it is the most concrete image in the chapter. Keep embodied emissions and circularity as a boxed response to the common objection.
• 6.3 Resilience. Rename "When the lines come down" and move most of it forward into chapter 3 or 4 of Frame A. Keep the "almost always sunny" map here.
• 6.4 Mana motuhake. Rename "From the other side of the world to your own whenua." Move it to open chapter 5 of Frame A, before the economics, so the economics read as the proof of a sovereignty argument rather than the argument itself.
• 6.5 Contribution to Aotearoa. Rename "What marae give the country." Keep short, and keep the order stated in the bullets: for marae first, byproducts for Aotearoa second.
• 7 Getting started. Rename "Your next decision." Reorganise the six steps around the moment of replacement, and add a one-page table: when this dies, choose this, ask for this.
• 8 Financing. Fold into chapter 9. The pre- and post-settlement split is useful and should stay.
• 9 How do we make this happen. Rename "What we are asking, and of whom," and address each ask to a named party. 9.3 (investing in the system) is a strong close; end the body of the report there.
• 10 Conclusion. Write it as a return to the foreword's register, one page, ending on the next decision.

7. Cultural framing checks

Where the draft risks speaking over marae and iwi. - The six-step "Getting started" chapter reads as consultant prose ("leadership ensures that every technical decision remains grounded in the wider kaupapa"). Marae committees have run projects for generations. Reframe as "what marae that have done this told us," drawing on the case studies, rather than as instruction. - "Marae are not always well served" and "marae committee needing more specialist knowledge than they can realistically be expected to have" are true but place the limitation on the committee. Restate as the system's failure to explain itself. - "We believe every marae in Aotearoa should have the opportunity" (5): who is "we"? See voice note below. - The vehicles, ATV and chainsaw sections use product names (Polaris, Honda, HDK Turfman) that read as a buyer's guide. Keep the comparisons but keep the brand detail in figures and footnotes, not in the body of a Rōpū-authored report.

Where whakataukī or kōrero from the Steering Rōpū could anchor sections (invite, do not invent). - Chapter opener for "He marae, he manaaki": a kōrero from a Rōpū member on what their marae did in Gabrielle, the January 2026 floods or Vaianu. The report currently cites Vercoe and Awatere; a first-person account from the Rōpū would carry more weight than either. - "Why the system does not fit marae": a committee member's own words about the bill after a tangi. The draft's line "a single weekend of manaakitanga can set the tariff" is strong, but a real voice saying it is stronger. - "Energy from your own whenua": the Rōpū may have a whakataukī about Tama-nui-te-rā or about the land providing that they would want here. Ask; do not supply one. - "Your next decision": a kaumātua or committee chair from one of the case study marae on the moment they chose the heat pump or the induction hob. - Conclusion: Marama Royal or the Rōpū chair, closing in their voice.

"We / our" voice. The draft has two authors inside it. Section 3.1 says "our rangatira," "our narratives," "our marae," and means Māori. Section 5.2.2 says "makes Rewiring Aotearoa a strong proponent" and section 6.1.1 says "our own national audit," and means Rewiring. Both voices are legitimate but the reader cannot always tell who is speaking, and in a report with a Māori Steering Rōpū, that ambiguity is a risk. Two options: (1) make the Rōpū the "we" of the whole report and name Rewiring in the third person for its modelling and prior work; or (2) keep a plural "we" but state in the acknowledgements who holds the pen and who holds the kaupapa. Option 1 is cleaner and more honest to the Iwi Chairs Forum audience. Either way, the mātauranga chapter should carry its author's name, because that voice is personal and should be credited.

"Marae are not businesses" versus "marae as sites of tauhokohoko." Section 5.2.3 says marae are not businesses; section 3.1 and 6.1.4 say marae have always been places of trade and exchange and should be again. These are not in conflict, but the draft does not say why, so a sceptical reader (a retailer, a Treasury analyst) will spot it. The resolution is already in 3.1: tauhokohoko is exchange "grounded in kinship and reciprocity," not commerce for its own sake. Say it in one sentence in 5.2.3: "Marae trade, host, feed and employ, and have always done so, but they do it as an act of manaakitanga, not to return a profit to shareholders. A tariff that treats a tangihanga as a factory shift has misunderstood what it is looking at." That turns an apparent contradiction into the report's sharpest policy point: the classification should follow the purpose, not the kilowatts.

Two smaller checks. - The Tapsell quotation and the Vercoe and Awatere citations are the only Māori scholarship cited by name. If the Rōpū has other sources it wants acknowledged (hapū histories, iwi climate strategies, the Electrification Iwi Leaders Group's own papers), the references chapter is empty and ready for them. - "Papatūānuku" and "Tāwhirimātea" appear with inconsistent macrons and capitalisation across sections (Papatuanuku on page 8, papatūānuku on page 18). A reo proofread before the Forum.

Top-line recommendation: adopt Frame A ("Built to hold everyone"), move the resilience and sovereignty material to the front, rename the six profiles by the rhythm of the week, and replace the executive summary with the draft in section 5 once Jenny's numbers are in.

Copy reviewCopy edit, structure, te reo, numbers

Reviewer role: copy editor. Date: 2026-10-06. Source: marae_clean.txt (85 pages, PDF text extraction). Page numbers below are PDF pages as marked in the extract.

How to read this: Section 1 is structural (what is missing, misnumbered or in the wrong place). Section 2 is line-level (quote, page, fix). Section 3 is te reo Māori and macrons. Section 4 is numbers and claims. Section 5 is tone and a proposed house style. Section 6 is the ranked top 10. Two sample rewrites sit at the end.

Overall state: the argument and the voice of the best sections (3.1, 4, 5.2, 6.1.1 to 6.1.4, 6.3, 6.4, 9) are strong and publishable with a line edit. Roughly 40 of 85 pages are empty chart pages, skeleton case studies, author notes or placeholders. The report is not yet at a stage where a full line edit pays off, so this review concentrates on the things that must be resolved before a Steering Rōpū read, plus an exhaustive list of what is already fixable.

1. Structure and completeness

1.1 Placeholders, author notes and empty sections

Counts for the tracker: 6 "[description]", 5 watercolour placeholders, 4 "Figure X" + 1 "Figure Y", 2 "Section X", 5 "(REF)" + 1 "(Ref)" + 1 "(ref)" + 1 "(source)", 2 "asdsd", 3 skeleton case studies, roughly 30 empty chart slots.

1.2 Heading numbering problems

• "4.1.0.1" (p16) should be 4.2.
• "5.3.0.0.0.1. Table X" (TOC only) is a table caption styled as a heading. Captions should not carry heading styles.
• "5.4. Smaller marae Xm2 - Xm2" (p27): the size range is unwritten.
• TOC shows "6.1.6.9.1 Ride on Mowers … 47" but the body uses "6.1.6.6.1" (p48). The TOC is stale.
• "6.2. 2 Environmental benefits", "6.3. 3 Resilience", "6.4. 4 Mana Motuhake", "6.5. 5 Contribution" (TOC): manual numbers typed into auto-numbered headings. Strip the manual digits.
• "6.2.3.6.1. Ride on Mowers" then an unnumbered "All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs)" (p64). Chainsaws has no emissions counterpart.
• "6.3.0.1" and "6.3.0.2" (p67) should be 6.3.1 and 6.3.2, but "6.3.1 Case study: Whakatu Marae" (p68) already uses 6.3.1. Make the case study 6.3.3, or lift all case studies into a separate numbering (Case study A, B, C).
• "7.0.1 How to begin" and "7.0.2 Step 1" to "7.0.7 Step 6" (p71 to 74): use 7.1 Introduction, 7.2 Step 1 … 7.7 Step 6, or drop the decimal numbers and keep "Step 1" to "Step 6" as the visible labels.
• Figures are numbered X, X, X, 5, X, Y, 1, 2, 34, 60. Renumber 1 to n in reading order. Tables: Table X (TOC) vs Table 1 (body); the benchmark-region table (p26) is unnumbered.
• Five levels of numbering (6.1.6.6.3) is too deep for a public report. Recommend capping at three levels (6.1.6) and using unnumbered bold subheads below that.
• Heading case is mixed: "Fixed Grid Electricity Costs and Volatility of Generation and Supply" (title case) vs "Locked in to fossil fuels" (sentence case). Use sentence case throughout.
• Several headings are run into the first line of body text in the extract (5.2.1, 5.2.6, 6.1.6.1, 6.1.6.2, 6.2.1, 6.2.5.1). Check these are genuine heading paragraphs in the source, not inline bold.

1.3 The misplaced "5.5.3.1 Low Marae Usage" block (p28 to 29)

5.5.3.1 Low Marae Usage, 5.5.3.2 Medium Marae Usage and 5.5.3.3 High Marae Usage sit under "5.5.3 High usage" (which itself has "[description]"). They are clearly the generic descriptions of the three usage levels, and they also mix in size cues ("Small, used sparingly"; "Pan-iwi, multiple buildings"). Move them up to sit directly under 5.3 as "5.3.1 How we define usage" (three short paragraphs, one per level), before the Smaller/Larger split. Then 5.4.x and 5.5.x each carry a profile-specific "[description]" that references the usage definition rather than repeating it.

1.4 Profile naming inconsistency

Two problems beyond naming. First, "Larger marae" is used as a size (5.5) and as a usage level (p47, 6.2.2.3), which makes it impossible to tell what the third emissions chart shows. Second, Table 1 defines six profiles as 2 sizes x 3 usage levels, but the chart sections define six as 3 usage levels x 2 islands with no size axis. These are different sets of six. The modelling team needs to confirm which set the charts actually present (brief says Smaller/Larger x Low/Medium/High, with NI vs SI heating as a variant, which would be twelve charts per benefit, not six).

1.5 Proposed canonical section outline

Foreword (Marama Royal)
Acknowledgements and Steering Rōpū
About Rewiring Aotearoa
Contents
1  Executive summary (one page: the case, the numbers, the ask)
2  Introduction
3  Background and context
   3.1  Mātauranga Māori and energy
   3.2  The electric opportunity: Aotearoa-made energy
4  Marae in Aotearoa
   4.1  Energy practices on marae
   4.2  Why marae energy profiles differ
5  What is a fully Electric Marae?
   5.1  Other buildings on marae
   5.2  Current energy challenges for marae (5.2.1 to 5.2.6, each with "How marae can respond")
   5.3  The six marae profiles used in this report
        5.3.1  How we define usage (Quiet / Active / Busy)
        5.3.2  How we define size (Smaller / Larger)
        5.3.3  Benchmark regions (Table 2)
   5.4  Smaller marae: Quiet, Active, Busy
   5.5  Larger marae: Quiet, Active, Busy
6  Benefits
   6.1  Economic benefits (6.1.1 upfront vs running; 6.1.2 lock-in; 6.1.3 stacking; 6.1.4 wider opportunities; 6.1.5 profile results; 6.1.6 per-machine results: space heating, water heating, cooktops, solar and batteries, vehicles, other machines)
        Case study: Ōnuku Marae
   6.2  Environmental benefits (6.2.1 emissions; 6.2.2 profile results; 6.2.3 per-machine results; 6.2.4 embodied emissions and circularity; 6.2.5 air quality outdoor and indoor)
        Case study: [name]
   6.3  Resilience benefits (6.3.1 marae as emergency hubs; 6.3.2 solar and batteries in an outage; 6.3.3 it is almost always sunny; 6.3.4 mitigation and adaptation)
        Case study: Whakatū Marae
   6.4  Mana motuhake through energy sovereignty
   6.5  Contribution to the national energy system
7  Getting started: six steps (7.1 to 7.6)
8  Financing (8.1 what exists; 8.2 what needs to exist; 8.3 policy)
9  How do we make this happen? (9.1 advocacy; 9.2 direct support; 9.3 investing)
10 Conclusion: the Electric Marae
Glossary
Appendix 1  Methodology and assumptions
References

Dropped from the public document: section 14 (working list of companion resources, unless rewritten as "Companion resources") and section 15 (internal to-do list). Case studies are pulled out of the decimal numbering so they can be designed as feature spreads.

1.6 Canonical naming for the six profiles

Recommend two axes with vocabulary that cannot be confused with each other:

• Size: Smaller marae / Larger marae (footprint, m², heaters, hobs, roof area).
• Usage: Quiet / Active / Busy (how many days a week the buildings run, and how many overnights).

Profile names: "Smaller Quiet marae", "Smaller Active marae", "Smaller Busy marae", "Larger Quiet marae", "Larger Active marae", "Larger Busy marae". Each chart is then labelled by profile plus "North Island" or "South Island" conditions.

Why not the alternatives: "Average" implies a statistical mean and clashes with the national-average assumptions; "Larger" as a usage word collides with the size axis; "Constant use" does not work as an adjective in a label; "Low/Medium/High use" is fine but flat, and Table 1 can keep those words in a sub-row ("Quiet (low use)") so the modelling labels still map. If the team prefers Low/Medium/High everywhere, that is acceptable as long as it is used everywhere, including chart titles and the TOC.

2. Line-level errors

Exact text, page, fix. Trivial mechanical errors are grouped at the end of each block.

2.1 Typos and spelling

2.2 Grammar, agreement and broken sentences

2.3 Duplicated or near-duplicated text

• p8, Manaakitanga paragraph: "are consistently the right temperature to ensure comfort and wellbeing for all whānau and manuhiri, healthy, and comfortable for all whānau and manuhiri." Two drafts merged. Use: "are consistently warm, healthy and comfortable for all whānau and manuhiri."
• p16 and p22: the "marae at the end of a long rural road … single, thin transmission line … blackouts happen more often" passage appears twice almost verbatim (4.1 and 5.2.5). Keep one, cross-reference the other.
• p18: "Electricity prices in Aotearoa have risen sharply in recent years" then two paragraphs later "Over the past couple of years, lectricity prices have risen sharply across the board". Merge.
• p18: "a fixed daily charge is a direct and unavoidable charge". "unavoidable cost".
• p11: "technological, regulatory, structural, market and market force reasons". Drop one "market".
• p64: "We are already seeing this here in Aotearoa, with Counties Energy already partnering". Drop one "already".
• p29 and p39/40: the "Looking at the full picture over time (installation, running costs, and emissions over a 15-year lifetime) … comes out as the lower-cost, lower-emissions option" sentence is reused for space heating and water heating. Fine as a deliberate refrain, but p40 lost its parentheses: "Looking at the full picture over time installation, running costs, and emissions over a 15-year lifetime heat pump water heating".
• p12 (V2G) and p66 ("two way charging"): same concept introduced twice with different names.

2.4 Punctuation and mechanics (grouped)

• Dashes: 17 spaced en dashes used as parenthetical dashes and one em dash (p12, in the same sentence as an en dash). House style is no em dashes. Replace parenthetical dashes with commas, brackets or a new sentence. Keep an unspaced en dash only for ranges in tables.
• Hyphens as dashes: p74 "high-demand activities - such as water heating, laundry, and vehicle charging - with". Use commas.
• "x" multipliers in prose: p13 "6x", "13x", "16x". Spell out: "six times", "13 times", "16 times".
• Symbols in prose: p13 ">85%", p67 "(<10% average generation)". "more than 85%", "below 10% of average generation".
• Scare quotes: p24 "to "gain"", p67 "A common "critique"", p29 ""more electric"", p29 ""Ready"". Drop the quotes or (for "Ready") explain that it is a category from the machine audit.
• Serial comma is inconsistent ("energy, climate, and electrification research" p3 vs "lights, fridges and general electricity" p15). Pick one.
• p48 "6240 hours a year" and p65 "760,000 tonnes": use thousands separators consistently ("6,240").
• p19 "$0.26–$0.40/kWh" vs p26 "25 c/kWh" vs p30 "8 to 17 cents per kWh". One format: "26 to 40 cents per kWh" in prose, "c/kWh" in tables.
• Inch mark: p51 "18-20" size bracket" uses a straight double quote for inches. Use "450 mm (18 inch)" once, then mm.
• p25 Table 1: "2 of 4 burners on all 2 cooktops" (ambiguous) and "Whare nui" / "Whare Kai" / "Marae" capitalised as proper nouns. "Indoor space 132 m² of Marae" presumably means wharenui.
• p1 and page footers: the "fi" ligature appears in "benefits", "profiles", "financing" throughout. This is a font export artefact; check the final PDF embeds the ligature glyph or the web version will show boxes.

2.5 Cross-reference errors

• p42 "These are explored further in Section 3." Indoor air quality is 6.2.5.2.
• p77 "Multiple Trading Relationships, as noted earlier in this report". It is not noted anywhere earlier; the only other mention is the internal note "MTRS - Mechanisms" on p85. Introduce MTRs in 5.2.3 or 6.5.
• p25 "(Section X)" twice; p44 "refer to resilience below"; p12 "V2G" vs p66 "two way charging"; p24 "outlined at the end of the report" (appendix empty).
• Figure 1 (p48, ATV cost) and Figure 2 (p50) are the only numbered figures with charts; Figure 5, 34 and 60 are orphans. Renumber all figures in order of appearance once the charts are placed.

3. Te reo Māori and macron consistency

Italics and glossing. Do not italicise te reo Māori. It is an official language of Aotearoa New Zealand and current practice at RNZ, Te Puni Kōkiri, Stats NZ and in Rewiring's own reports is roman type. Gloss on first use only for terms a Pākehā government reader is unlikely to know: tauhokohoko (p10 glosses it, good), te ira tangata (p9), te ao hurihuri (p18), hapori (p66), whare tupuna (p15 glosses, good), paepae (p15 glosses, good), wahie, kauta (p15 does not gloss), māra kai, kaimahi (p16, unglossed), rangatahi (p32), hapori Māori. Do not gloss marae, whānau, hapū, iwi, kai, hui, mana, kaupapa, tangihanga, manaakitanga, kaitiakitanga, rangatiratanga, tikanga in running text; they belong in the glossary instead.

Glossary (section 11, currently empty) should contain two lists. Te reo: hapū, hapori, hui, iwi, kai, kaimahi, kaitiaki, kaitiakitanga, kauta, kaumātua, kaupapa, koha, kōhanga reo, kura, mana motuhake, manaakitanga, manuhiri, māra kai, marae ātea, mātauranga Māori, motu, paepae, papakāinga, pōwhiri, pūrākau, rangatahi, rangatira, rangatiratanga, rohe, rūnanga, tamariki, tangihanga, tauhokohoko, te ao hurihuri, te taiao, tikanga, tukutuku, tūpuna, wahie, wānanga, whakapapa, whānau, whanaungatanga, wharekai, wharenui, wharepaku, whenua. Technical: califont, COP (coefficient of performance), demand charge, distributed energy, dry year, embodied emissions, EV, GXP (grid exit point), heat pump, hot water heat pump, induction cooktop, kW / kWh / MWh, lines charges, LPG, MTRs (multiple trading relationships), peer-to-peer trading, reticulated gas, resistance heater, single-phase / three-phase, time-of-use pricing, V2G (vehicle-to-grid, two-way charging).

4. Numbers and claims consistency

4.1 Internal contradictions

4.2 Unsupported superlatives and strong claims

• "solar is now the cheapest form of energy per kWh" (p11), "rooftop solar as the cheapest form of energy available in New Zealand" (p19), "solar is now the cheapest energy available to New Zealanders" (p76): consistent, but each needs the chart and a citation to the Electric Homes and Vehicles analysis.
• "No retailer currently offers a 30-year contract anywhere near that price" (p19): rhetorical; no retailer offers a 30-year contract at all. Cut or rephrase.
• "electric wins almost every time" (p29), "close to a guaranteed win over its working life, not a gamble" (p30), "that capital cost isn't really a cost at all in the long run" (p30): the third overreaches; the capital is real and must be financed. Soften.
• "Our own national audit of fossil fuel machines, the first of its kind in the country" (p29): cite the report by name.
• "Heat pumps … tested down to -30°C and continued to outperform gas, wood, and resistance heaters" (p39): needs a source.
• "A shower powered by a heat pump water heater with solar costs less than a quarter of the equivalent shower heated by gas" (p40): needs the worked calculation or a citation.
• "conditions far harsher than anything experienced in Aotearoa" (p39): Central Otago records below -20°C; "harsher than almost anywhere in Aotearoa" is safer.
• "the mind-boggling scale of extraction" (p64): tone, not evidence. Replace with a number.
• "Each stage is a point where things can break, and as we have seen recently, it will break" (p69): "and recently it has" plus an example and date.
• "This allows for a transition that is perfectly aligned" (p71): "well aligned".
• "Iwi think intergenerationally, not in electoral cycles" (p78): fine as advocacy but attribute ("as iwi leaders often say").
• "Electrification doesn't cost people money, but actually saves them money in the long term" (p29): qualify ("over the life of the machine").

4.3 Statements that need a citation (beyond the explicit REF tags)

p13 cooktop 6x, water heater 13x, space heater 16x lifetime emissions; p13 EV operating emissions "more than 85%"; p15 Tapsell quotation (source and year); p18 OECD 2026 Economic Survey quotation (page); p21 gas reserves 27% lower, production down 20%, MBIE quotation; p21 Vector no new residential connections after 2028; p21 solar overtaking gas in California and Australia; p29 10.2 million machines, 84% Ready; p30 buy-back rates 8 to 17 c/kWh; p32 NES-ETA proposed change and 10,000 chargers by 2030; p48 Honda, eTuatara, Polaris, HDK model prices; p64 panel recovery 90%+, Phoenix Metalman 98%, batteries 70 to 80% capacity, Counties Energy and Relectrify, lithium recovery 90%+; p65 760,000 / 150,000 / 75,000 tonnes; p65 and p66 Vercoe 2025 and Awatere 2025 (full references); p66 January 2026 Te Tai Tokerau floods and Cyclone Vaianu, April (year); p67 UC solar irradiance analysis and hydro storage "many weeks"; p69 Rewiring Aotearoa 2025 and MBIE 2025; p69 strategic diesel reserve and Strait of Hormuz tanker traffic; p77 Māori Climate Platform "more than sixty marae" and its wind-down.

5. Tone and readability

5.1 Sentences over 40 words (examples, not exhaustive)

Paragraph length: 6.1.1 (p29) is a single paragraph of around 330 words; 6.3 (p66) around 250; 9.1 "Set fair rules" (p77) around 200. For a marae committee reader, break at every change of idea and aim for 60 to 100 words.

5.2 Jargon needing a plain-English gloss on first use

5.3 Americanisms and non-NZ usage

• "weed eater" (p29, p65): "line trimmer" (p51 and p65 already use it; p65 lists both as if different tools).
• "defense" (p65), "aging" (p22 x2): defence, ageing.
• "golf cart" (p48, HDK Turfman): fine, but say "electric utility cart" so the comparison with an ATV does not read as a joke.
• "sqm" (p25): m².
• "jerry cans" (p51): fine in NZ.
• "Whilst" (p19): acceptable but "While" is the Rewiring house norm elsewhere in the document.

5.4 Voice shifts

• Section 3.1 is first-person Māori voice ("our rangatira", "we are an expression of te taiao"). Section 5.2 is third-person policy voice. Section 6.1 is second-person and chatty ("once you look past the price tag", "what you'd otherwise pay"). Section 7 reads like a consultant checklist ("Comprehensive costs for professional installation", "Ongoing servicing and upkeep protocols", "perfectly aligned"). Section 9 is polished advocacy. Readers will notice at least three authors.
• Pronoun drift: "our marae" (3.1, 6.4) vs "their marae" (2, 6.3) vs "your marae" (7, 6.1). Recommend: "our" in the framing and mātauranga sections written from a Māori standpoint; "your marae" in the practical sections (5.3 benchmark guidance, 6.1.6, 7); "a marae" / "marae" in the analytical sections. Avoid "their" where "our" has already been used in the same section.
• The Section 7 list items should match the plain register of 6.1.6: "Comprehensive costs for professional installation" becomes "The full installed cost"; "Ongoing servicing and upkeep protocols" becomes "What servicing is needed and who does it".
• The lyrical register of 3.1 is a strength. Protect it by not inserting numbers or citations into it; let 3.2 carry the evidence.

5.5 Proposed house style

• Language: New Zealand English (ageing, defence, programme, organise, -ise). No em dashes. En dash only unspaced in numeric ranges inside tables; in prose write "26 to 40 cents".
• Place names: "Aotearoa New Zealand" at first mention in the executive summary and for national statistics and government-facing statements; "Aotearoa" as the default in running text; "New Zealand" only inside proper names and quotations (New Zealand's gas reserves becomes "the country's gas reserves"). Currently 31 bare "New Zealand" against 8 "Aotearoa New Zealand" and over 100 "Aotearoa".
• Electric Marae: capitalised as the defined concept, singular and plural ("Electric Marae", never "Electric Maraes"). Matches "Electric Homes", "Electric Farms".
• marae: lowercase common noun, invariant plural; verbs agree with the article ("a marae is", "marae are").
• Te reo Māori: macrons always; no italics; gloss on first use for less common terms; glossary for the rest. Atua and place names capitalised.
• Numbers: spell out one to nine, numerals from 10; always numerals with units and percentages ("3 kW", "12%"); thousands separators ("6,240", "$21,900"); "times" not "x"; "more than" not ">"; currency "$1,043 a year"; units with a space ("6 kW", "120 kWh", "560 m²"); "c/kWh" in tables only.
• Government: "the Government" (capital G) for the New Zealand Government of the day; "central government" and "local government" lowercase as tiers; "Civil Defence" capitalised for the agency or status.
• Technical terms: heat pump; hot water heat pump; induction cooktop; resistance heater (not "resistive"); three-phase and single-phase (hyphenated); grid-connected; on-site (adjective) and on site (adverb); EV after first expansion; LPG without expansion; "gas" means piped natural gas, "LPG" means bottled, do not use "gas" for both.
• Headings: sentence case; numbered to three levels; case studies unnumbered.
• Citations: author-date in text (Commerce Commission, 2026); full reference list; no bare URLs in captions.
• Serial comma: pick one and apply (recommend none, with the comma added only where it prevents misreading).
• Second person: allowed in practical sections only.

6. Top 10 fixes before the Steering Rōpū read

1. Write the Executive summary. It is one sentence. The Rōpū and the Iwi Chairs Forum will read this page first and possibly only. Draft below.
2. Settle the six profiles. Table 1 (2 sizes x 3 usage) and the chart sections (3 usage x 2 islands) define different sets of six, and five naming schemes are in play. Adopt Smaller/Larger x Quiet/Active/Busy (or Low/Medium/High use) and apply it to Table 1, every heading, every chart title and the TOC.
3. Fix the outline and regenerate the TOC. 4.1.0.1, 5.3.0.0.0.1, the 5.5.3.x misnesting, "6.2. 2", 6.3.0.x, 7.0.x, the 6.1.6.6.x / 6.2.3.6.x duplication, sequential figure and table numbers. Remove sections 14 and 15 from the public document.
4. Clear every placeholder and author note (the 1.1 table: 6 "[description]", 5 watercolour notes, 5 Figure X/Y, 2 Section X, 8 reference tags, 2 "asdsd", "Thank you!", "Testimonial/quote.x v", "INSERT IMPORTED ENERGY GRAPH", the "25%?" notes inside Table 1). Even if sections stay unwritten, mark them "[Section in progress]" so reviewers do not mistake notes for text.
5. Reconcile the headline numbers (4.1): heat pump multiple, EV multiple, the 25% emissions claim, 85% vs 30% renewable, 70% vs two-thirds fossil, $720 vs $800, electricity price ranges, the ATV 6,240 hours, "hundreds of thousands of kilometres".
6. Repair the broken and duplicated sentences (2.2 and 2.3): p7 "Put simply…", p8 Manaakitanga duplicate, p16 "a rural marae are…", p28 "some sort of Cooking", p29 "The ma", p64 "in Section" and "fossil fuel economy runs", p69 "sharply through sharply", p76 "polic Make", and the duplicated rural-line passage on p16 and p22.
7. Te reo and names pass (Section 3): hāpu to hapū, Papatūānuku, kaumātua, wharenui/wharekai as single words, pūrākau, māra kai, papakāinga, rūnanga, Te Tairāwhiti, Te Matau-a-Māui, te ngahere, te ao hurihuri, atua names capitalised; "Kiritapu Allan" on the title page; close the Foreword quotation; confirm Whakatū and Ōnuku macrons with the marae.
8. Fix wrong and missing cross-references: "Section 3" on p42; "as noted earlier" for MTRs on p77 (never introduced); "(Section X)"; V2G vs "two way charging"; "assumptions at the end of the report" (appendix empty).
9. Gloss the jargon on first use and populate the Glossary (5.2 and the list in Section 3): EV, califont, V2G, three-phase, demand charge, reticulated gas, GXP, AF8, MTRs, the seven agency acronyms on p75.
10. Mechanical sweep (2.1 and 2.4): the two dozen typos, "x" multipliers, symbols in prose, the 17 spaced en dashes and 1 em dash, unit spacing, "aging/defense/weed eater", ligature glyphs, heading case.

Sample rewrites in the target voice

A. Executive summary (one paragraph draft)

Marae are the beating heart of Māori communities, and energy underpins everything they do: a warm wharenui, hot showers for manuhiri, a kitchen that can feed hundreds at short notice, and shelter when disaster strikes. Today most marae buy that energy as LPG bottles, petrol, diesel and grid electricity, and all four are getting more expensive. This report shows a better path. An Electric Marae replaces its fossil fuel machines with efficient electric ones, adds solar and batteries where it can, and stays connected to the grid for the big days. Across six composite marae profiles, modelled for North Island and South Island conditions, the electric option costs less over its working life than the fossil fuel machine it replaces, cuts emissions by [X]%, and keeps the lights, the kitchen and the hot water running when the grid goes down. The savings are largest when solar and electric machines are installed together, because the marae uses the power it makes instead of selling it for a fraction of what it pays to buy it back. The barrier is not willingness but upfront cost. So this report sets out a six-step pathway for marae committees, the funding and finance available today, and the changes the Government and the energy sector should make so that every marae in Aotearoa that wants to become an Electric Marae can do so. Whakahiko ngā marae, electrifying our marae, is an act of mana motuhake, manaakitanga and kaitiakitanga. It also stacks up economically.

(Insert the headline savings and emissions figures once the modelling is final. Keep the paragraph under 250 words.)

B. "What is a fully Electric Marae?" definition (tightened)

An Electric Marae no longer relies on fossil fuels. Every machine that once burned gas, LPG, petrol, diesel, coal or wood, whether for heating rooms, heating water, cooking, driving or mowing, has been replaced with an electric equivalent. Where it can, an Electric Marae also generates and stores its own power with rooftop solar and batteries, the cheapest and most resilient energy available in Aotearoa. It stays connected to the grid, drawing on it during the big days and exporting surplus the rest of the year. If the marae runs vehicles, they are electric too, and it may host chargers for its fleet and for whānau. Depending on its size, an Electric Marae can share power with neighbouring papakāinga and act as a local energy hub. Becoming fully electric, rather than swapping one fossil fuel for another, is the surest route to real energy independence and resilience. We believe every marae in Aotearoa should have the opportunity to get there.

(Original: three paragraphs, 190 words, with "their" for "its" and the resilience point separated from the definition. Rewrite: one paragraph, 150 words.)

Visuals reviewCharts, illustration, layout

Reviewer role: Illustration and data-visualisation director Date: 2026-10-06 Inputs: 85-page draft render, cleaned text, Google Doc planning notes, Rewiring 2026 palette and the three illustration directions trialled this year.

0. Headline findings

1. Almost every chart in the draft is a placeholder lifted from Electric Homes and Vehicles. The six marae profile pages (p33 to p37) and the six emissions profile pages (p54 to p58) all show the same two household charts ($5,500 vs $4,200, and $4,400 vs $300) ten times over. The emissions pages show dollar charts. Nothing in the economic or environmental sections is marae data yet.
2. Figure numbering is inherited and chaotic: Figure 6, 52, 5, 60, 19, 2, 63, 67, 24, 26, 20, 22, 1, 2, 21, 25, 29, 31, 32, 34, 60 in page order, with Figure 60 used twice and Figure 52 appearing twice (p12 and p45). The body text says "Figure X" or hardcodes colours ("yellow line", "green", "blue"). Every figure needs renumbering from 1 and every reference needs to point at a number, not a colour.
3. Colour has no fixed meaning. Gas is magenta on p11, mauve on p33, purple on p39, dark purple on p27. Solar is orange on p11 and yellow on p12. Electricity is blue everywhere except the ATV chart. Red is used for petrol, emissions, strike-through prices and the word "Lifetime". A single chart system fixes this.
4. The cover watercolour and the ATV product renders are the two riskiest images in the deck. The cover depicts a wharenui with implied carvings in a generic AI-watercolour style with no Steering Rōpū sign-off path. The ATV page shows branded, model-specific vehicle renders with exhaust clouds, which reads as a product endorsement and is probably inaccurate.
5. Recommendation: build the report in the Rewiring 2026 paper-and-ink palette with the colour marker-doodle style as the illustration system (diagrams, vignettes, icons, openers) and consented real-marae photography with the yellow scribble for the cover alternative and case studies. Do not pursue watercolour.

1. Audit of current visuals, page by page

General issues across all charts: default Google Sheets styling, light grey gridlines on white, no source line format, no units in axis titles on half of them, captions in italic blue, chart titles sometimes a takeaway sentence (good) and sometimes a label (not good). Tables are spreadsheet tables. There is no visual difference between a marae-scale machine (commercial six-burner, 30 kW ceiling heat pump) and the household machine the chart is actually showing.

2. Complete figure list and chart system

2.1 Chart system (one palette, one rule set)

Palette tokens are the Rewiring 2026 draft set. Colour carries energy-source meaning and nothing else.

Accessibility check: the working pairs are yellow vs blue (lightness contrast plus hue), charcoal vs blue (lightness), mint vs everything (very light). Deuteranopia and protanopia keep all of these apart. Red and green are never co-located. Mono print: charcoal, blue and yellow sit at roughly 14, 58 and 82 percent luminance, battery and fixed charges carry patterns, so the chart still reads in a black and white photocopy, which is how many marae committees will receive it.

Shared layout rules: - Before/After: before is always left or top ("Today: gas and grid"), after is always right or bottom ("Electric Marae: solar and battery"). Where there are four scenarios the order is fixed: Today / Electric on grid / Electric with solar / Electric with solar and battery. - Savings are shown as a green bracket between the tops of the two bars with a big number, or as a separate green big-number tile, not as a third bar. The current third-bar layout makes savings look like a cost column. - NI/SI: never by colour. Two panels side by side (A4 portrait) or stacked (web mobile), North Island left, South Island right, each labelled with a small island silhouette and the phrase "North Island (less heating)" / "South Island (more heating)". Shared y axis across the pair so the SI bar is visibly taller. - Six profiles: fixed order Smaller Low, Smaller Medium, Smaller High, Larger Low, Larger Medium, Larger High. Fixed profile glyph (from the vignette set) in the panel corner. One naming scheme only (recommend "Smaller / Larger" x "Low use / Medium use / High use", since that is what Table 1 uses; drop Quiet/Active/Constant and Quiet/Average/Larger). - Title = the takeaway sentence in ink, 15pt. Subtitle = what is measured and the unit, 9pt. Source line, 7.5pt, format: "Source: Rewiring Aotearoa Marae Electrification Model 2026. Prices as at [month] 2026, 15-year lifetime, [x] percent finance. Excludes vehicles." Figure caption below in ink 9pt regular, not italic blue: "Figure 12. Smaller marae, medium use: yearly energy bills before and after electrification." - Direct labels on lines and bars, legends only when there are more than four series. Big number for the one value the reader should take away, in ink 24pt, placed inside the plot. - Annotations: short ink text with a thin ink leader, hand-drawn feel allowed for the web version only (the doodle line). Print uses straight leaders. - Numbers: round to two significant figures in the plot ($1,300, 4.2 t). Precise values live in the appendix tables. - Build once: every chart generated from a JSON file (one per figure) through one renderer (Recharts for web, exported SVG into the print layout). When Jenny updates a number, the chart regenerates and no one redraws anything. The existing figma-chart pipeline and the Electric Homes Recharts build both work as starting points.

2.2 Figure list

Numbering below is proposed final numbering. "Data" says what Jenny needs to supply. "Now" means OJ can build from existing public data.

Section 3: Background and the electric opportunity

Section 4: Marae in Aotearoa

Section 5: What is a fully Electric Marae

Section 6.1: Economic benefits

Section 6.2: Environmental benefits

Section 6.3: Resilience

Section 6.4: Mana motuhake

Sections 7 to 9

Front matter and summary

3. Illustration direction

3a. Evaluating "labelled watercolour"

Watercolour is the wrong tool for this report, for five reasons.

1. Labelled diagrams need a crisp line to hang labels on. Watercolour has no edges, so callouts float and the diagram reads as a painting with stickers.
2. It is not in the Rewiring family. The three directions trialled in 2026 (mono felt-tip doodle, colour marker-doodle, approachable photo with yellow scribble) all share one thing, a confident hand-drawn line. Watercolour has none.
3. Consistency across six vignettes, a cover, nine openers and 13 icons is very hard in watercolour, and AI watercolour drifts in style between generations. The p01 cover already has the tell-tale AI-watercolour softness.
4. It prints badly. Pale washes go muddy on uncoated stock and vanish in a mono photocopy.
5. It carries cultural risk. A painterly style invites the generator to "complete" a wharenui with carvings, koruru, tukutuku and kōwhaiwhai. A schematic doodle line naturally leaves those out.

Recommendation: colour marker-doodle (thick black line, one flat colour blob misregistered from the line, on paper #fdfaf1) as the illustration system for the diagram, vignettes, section openers, journey and icons. Approachable photography with the yellow scribble for real marae (case studies, and the cover if a participating marae consents). The two directions share the same yellow and the same hand-drawn mark, so they sit together on a page.

3b. The fully Electric Marae diagram (F7)

A 3/4 aerial doodle of a composite marae, wonky and deliberately not symmetrical. Buildings: wharenui (plain gable, plain maihi, no carving, no koruru detail, door and window only), wharekai with commercial kitchen, wharepaku/ablution block, a kaumātua flat pair, a kōhanga reo, a shed, carpark, māra kai, marae ātea left open and empty.

Machines and where they go, each with a numbered callout and a one-line label set in type (never drawn): 1. Rooftop solar on the wharekai, ablution block and shed. Panels are not on the wharenui in the base diagram. Whether they may be is a Steering Rōpū decision, and some marae will say yes; make it a toggle in the file. 2. Battery in the shed or on the wharekai wall. 3. Heat pumps on the wharenui (wall units, small and unobtrusive) and ceiling cassettes in the wharekai. 4. Hot water heat pump cylinders behind the ablution block and wharekai. 5. Induction cooktops in the wharekai. 6. EV chargers in the carpark, one public fast charger at the road end, a van and a ute plugged in. 7. Electric ATV and ride-on mower by the shed, electric chainsaw and tools on a rack. 8. Grid connection: a single pole and line, labelled "still connected: exports surplus, covers peaks". 9. Kaumātua flats and kōhanga sharing the marae solar via a small line. 10. Crossed-out LPG bottles and generator at the gate (the "retired" items), drawn in the mono line with no colour.

Colour blobs: yellow on panels and anything solar, blue on grid line and electric machines, mint on grass and whenua, ink line everywhere. One version with callouts for print, one clean version for the web with hover callouts.

3c. Six profile vignettes (F13)

Same style, same angle, same scale bar, so the committee compares footprint at a glance. Smaller marae: wharenui plus wharekai plus ablution block. Larger: those plus kōhanga, office, kaumātua flats, bigger carpark. Usage is shown by activity, not by buildings: Low use shows an empty ātea and one car, Medium shows a weekday scene (a few cars, kōhanga sign, lights in the office), High shows a full carpark and lights in every building. A tiny 12-month activity sparkline sits under each vignette (from F5) so the "usage" axis is literally visible. Avoid people on the ātea; keep people at the carpark or wharekai end if shown at all.

3d. Section openers

Nine full-bleed-top doodles with one yellow blob each, paper background, title set in type: Foreword (sunrise over a plain gable), Background (sun, wind and water as elements, no atua depiction), Marae in Aotearoa (the composite marae from F7, mono), Electric Marae (F7 with colour), Economic (a gas bottle being wheeled out, a heat pump going in), Environmental (whenua, awa, clean air), Resilience (storm at night, one building lit), Mana motuhake (a tanker on the horizon vs a roof of panels), Getting started (the six-step path), Financing (a koha box next to a bank). Do not draw atua, Papatūānuku, Tāwhirimātea or Tama-nui-te-rā as figures; use the natural elements only.

3e. Case study pages

Real photographs of the participating marae, with the yellow scribble overlay, taken or supplied with written consent from the marae committee and sign-off on which buildings and interiors may be shown. If photos are not available, the doodle style stands in. Layout in section 4.

3f. Getting started journey (F41)

A single winding ink path across a double-page spread, six numbered stops, each with a small doodle icon (goals = a hui circle, map = a bill and a sun, limitations = a switchboard and a roof, proposals = three envelopes, funding = a koha box, capability = two people at a monitor). A yellow blob highlights the stop; the path is drawn so it can be cut into a six-panel vertical for the web and the one-pager.

3g. Machine icon set (13)

Mono doodle icons, 1:1, drawn as a single sheet so line weight matches: heat pump (wall unit), hot water heat pump (white cylinder with a fan grille in the top), induction cooktop (commercial six-zone), EV (van, right-hand drive), EV charger (wall box) and fast charger (bollard), solar panel, battery (wall cabinet), electric ATV/side-by-side, ride-on mower, chainsaw with battery pack, generator (crossed out), LPG bottle (crossed out), califont (crossed out). Export as black-on-transparent, recolour to paper or ink for dark or light sections (the conversion trick from the doodle homepage build).

3h. Cultural appropriateness: what to avoid, what to sign off

• Never generate carvings, koruru, tekoteko, tukutuku, kōwhaiwhai, tā moko, named tūpuna, or any identifiable real wharenui. The doodle style should render wharenui as a plain gable with plain maihi and a door. If the Steering Rōpū wants a cultural pattern anywhere, it is commissioned from a Māori artist, not generated.
• Never depict a specific marae without that marae's written permission, including from a photo reference.
• Keep kai in the wharekai domain of the diagram and away from the wharenui (tapu and noa). No food, no cooking near the wharenui.
• No people sitting on tables, no footwear shown inside the wharenui, no casual walking across the ātea. Keep people at the wharekai, carpark and whenua end.
• No atua drawn as figures. Elements only.
• Solar on the wharenui roof is a decision for each marae and for the rōpū for the composite. Default to wharekai, ablutions, shed, carport and ground mount.
• Steering Rōpū sign-off list: the cover, the F7 diagram, the six vignettes, any photo of a real marae, any use of a marae name on a chart, and the te reo captions.
• Photos of real marae with consent beat illustration for credibility at the Iwi Chairs Forum, but only with consent in writing and a named contact for each image. If consent is late, the doodle cover ships and the photo cover becomes the web hero later.

3i. Ready-to-use nano-banana prompts (colour marker-doodle style)

Pass the palette swatch PNG as a reference (refs/palette-2026.png from the 2026-09-11 folder) and the five colour-doodle refs. Flash model, 1K, then upscale the keeper.

Prompt 1, cover base (3:4 portrait) "Hand-drawn colour marker doodle on warm paper #fdfaf1. Thick black felt-tip line (3 to 4 percent of image width), wobbly, overshooting corners, wonky 3/4 perspective, deliberately NOT symmetrical. A small rural Aotearoa New Zealand marae complex at dawn: a plain gabled meeting house with plain bargeboards and a single door, a long dining hall beside it with rooftop solar panels, a small ablution block, a shed, a gravel carpark with one electric van plugged into a wall charger, rolling hills behind. One flat opaque yellow #ffc754 blob misregistered from the line over the sun and the solar panels, one flat mint #c2d0c4 blob over the grass, everything else black line on paper. No carvings, no painted patterns, no faces, no people, no text, no lettering, no logos, no shading, no gradients, no watercolour."

Prompt 2, profile vignette, Smaller marae, Low use (4:3) "Hand-drawn colour marker doodle on warm paper #fdfaf1, thick black felt-tip line, wobbly, 3/4 aerial view from the front-left, deliberately NOT symmetrical, small object alone on paper with generous margin. A small marae: one plain gabled meeting house (plain bargeboards, single door, no carving), one modest dining hall, one small ablution block, a gravel area in front left empty, a single parked car, a flagpole, a low fence. Quiet and still. One flat opaque yellow #ffc754 blob over the dining hall roof misregistered from the line. No people, no text, no lettering, no shading, no gradients, no carvings, no patterns."

Prompt 3, Electric Marae diagram base (16:9) "Hand-drawn colour marker doodle on warm paper #fdfaf1, thick black felt-tip line, wobbly, wide 3/4 aerial view, deliberately NOT symmetrical, lots of empty paper around the scene for labels. A composite marae complex: plain gabled meeting house with plain bargeboards centre-left facing an open empty grassed courtyard, long dining hall to the right with rooftop solar panels and two small heat pump units on its wall, a white hot-water cylinder with a round fan grille built into its top behind the dining hall, an ablution block with solar panels, two small single-storey flats and a small preschool building at the back, a shed with a wall battery cabinet and an electric side-by-side quad and a ride-on mower outside it, a carpark with an electric van and a ute plugged into wall chargers and one tall fast-charger bollard by the road, one power pole and line entering from the road, a vegetable garden. Flat opaque colour blobs misregistered from the line: yellow #ffc754 on all solar panels and the battery, blue #7c96c1 on the power line and chargers, mint #c2d0c4 on grass. No people, no text, no lettering, no carvings, no patterns, no shading, no gradients, no logos."

Prompt 4, resilience section opener (16:9) "Hand-drawn colour marker doodle on warm paper #fdfaf1, thick black felt-tip line, wobbly, deliberately NOT symmetrical. Night storm scene in rural Aotearoa: rain lines, a bent tree, a fallen power line on the road, and in the middle a long gabled community dining hall with every window glowing, rooftop solar panels and a battery cabinet on its wall, a few parked cars outside, a plain gabled meeting house behind it also lit. One flat opaque yellow #ffc754 blob misregistered from the line filling the glowing windows. No people, no text, no lettering, no carvings, no patterns, no shading, no gradients."

Prompt 5, machine icon sheet (1:1, run once per icon) "Mono black felt-tip doodle icon on warm paper #fdfaf1, thick wobbly line, overshooting corners, wonky 3/4 perspective, object alone and centred with wide margin, no fill, no shading, no colour, no text. Subject: [a wall-mounted heat pump indoor unit / a white hot water heat pump cylinder with a round fan grille built into the top / a commercial six-zone induction cooktop / a right-hand-drive electric van plugged into a wall charger / a public fast-charger bollard / a single solar panel at an angle / a wall battery cabinet / an electric side-by-side quad bike / a ride-on mower / a battery chainsaw / a portable petrol generator with a big X through it / a 45 kg LPG bottle with a big X through it / a wall-mounted gas califont with a big X through it]."

4. Layout and format

Format: A4 portrait print PDF (matches Electric Homes at 104 pages and Electric Farms) plus a web report page on pages.rewiring.nz built the way Electric Homes was (field-driven page, live Recharts charts from the same JSON). Use the 2026 paper-and-ink palette rather than the Electric Homes navy: it is warmer, prints cheaper, photocopies legibly, and the kaupapa (warm, welcoming, mana motuhake) does not want a dark corporate frame. Keep Rubik or whatever Elliot's 2026 type decision is; type sits in ink on paper with yellow 300 highlights for emphasis words.

Grid: 12-column, 16 mm outer margins, body text in a 7-column measure with a 4-column side column for figures, pull-quotes and the profile glyph strip. Charts full-measure, never squeezed into the side column.

Pull-quotes: ink, 20pt, a hand-drawn yellow underline or scribble (the same yellow mark as the photo style), no quote marks box, no rule. Attribution in 9pt. Good candidates already in the text: "If it's sized for the quiet months, it fails exactly when it's needed most", "A single weekend of manaakitanga can set the tariff rate, and the bill, for months", "Make your next decision an electric one".

Big numbers: 40pt ink numeral, 10pt label beneath, in a yellow 100 tile without border. Group them in rows of three. Savings numbers may use good-green for the numeral only.

The six-profiles component: a strip of six glyph tiles (from F13) at the top of every profile page with the current profile filled yellow 100 and the others outlined. The same strip is the "find your marae" lookup on p24 (F10) and the one-pager, with two lines under each tile: "Buildings about x m2" and "Used y days a week". A reader finds themselves in three seconds and the strip is the hyperlink nav on the web.

"Overcoming this challenge" callout: a full-measure mint 100 panel with 12 mm padding, a small doodle icon top-left (a lightbulb with a koru-free line), heading "Overcoming this challenge" in ink 12pt bold, body in regular. No border, no side stripe, no drop shadow. Where the author has not yet written the content (p18, p21, p22, p23), the panel still ships as the pattern with the text to come.

Case study template (two pages each): page 1 is a consented photo with the yellow scribble at the top half, name, rohe, a three-line "who we are" and the F10 glyph for the nearest profile. Page 2 is the F27 before/after pair (bill, emissions), a timeline strip of what was installed when, a pull-quote from the marae, and a mint panel "What we'd tell another marae".

Two-page summary and topic one-pagers: A4 sheet, both sides. Side 1: title, the F7 diagram at half height with eight callouts, three big numbers, the six-profile strip. Side 2: the six-step journey as a vertical, "where the money comes from" matrix, and a QR to the web report. Topic one-pagers (Getting off gas, Solar for marae, Economic, Emissions, Resilience, Mana motuhake, How to, Financing) each reuse one section opener doodle, one chart from the figure list, three big numbers and the QR. Design them as one InDesign template with swappable blocks.

Tables: Table 1 and the benchmark table go to the appendix in a plain style (ink hairlines, no fills, mint 100 header row). The body gets profile cards instead.

Web specifics: charts are the same JSON through Recharts with hover values, NI/SI as a toggle instead of two panels on narrow screens, the F38 Felt map embedded, and the F7 diagram with hover callouts. Everything else mirrors print.

5. Priority list for OJ

Can start now (no Jenny data needed): 1. Chart system spec and a styled template (title, subtitle, source line, caption, palette tokens, patterns) built once in the chart renderer, plus a test render of F2 to prove it. This unblocks every later chart. 2. Rebuild the existing-data charts in the system: F1, F2, F4, F8, F11, F22, F25 (fix the 700-2P label, split into cost and emissions), F32 (shared axis), F33, F34, F37, F38. 3. Machine icon set (13), the F7 Electric Marae diagram base and the six vignette bases from the prompts above, then a review pack for the Steering Rōpū (cover, F7, vignettes) so sign-off runs in parallel with the modelling. 4. Cover concepts: doodle composite (primary) and, pending consent, a consented photo plus yellow scribble (alternative). 5. Page template in InDesign or Figma: grid, type, pull-quote, big numbers, mint callout panel, the six-profile strip component, case study template, section openers. 6. Two-pager and topic one-pager template. 7. F40 supply-chain strip, F41 journey, F43 three levers, F35 and F26 big-number tiles.

Blocked on Jenny's modelling (ask for everything as one JSON or CSV in the chart renderer's shape): 8. F16.1 to F16.6 (the 6 x 2 islands x 4 scenarios x 2 metrics bill matrix). This is the core deliverable; ask for it first. 9. F28.1 to F28.6 emissions per profile (same shape). 10. F15 waterfall for Smaller Medium NI. 11. F17 to F19 marae-scale per-machine costs, F29 to F31 emissions. 12. F23 three vehicle examples, F24 mowers, F21 solar option cards, F12 regional prices, F5 and F6 load shapes, F39 backup hours, ES1 executive summary numbers.

Blocked on authors or the Steering Rōpū: 13. One naming scheme for the profiles (recommend Smaller / Larger x Low / Medium / High). 14. Figure renumbering and replacing every "Figure X" and every colour-named reference in the body text (coordinate with the copy editor). 15. Case study photos and consents (Ōnuku, Whakatu, third marae) and sign-off on cover, F7, vignettes. 16. Decision on F9 (chart vs big numbers) and F36 (EECA indoor air content).

Comms reviewAudiences, launch, asks, risks

Reviewer role: Communications tactics strategist Date: 6 October 2026 Basis: the 85-page draft (marae_clean.txt), the Google Doc planning and notes tabs, and four quick fact checks (noted in section 0).

0. Headline findings (read this first)

1. The report has no hero number yet. Every chart page for the six marae profiles is empty, the per-machine savings are empty, and the brainstorm literally says "Marae save approximately $x annually". Electric Homes launched on "$3,000 a year" and "$9 billion by 2040". This report needs its equivalent before any launch date is set. Proposed hero: "A [medium-use] marae saves $[X] a year going fully electric with solar and batteries", backed by "over 1,000 marae across Aotearoa" and "two-thirds of marae sit in a hazard zone".
2. The launch timing in the brief has lapsed. The plan says Iwi Chairs Forum 28 July. It is now 6 October and the draft is half complete. The next two National Iwi Chairs Forum hui are 20 to 22 October 2026 (Kohinga Koha, Tauranga Moana, investor and philanthropy focused) and 23 to 25 November 2026 (Takina, Wellington). The November hui is the realistic sign-off and presentation slot. Public launch would then land late November or early February 2027 (avoid the December dead zone).
3. The "why now" is strong and current. Māori Climate Platform funding ended 30 June 2026 after cuts in Budget 2024 and 2025 (a residual third stage of about $1.36m covers four projects). The draft already says the Platform "is now being brought to an end" and that 60-plus marae benefited. That is a live political story and the report's sharpest news hook if the Steering Rōpū is comfortable with it.
4. Case studies are the comms engine and they are empty. Ōnuku, Whakatu and an unnamed marae are bullet skeletons. Without a named marae, a kaumātua quote and a before-and-after bill, Māori media will have no story and mainstream media will have no pictures. These need consent and interviews now, not after the modelling.
5. The resilience claim needs a technical guardrail. The draft says solar and batteries "keep the lights on" during outages. Standard grid-tied solar shuts down in an outage. Only a battery with islanding or backup capability keeps the marae running. The copy and every resilience asset must say "solar with a backup-capable battery" to avoid a credibility hit from installers and lines companies.
6. The policy asks need owners. Section 9.1 is written as prose to "Government". It needs a numbered list with a named minister or agency for each ask, framed in language that works for the current coalition (cost of living, energy security, resilience, Aotearoa-made energy) while keeping the kaupapa Māori frame intact.
7. The report is grid-positive, which is a comms asset. Section 5.2.2 argues firmly for marae staying grid-connected. That blunts the "off-grid separatism" attack and makes lines companies and the Electricity Authority potential allies rather than targets.

Fact checks used (do not cite beyond these without re-verifying): - Māori Climate Platform: all funded projects complete by 30 June 2026; Budget 2024 and 2025 cuts; 21 projects, 60-plus marae; third stage about $1.36m for four more projects (environment.govt.nz, RNZ, Stuff, mcert.govt.nz). - TPK "Marae of Aotearoa" dataset: 1,060 marae records; TPK 2018 cited "approximately 1,100 marae" (hub.arcgis.com, TPK). - NICF 2026 hui: 20 to 22 Oct Tauranga Moana (Kohinga Koha); 23 to 25 Nov Takina, Wellington (iwichairs.maori.nz). - Electric Homes and Vehicles 2026: released on a Monday with a media release, "$3,000 a year" headline, RNZ and NZ Herald coverage (rewiring.nz, nzherald.co.nz, 28 June 2026).

1. Audience map

Note on hui kōrero: for marae committees, the most consumed "format" is a conversation. Budget for 6 to 10 regional hui (in person where possible, via rūnanga networks) and treat each as both distribution and case-study harvesting.

2. Key messages and proof points

2.1 Strongest claims already in the draft (with status)

2.2 Claims that still lack data (blockers for launch)

• Annual savings per marae profile (six profiles, with and without solar and batteries). Every chart page in s6.1.5 and s6.1.6.4 is blank.
• Per-machine yearly bill and lifetime cost charts (s6.1.6).
• Solar and battery sizing and cost for a marae (small and large ground-mount; the notes tab lists these as data needs).
• Case study before-and-after bills (Ōnuku, Whakatu, third marae).
• Number of marae in Aotearoa (not stated anywhere in the draft). Use TPK's dataset: 1,060 marae records. Cite TPK directly.
• Demand-charge example in dollars ("a single weekend of manaakitanga can set the tariff for months" needs one real bill to prove it).
• Reticulated gas fixed charge: the draft says "around $2 a day ($720 a year)" on p21 and "around $800 per year" on p42. Pick one.
• Three-phase upgrade cost "upwards of $10,000": source it or soften it.

2.3 The hero number

The report currently lacks one. Options, in order of preference:

1. "$[X] a year": annual saving for the medium-use marae profile (North Island), fully electric with solar and batteries, net of finance. Mirrors the Electric Homes "$3,000 a year" and makes the two reports rhyme. Add the South Island figure as the second beat ("up to $[Y] in colder rohe").
2. "1,060 marae, two-thirds in harm's way": pairs the TPK count with the Vercoe hazard stat. Works for resilience, Government and CDEM audiences even before modelling lands.
3. "$[Z] million a year": the national figure if all 1,060 marae electrified (medium profile x 1,060 as a floor). Only publish with a clear method note; it will be the number ministers and journalists repeat.
4. "$55 million a day offshore": already in the draft; a strong secondary tile for the mana motuhake frame.

2.4 Three headline options for launch

1. "Electric marae could save $[X] a year each, and keep the lights on when the grid goes down" (mainstream, cost of living + resilience)
2. "Whakahiko Ngā Marae: 1,060 marae, two-thirds in harm's way, one practical way to keep them running" (resilience and Government)
3. "Marae are leading the shift to Aotearoa-made energy. New report shows how every marae can follow" (Māori media, mana motuhake)

2.5 Ten pull-quotes and stat tiles

Stat tiles (bracketed values pending modelling): 1. "$[X] a year": what a medium-use marae saves going fully electric with solar and batteries. 2. "1,060 marae across Aotearoa. Two-thirds sit in a hazard zone. 45% are in flood zones." 3. "Solar: 6 to 12 cents a kWh. Grid: 26 to 40 cents. No retailer offers a 30-year contract at that price." 4. "A shower heated by solar and a heat pump costs less than a quarter of a gas shower." 5. "$55 million a day leaves Aotearoa to buy fuel we could make at home." 6. "60-plus marae got solar through the Māori Climate Platform. That fund ended on 30 June 2026." 7. "Worst run of low-sun days in ten years: about one week. Average: two days."

Pull-quotes (from the draft, lightly tidied): 8. "For generations, marae have been the beating heart of our communities... Electrification offers a different path: one grounded in self-determination." (Marama Royal, foreword) 9. "If it's sized for the quiet months, it fails exactly when it's needed most. If it's sized for the large spikes, it sits underused nearly all year." (p16) 10. "A single weekend of manaakitanga can set the tariff rate, and the bill, for months." (p20)

Bonus: "Make your next decision an electric one." (p78) is the whole marae-committee CTA in six words. Use it everywhere.

3. Narrative spine

3.1 Why now (all of it is already in the draft)

• Fuel shocks 2026: Strait of Hormuz disruption, the Government counting tankers for the strategic diesel reserve (p69). Appendix notes modelling excludes the 2026 fuel shocks, so savings are conservative. Say that out loud.
• Marsden Point closed 2022: every litre arrives as finished product (p69).
• Gas is running out: reserves down 27% in a year, production at its lowest since 2011, Vector forecasting no new residential connections after 2028 (p21).
• Electricity prices: about 20% in two years; OECD calling NZ prices "structurally too high" (p18).
• Māori Climate Platform ending: 60-plus marae helped, fund closed 30 June 2026 (p77).
• Disasters are now routine: Cyclone Gabrielle 2023, Te Tai Tokerau floods January 2026, Cyclone Vaianu in the Bay of Plenty April 2026, with marae opening their doors each time (p65-66).
• Policy momentum: Government target of 10,000 public chargers by 2030 and proposed NES-ETA changes making EV charging a permitted activity at marae (p32).

3.2 The three-act story (for media and hui)

Act 1: The marae holds everyone, and the bill holds the marae. Open on a marae in a tangihanga or a cyclone: the wharekai feeding hundreds, the califont running non-stop, the diesel generator that could not be refuelled because the road was out. Then the bill: commercial tariffs set by one weekend, LPG up 20%, a fixed line charge paid every day of a quiet month. The tension: the place that carries the community is being carried by koha and raffles.

Act 2: The sun is already on the roof. Solar is now the cheapest energy in New Zealand, and marae are daytime users with big roofs and land. Pair it with a backup-capable battery and electric machines (heat pump, hot water heat pump, induction) and the marae saves $[X] a year, stays warm, cooks for a fraction, and keeps running when the lines come down. Show the case studies: Ōnuku, Whakatu, a third. Make a kaumātua the narrator, not Rewiring.

Act 3: Make the next decision an electric one, and make the system catch up. For marae: six steps, no need to do it all at once. For iwi: one programme across the rohe, a revolving fund, a stake in generation and lines. For Government: a dedicated marae electrification fund to replace the Platform, funding for machines not just roofs, fair export prices, MTR and peer-to-peer trading, and recognition of marae as resilience infrastructure. Close on mana motuhake: energy made on the whenua, priced at home, controlled by the people it belongs to.

For hui, flip the order of Acts 2 and 3 as needed: rūnanga audiences want the ask before the explanation.

4. Channel and asset plan

4.1 Launch sequence (revised for the actual calendar)

Recommendation: unless the modelling and case studies are locked by mid-November, go for 9 February 2027. A December launch into the holiday period wastes the case-study content and lands after most rūnanga have closed for the year. Electric Homes launched on a Monday in late June; a Tuesday morning gives Māori media's daily bulletins a clean run.

4.2 Owned channels

• rewiring.nz report page in the Electric Homes pattern (interactive charts for the six profiles, downloadable PDF, the secondary resources as tiles). OJ builds; dark-editorial NZME theme or a warmer paper-and-ink marae variant is the visual director's call.
• Profile picker: a simple "which marae are you" widget (smaller/larger x low/medium/high x NI/SI) that returns the right profile chart and savings. This is the single most useful web asset for marae committees.
• Email: Rewiring list (segment: Māori organisations, councils, installers) plus a dedicated send to every rūnanga comms contact via NICF.
• Social: Rewiring's channels run the stat tiles and case-study clips; the heavy lifting is done by iwi pages (see partner). LinkedIn for funders and officials; Facebook for marae and whānau; Instagram and TikTok for rangatahi clips.

4.3 Earned media

4.4 Partner channels

• NICF and Electrification Iwi Leaders Group: endorsement, presentation slot, distribution to 70-plus iwi chairs, carriage of the asks to the Crown.
• Iwi comms teams: pre-built social kit (tiles, clips, captions in te reo and English), a template pānui, and permission to co-brand the two-pager.
• Te Puni Kōkiri: regional offices distribute the two-pager; align with Marae Development support.
• EECA: Gen Less channels; a co-badged "Getting off Gas for Marae" guide is a natural fit for their existing gas-transition material.
• CDEM groups and NEMA: Resilience one-pager into welfare-hub planning.
• SEANZ and lines companies: the installer one-pager; ask ENA to circulate.

4.5 Secondary resource set (from s14 of the draft)

5. Case studies as comms

5.1 Which to prioritise for launch (3 to 4)

Hold "Marae with whānau business" and "Microgrid" for the roadshow and the rewiring.nz page; they are great second-wave stories but complicate the launch message.

Balance: at least one North Island and one South Island, at least one rural and one urban, at least one that is pre-settlement or hapū-funded so the story is not "only rich iwi can do this".

5.2 Interview and consent process

1. Approach through the Steering Rōpū member or rūnanga closest to the marae, never cold.
2. Kanohi ki te kanohi first hui on the marae: explain the report, the audiences, where the story will appear (TV, web, social, ministerial brief), and what will be said about their bills. Leave the two-pager draft.
3. Written consent from the marae committee or trust (not just one person) covering: naming the marae, naming people, use of bills and figures, photos and video, duration of use, and the right to review and withdraw before publication.
4. Interview the chair, a kaumātua, the kaimahi who runs the kitchen or the energy system, and one rangatahi where possible. Record in te reo where the speaker prefers; subtitle rather than dub.
5. Draft the case-study page and send it back for approval with the exact figures. Koha for time. Offer the marae the raw photos and video for their own use.
6. Do a data-accuracy pass with Jenny: before-and-after bills normalised for usage changes (a marae that electrified and also started a kōhanga will show a bigger bill, which must be explained, not hidden).
7. Allow four weeks minimum from first hui to approved page. Start now if a late-November NICF presentation is the target.

5.3 Content formats per case study

• Video kōrero (90s hero + 30s social cut): the chair or kaumātua on the paepae or in the wharekai, b-roll of panels, induction hobs, heat pumps, the battery, and the marae full of people. Subtitles always; no subtitles on the final two frames (Rewiring caption rule).
• Photo essay (8 to 10 frames): candid, people-first, the approachable photo style with the yellow scribble overlay trialled this year. Avoid stock-looking panel shots.
• Numbers card: a single tile per marae: profile type, what they installed, before bill, after bill, annual saving, emissions cut, "what the savings paid for" (te reo classes, scholarships, māra kai: the brainstorm already lists these). This is the share unit for iwi Facebook pages.
• Audio grab (30 to 60s) for Waatea and iwi radio, in te reo and English.
• Report page (one spread): the structure the draft already sets out (intro, before, what and how, after, quote).

6. Policy asks as a campaign

The draft's section 9.1 is prose addressed to "Government". Sharpen it into this numbered list. Each ask has a decision-maker and a cross-spectrum frame that keeps the kaupapa Māori core.

Framing rules for the campaign: - Lead with cost of living, resilience and energy security in mainstream and Government rooms; lead with mana motuhake and manaakitanga in Māori rooms. Never drop either; order them for the audience. - Avoid "subsidy". Use "infrastructure investment", "resilience funding" and "replacing a fund that already works". - Always pair an ask with a number and a marae. Ask 1 is strongest when a Gabrielle or Vaianu marae says it. - Make the grid-connected stance explicit in every Government conversation: the report is not asking for off-grid separation, it is asking for marae to be treated as part of the system.

7. Risks and sensitivities, with pre-bunks

7.1 Cultural protocols

7.2 Political risk

7.3 Technical and data risk

8. Measurement

30 days (launch month)

• Report downloads and page views on rewiring.nz against the Electric Homes benchmark (Rewiring described it as "a large number of downloads"; get the actual figure and set 60% of it as the target given the narrower audience).
• Media: at least 3 Māori media pieces (Whakaata Māori, RNZ Te Ao Māori, Waatea), 2 mainstream, 1 trade; share of coverage that uses the hero number; share that names a case-study marae.
• Partner reach: number of iwi and rūnanga pages that post the kit; number of NICF members who receive the report.
• Ministerial engagement: briefings held with Energy, Māori Development, Emergency Management, Climate Change.
• Inbound: number of marae that contact Rewiring or the Iwi Leaders Group asking for a kōrero or the profile tool.

90 days

• Roadshow: hui held (target 4 of the planned 6 to 10), marae represented, two-pagers distributed.
• Profile tool: sessions and completed profile picks; the split across the six profiles (tells you which secondary resource to deepen).
• Funders: at least one philanthropic conversation converted to a demonstration-cohort commitment or feasibility-study fund.
• Policy: at least one ask acknowledged in writing by the responsible minister or agency; Electricity Authority engagement on MTR and export pricing; NEMA or a CDEM Group referencing marae electrification in a plan.
• Secondary resources: all nine published; downloads by resource.

365 days

• Marae outcomes: number of marae that started a feasibility study, got quotes, or installed (tracked via rūnanga and installer partners; this is the real metric).
• A funded successor to the Māori Climate Platform announced, or marae electrification named in Budget 2027.
• At least one regulatory move (export pricing, MTR, community tariff classification) that cites the report.
• Case-study pipeline: 6 to 8 published marae stories across all eight archetypes, with at least two "Beginning Journey" marae now mid-install.
• Report cited in at least one iwi strategy, council Long Term Plan or CDEM Group plan.
• Rewiring's standing with NICF: the Electrification Iwi Leaders Group asks for a second piece of work (papakāinga, kōhanga reo, or the Māori energy precinct idea from p9).

9. Immediate actions (next three weeks)

1. Agree the hero number and lock the launch target date (recommend Tue 9 Feb 2027, with NICF presentation 23 to 25 Nov 2026).
2. Start case-study consent and interviews with Ōnuku, Whakatu and a Gabrielle, Jan 2026 floods or Vaianu marae now.
3. Build the single source of truth numbers sheet; fix the three internal inconsistencies and resolve every (REF).
4. Add the islanding caveat to every resilience sentence.
5. Convert s9.1 into the numbered ask list with named decision-makers.
6. Fix te reo and name inconsistencies before the Steering Rōpū read.
7. Brief OJ on the profile picker, the stat tiles and the two-pager so design starts in parallel with the modelling.