Sione Finau Taani and Sisilia Mosooi Taani were ordered to pay Walker Weir Property Management $80 for digging the pit.

Two tenants have been made to pay compensation after digging a hāngī pit in the backyard of their south Auckland rental property.

Sione Finau Taani and Sisilia Mosooi Taani were ordered to pay $80 to Walker Weir Property Management at a Tenancy Tribunal hearing.

It was part of a counter-claim against the Taanis after they brought a case against Walker Weir for incorrect electricity and water charges.

TOURISM NEW ZEALAND A property management company has won a claim against a tenant who dug a hāngī pit (file photo).

In a decision delivered on April 19, tribunal adjudicator Jack Tam said Sione Taani had received permission from the previous property managers to dig a hole in the ground at the Papatoetoe home for cooking purposes.

When the tenancy ended, he filled the hole with dirt again.

However, Tam ruled Sione Taani owed compensation because he had not resown the earth with grass.

The reclaimed hāngī costs were a small win for Walker Weir in a costly claim against the company.

Tam found the property managers owed the Taanis $3911.83 in water charges. He said the Taanis had been charged a water bill that included water use by a tenant in a sleepout which was not separately metered.

Hāngī pit re-sowing costs would be deducted from those damages, Tam ruled.

KARAKA CAFE Hāngī like this one, held by Karaka cafe in Wellington, are hard to pull off in cities.

Rewi Spraggon, who owns Hāngi Master, a company that aims to bring hāngī back into the mainstream, said council and government rules in urban areas were making it harder for people in cities to cook hāngī.

"They're even stopping people from lighting wood fires in chimneys in some areas. For me it's the oldest dish in the country and it's fast getting lost."

However, Spraggon believed the property managers in this case have a point.

"You want to be a tidy Kiwi and clean up after yourself."

Massey University's Rawiri Taounui, a professor of Māori & Indigenous Studies, said returning a hāngī pit on a rental property back to its original state was an important part of the manaaki, respect, associated with a hāngī.

"Part of Māori renaissance is finding that sense that our culture and cultural practices have a place in a modern society," he said.

"In rental areas there are probably a lot of people that want to do it and do do it, but don't have the permission of their landlord.

"By not tidying it up that makes it harder on all those people who might follow up and ask their landlords."

Taounui said the Polynesian hāngī pit, the umu, involved a shallower pit but like hāngī was an important cultural practice that both landlords and renters should be willing to discuss.

The Taanis could not be reached for comment.