Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill

As a matter of courtesy to Ngāti Tama, I should explain why ACT sought the removal of the provisions that set up protocols. This part of the Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill records that a series of documents will be entered into that provide for cultural redress. The Minister of a number of departments must issue a protocol, which is set out in the Cultural Redress Schedule, and it consists of an acknowledgment that appears to record grievance and injustice, and is primarily about particular interests of Ngāti Tama in special areas, including former historical areas, pā, fighting places, and areas where food was gathered. Then it appears to indicate that the Government has to be particularly sensitive to Ngāti Tama’s interest in those areas. I say “appears to indicate” because it is entirely unclear as to just what effect a protocol really must have.

Part 5 is divided into a series of subparts. The Minister has to issue the protocol, and may amend or cancel it either on his or her own initiative or on the initiative of the counterparty—that is, Ngāti Tama’s governance entity, as it is called. The legislation then states that a protocol does not restrict the Crown—including the Crown’s ability to introduce legislation—and does not restrict the legal rights of Ngāti Tama or a representative entity. It states that the Crown must comply with a protocol, and the governance entity may enforce the protocol, but there are no damages or any form of monetary compensation available as a remedy. ACT is concerned that this sets up the appearance of rights, then makes them hollow.

It may be objected that this is face-saving on both sides and is a good-faith attempt to recognise that Ngāti Tama’s interest was not simply in money, and I applaud that. I applaud the fact that the Crown is trying to avoid wrongly imputing two claimants as having purely venal interests in these claims, and that it is acknowledging that there is a sense of justified grievance about the Pākehā community’s complete overriding of historical interests that were cultural in these land areas. But I do not believe that as a country we should be compounding that by appearing to recognise them without actually giving them a legal form that can be understood in accordance with the rule of law. The rule of law is that behaviour can be ordered by rules known in advance, and enforced by courts that would treat the Crown and the other right-holders equally. The king or the lord in his castle and the ploughman in his field should be able to access the law equally.

What those protocols are saying is that someone may have some kind of special right or interest, but it is not properly enforceable, no one knows quite what it is, and it can be changed at any time by a Minister. ACT asks what kind of right that is. We believe that property rights really matter in a community. If we do these kinds of settlements, we should set them up on a basis on which this country can go forward, not on a basis of political fudge—a basis that is essentially political slogans written into law, and apologies that are not worth the paper they are written on. These rights ought to be worth something. If they are not, then the young of future Ngāti Tama generations will come back and say: “What was this about? You acknowledged a wrong. You acknowledged we were owed something, but then you gave us the mere shadow of some rights.” It will not avail the Crown then to say: “No, you agreed to it, even if you didn’t really know what it meant. Nor did we—we were equally ignorant.”, and therefore go ahead with it. ACT will vote against these protocols.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Stephen Franks to clauses 20 to 26 be agreed to:

to omit these clauses.