Ngāti Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill

As the Committee well knows, the reason for the referral of settlement bills to a select committee is largely for the committee to scrutinise whether a bill is basically in order with the deed of settlement—to make sure that the deed of settlement is being implemented. With that being the case, however, it does mean that the opportunity to amend settlement legislation is very limited indeed, and mostly it is limited to technical issues only.

In this case, particularly with regard to the title and name of this bill, I just make reference to the fact that the bill as introduced identified Ngāti Tūwharetoa only. The Māori Affairs Committee, in looking at the bill and also being very mindful of the fact that there are Ngāti Tūwharetoa in the Bay of Plenty and Ngāti Tūwharetoa in the Lake Taupō area itself, came to the view that it would propose, as the most appropriate title, that the bill be called the Ngāti Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill, instead of the “Ngāti Tuwharetoa Claims Settlement Bill”. But to do that the Crown had to seek the agreement of the claimants, although it was certainly a committee view that we should avoid any doubt as to which part of Ngāti Tūwharetoa the settlement referred to. Obviously, if we include “Bay of Plenty” in the title, then it is very clear that this settlement is not applicable to those of Ngāti Tūwharetoa—indeed, my own people—who live by the shores of Lake Taupō.

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: They’ve got a monster claim, as well.

This is not a monster claim, and nobody would refer to any claim as being a monster claim. But in any event, under clause 10(2) of the deed of settlement, the deed is able to be amended if the amendment is in writing and signed by or on behalf of Ngāti Tūwharetoa Bay of Plenty and the Crown. The bill as introduced actually matched the deed, as it was originally called.

Happily, the claimants agreed to the change. I want to pay particular tribute to Bev Adlam, who has driven the claim along with all the others—family, I suppose I could call them in the end—and, in particular, I just want to pay tribute to the work that has been done by her. This bill is now more aptly and appropriately named Ngāti Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill, so there is no doubt as to which part of the Tūwharetoa tribe we are talking about. Hopefully, the Minister, Mita Ririnui, will use his good administrations to make sure that the bill comes on to the Order Paper reasonably quickly for its third reading, because he and I both know—as do others—that Bev Adlam has been very, very committed and dedicated to driving this settlement through, but it has taken its toll. So it would be a good thing for it to be passed into law. Of course, I suppose the Minister hopes that he will get the bill through before the election. But I hope that he will get it through in any event, because it would be great to see this settlement passed into law and completed, as a tribute to Bev Adlam and the great work that she has done in this matter.

I think it was appropriate that the Hon Georgina te Heuheu spoke first in this final part of the Committee debate. She is of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, so she has precedence in a matter like this, and we acknowledge that.

The National Party does support settlements as a general principle, and we do so for quite a deliberate reason, which is that we want this country to move beyond being trapped in grievance mode. To some extent settlements have had an ironic effect. They have helped race relations, and helped Māori move forward, but at the same time I think they could almost be said to have harmed race relations. There is a great deal more friction these days, I suspect, than there has been in the past. Therefore, the way to deal with that issue is to ensure that the process is done reasonably quickly. That is why National has committed to completing all settlements by 2010. Even Labour, apparently, now sees the wisdom of accelerating settlements, and it had to be driven to that point by National.

💬 Hon Ken Shirley: Who had the idea first?

I wanted to make reference specifically to the ACT party, and I had this set down as one of the points that I wanted to make, but Mr Shirley has asked who had the idea first. Well, I say to ACT party members that they cannot have a policy that states that they will settle everything quickly—and I acknowledge that they have said that—and not actually vote for anything. It is just such a bizarre irony. One assumes from the way ACT party members conduct themselves that unless the settlement meets their needs in every precise particular, they cannot agree to it. Well, the real world is not like that. One has to have a degree of compromise and seek something of a consensus.

National has pointed out during this debate our concerns about the style of the preamble. I think there is far too much reference to people as they were back in time without enough acknowledgment of the way that people are developing and advancing. So I would like to see more balance on that aspect in the future. The second thing is that we made reference to our concerns about the inclusion of the principles of the treaty. Finally, we referred to our concerns about the inclusion of myth and legend in the law of the land. I acknowledge that virtually everyone has a belief of some description or another. Even if a person is an atheist, that is still a belief. We, however, do not expect beliefs to be included in the law. I would invite the Government to think very seriously about that issue. I was heartened in some respects to note that the Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations did acknowledge that concern, which I think is now quite widely felt in this Parliament.

I want to conclude on this point. We believe that settlements must fit within the criteria of building equality—equality within the law. A settlement that infringes that principle in a serious way would not receive our support, and we have signalled our very deep concerns indeed about the settlements around the lakes in the Rotorua area. Essentially that does seem to take rights away from the wider community, and we think settlements of that nature will prove to be harmful rather than helpful. So it is not likely that that kind of settlement would meet with our agreement. But, as a general principle, we do support settlements. We do vote for them. They may not be perfect in every particular, but they do have a pretty broad consensus, as I think the votes in this Committee have demonstrated today. It is perhaps a pity that ACT members do not also support the settlements—at least occasionally—as a testament of good faith to back up their own views about the need to conclude settlements.

We will have the opportunity in the third reading to speak more broadly on this. I think this debate has been valuable. We are bound to signal our concerns about these settlements and the way we would deal with them in the future.

I stand on behalf of New Zealand First and—as people tend to forget—on behalf of the only non-politically aligned party in this Chamber, to support the speaker from the National Party who led off in the debate on these clauses, and to speak particularly to the title clause.

I originally had the intention of putting forward an amendment on a Supplementary Order Paper suggesting that the title should be all in te reo Māori. However, I was taken aback by the decision yesterday by the Minister in the chair at the moment, the Hon Mita Ririnui, to decline the opportunity to support an amendment to recital (32) reflecting the amendment put forward by the Government in its Supplementary Order Paper to the English recital. I had hoped that, in keeping with balance and the desire on the part of the Crown to ensure an enduring settlement with any claimants, the Government would have the good faith to support the amendment that I wanted to make. But obviously that was declined, so I will not put forward an amendment suggesting that the title be changed to include the Māori wording for “Bay of Plenty”. So I am obliged to support the title.

I think it is important that the titles of these sorts of settlements reflect and identify the claimant groups that the settlements are all about. In this case, we are talking about Ngāti Tūwharetoa. As we all know, Ngāti Tūwharetoa is one of the major tribes of New Zealand. Under its present leadership and previous leaderships it has become well known not only in New Zealand but also on the international scene. The bill is appropriately named, although I would have liked to see the full Māori wording for “Bay of Plenty” in the title. Given that the Minister in the chair represents that area—and I note that his electorate does have a Māori title—I would have thought he would be quite supportive of the extension of the Māori language. Unfortunately he is not, so we in this Chamber are obliged to stick with what we have.

In conclusion, I think that the bill is appropriately named. It identifies which part of Ngāti Tūwharetoa this settlement is all about—the group that is resident in the Bay of Plenty. We will support these clauses.

The ACT party has opposed this bill. We recognise that it will be passed. The ACT party recognises that there are legitimate grievances that need to be resolved, and we certainly favour the Crown expediting the settlement of those grievances. That has been the ACT position. We heard from the National Party spokesperson that National had initiated the idea of bringing the treaty grievance industry to finality. I think that that is an expansion of the truth.

I remind the Committee that it was Derek Quigley, the co-founder of the ACT party and an ACT MP in that period, who brought a bill to the House for a full, fair, and final settlement of the treaty grievance industry. He outlined a provision whereby, firstly, all claims would have to be lodged by a set date. Secondly, the Waitangi Tribunal would have been resourced adequately so that it could do the work and sort out the wheat from the chaff. [Interruption] I will come to that member. Thirdly, the tribunal would have been wound up.

What followed was an outrage. The National Party in Government had the opportunity to pass that bill. In Government it voted the bill down. Doug Graham and others actually called the ACT party racist for promoting that concept. Helen Clark in turn said it was impossible. Here we are in 2005, and the National Party, to its credit, has seen the error of its ways. It has adopted the ACT policy exactly, word for word, with the same date mechanisms. That was its policy in 2002, and it has been consistent with it. Good on the National Party, but I ask it not to claim that it was the initiator of the idea. Of course Labour, which said the idea was impossible and an outrage, now in 2005 says: “Oh yes, we have to set dates and time limits on the treaty grievance industry.” That is absolutely wonderful, but Labour should not forget that ACT was the pioneer of that idea. It was a sound, rational, sensible policy when we announced it in 1997, and it still is today.

I will come to the context of why the ACT party opposes this legislation. It is not because we are against settlement—far from it. It is because of the very fact Mr Mapp talked about. New Zealand First has railed against the principles of the treaty. Winston Peters has campaigned consistently about this nonsense of the principles of the treaty. I have to say to New Zealand First that this bill has the principles of the treaty in it, yet Winston Peters and his merry band are prepared to vote for it. In other words, they have to walk the talk. They cannot just say something at the election; when the rubber hits the road here in Parliament, they have to walk the talk. I say to New Zealand First that that is absolutely duplicitous.

Equally, the National Party says that it is concerned about the style of the preamble. So is the ACT party. The preamble is all about metaphysical, ill-defined concepts, as Dr Mapp pointed out. That is why we are opposing it. That is why the ACT party says that this is not good enough. We are laying a bad foundation for the future when we perpetrate in legislation woolly-woofter, conceptual, feel-good mumbo jumbo that everyone may think is great but that no one knows the meaning of. I recognise the role of spirituality, but it is not the business of the State and it is not the business of legislation. We are legislating for spirituality in this bill and in other treaty settlements. That is why the ACT party consistently opposes them—not because we are against a fair and final settlement. God knows, all in this country—including those within Māoridom—are looking forward to the day when we can make these settlements and move forward as a nation.

This is the title debate, but I notice that the debate has been ranging across the bill more widely in quite an interesting way.

I want to make it very clear to the New Zealand First member, who stood up and introduced his party as being the only non-aligned political party in the country, that no one believes that at all. New Zealand First is, of course, the Māori party proper. Everyone knows that.

I am staggered by that speaker’s concern about the title of this bill. His suggestion that “Bay of Plenty” should have been in te reo is not a bad idea. He should perhaps have put forward an amendment to have that happen, if he were serious. But if he were super-serious, then of course he would be from the “Tahi o Aotearoa” party rather than from New Zealand First, and I do not see New Zealand First racing out to the public to start publicising itself as that. Mr Winston Peters, leader of the “Tahi o Aotearoa” party—I cannot see that going down too well. The moment we saw that title come across the screen Winston Peters would be confined to the very low levels in the poll that I think the election will ultimately deliver anyway.

The ACT party speaker suggested that National is somehow doing a bit of a copycat on the proposals put forward by Mr Derek Quigley. He might remember that National backed Mr Quigley back in those days, and, in fact, was quick to embrace the concept, and that it was National that said back in the 1990s that we wanted to settle this whole grievance as quickly as possible. We put a 10-year time line on it. We did not quite get there, basically because since 1993 we have had coalitions in this country, which have not proved particularly prosperous as far as getting this sort of legislation through quickly goes.

However, if ACT thinks it has some sort of right to provide good ideas for the rest of the world to pick up on, I would like to know where those ideas are at the moment. Where are these good ideas? Where are these earth-shattering new views of how to do things? There is a party that, for the last 6 years, has lamented the fact that it has not had the numbers to do anything.

As to the concern from ACT about the reference in the bill to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, I think it would be a strange settlement bill that was put together on the basis of accepting Treaty of Waitangi issues as laid out by the tribunal that does not mention the principles. As I made clear to New Zealand First—my apologies, “Tahi o Aotearoa”—last night, there is a need to refer in some cases to the principles, because those principles are littered throughout so much of our legislation, and I mean that in its most literal sense. So what simply is being said in this bill is that it deals with all those issues. It tells Ngāti Tūwharetoa Bay of Plenty that they cannot go around trolling through bits of legislation to find new interpretations of principles that let them come back to the Crown and say “Let’s have another go.”—which they accept. So from that point of view we are happy with it.

The bill, of course, is called the Ngāti Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill, and we are at the moment discussing the title. It would seem to me that to refer to this bill in any other way at all would be quite ridiculous, so we will support the title.

I will just make a final comment on the concerns about metaphysical references, mentioned by Mr Shirley from the ACT party. From the start of my involvement with the Māori Affairs Committee I have raised issues around this stuff. However, I accept in this case that the references do have a geographic nature. In that regard I think defining the part of New Zealand that is special to Ngāti Tūwharetoa Bay of Plenty in terms that they has always understood in their tribal history is not unreasonable, because when it comes to this settlement bill it is about a giant step in the history of the iwi.