Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi Claims Settlement Bill

Clause 1 deals with the title of the bill. There can be no doubt that the words in the title “Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi Claims Settlement” by and large reflect what the bill does. I do not want to argue that the title of the bill should change. What I have to say is that at the end of a very long process, we are very disappointed to have been put in a position today where it becomes almost impossible for us to support the passage of this settlement bill. One may ask why I bring that up now. It is because of the use of the very word “settlement” in the title of this bill, which is to become an Act. When that is considered alongside schedule 12, then I think that those who have read schedule 12 will begin to see the difficulty that the use of the word “settlement” in the title creates, because it confers something upon this particular iwi that is not there for other New Zealanders. We will speak further of that in the third reading debate, but I take this moment simply to indicate the difficulty the National Party is currently wrestling with.

Again on behalf of New Zealand First, I want to say that the title is quite clear. The bill is about a particular claimant group. The title identifies the name of the claimant group, and that is really what is needed from a title.

The previous speaker, Gerry Brownlee, said that this bill gives some rights to the claimant group that are not available to other New Zealanders, and I accept that he is quite right to raise his concern about that. But this bill is about Ngā Rauru Kītahi’s claim; it is a settlement between them and the Crown. However, we do express some concerns about some of the entitlements that it gives this claimant group that are not available to other New Zealanders, and that should signal to the Government, and therefore the Crown, that care and thought should be given when considering future claimant settlements that come before this House.

In terms of the commencement, again, I ought to say that there may be a technical reason why the bill cannot come into force until the day after the royal assent is given, but this claimant group has waited a long time for this settlement to take place. Although some people may consider that an extra day is not too long, I think that if it were technically possible, the bill should come into force the moment the royal assent is given.

On behalf of New Zealand First, I say we support clauses 1 and 2.

Before I start, may I ask for some guidance. I have assumed that the expanded form of preamble that is now in some of these bills is, in fact, part of the title. The title used to be called the long title, and this is a very, very long title. It seems to me that the preamble would not have been debated under any other heading, and I propose to address some parts of the preamble.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): The preamble has already been agreed to. However, the member may wander over any aspect of the bill, from the first page to the last—any issue at all.

The debate being a title debate—I understand. The matters I wish to draw attention to are matters that one day will be seen in the same light as the issue that Mr Brownlee has now indicated—and I think the people of New Zealand should be grateful for that—the National Party is starting to treat seriously, and that is the language that appears in settlement bills, and the importance that that language might have for future generations. We must try to make sure we actually are settling claims, and are not simply creating fresh foundation for new claims.

The title states that the legislation is a settlement, and it immediately follows a preamble that recites a series of events in what I imagine the Crown would argue are non-judgmental terms, but which I believe future generations will cite as some kind of parliamentary confession. There are statements about facts there, and there are statements that are probably highly controversial.

I do not know whether this particular claim and the lead-up to it were involved, but about 8 years ago I was told by one the Crown Law Office people who had been engaged on treaty claims work that when he left he could not stand the work any longer. He had been instructed not to challenge evidence that he knew came from people who were unreliable, their having been declared unreliable in completely unrelated court proceedings, and he was not allowed to put forward matters that he believed were relevant. I have no idea whether that relates to the Ngā Rauru Kītahi claim, but I am reminded of it because this title follows a preamble that records that the Crown gave the Waitangi Tribunal an indication of a number of matters on which it would not give evidence. It then recites what undoubtedly were very nasty events 150 years ago. But at the end of it the Crown says that the “disempowerment” recited by the Waitangi Tribunal, the “denigration and destruction of Maori autonomy or self-government”, is a breach of the treaty and its so-called principles.

That disempowerment theory, that autonomy notion, is at odds with the treaty itself. It is at odds with the principles on which any healthy society works. We simply cannot see around the world any prosperous, forward-looking, healthy society where people spend their time arguing about who has ultimate authority on a race basis. By reciting the disempowerment theory and the autonomy theory in the preamble to this bill, the Government is setting this country up for another argument in 20 years’ time. If the money runs out, if it is lost, if the settlement does not bring a new millennium of prosperity and happiness, there will be some people who come back to visit it. A document that purports to be a full settlement should not contain within it, by deliberate obfuscation, the seeds of more argument. We should know whether this bill is endorsing that tribunal decision. We should know whether this House, by simply recording that decision without comment, is trying to separate itself from it. I am sure that in 20 years’ time someone will say: “Parliament never meant to endorse it. It simply recited it.” But I believe that it has been put there to mislead the claimants into thinking it is being endorsed, and that is wrong. Either it is endorsed or it is not, and the legislation should state it.

The title talks about a settlement, but, as Mr Brownlee says, there will be no true settlement in a document that sets out to try to mean one thing to one side and another thing to the other side—or, maybe, multiple things. There may be more than two sides here. There may be those who oppose claim settlements on one side, and in the middle is the vast body of New Zealanders who want to see injustice remedied, who are embarrassed by what happened in Taranaki, and who wish they did not have to learn about Parihaka and the treatment of Māori rightly defending their property and existence—their tūrangawaewae. There is huge goodwill, and a huge wish that these things be put behind us. But by recording the autonomy theory and the disempowerment theory—as if disempowerment were itself a breach of the treaty—we are setting up this House, this country, and this Government to have the next generation come back and say: “Clearly, we still don’t have power. Clearly, we still don’t have autonomy. Clearly, there’s a standing breach of the treaty.”

I think there are very few, if any—perhaps the Green Party—in this Chamber who would agree with that. Perhaps Labour would have agreed until 2 or 3 years ago—until the Ōrewa speech, until Mr Mallard started his review of the effects of race distinctions. I think it is wrong to have a vote on this bill treated as a form of endorsement of a theory that, when the Waitangi Tribunal came out with it, immediately generated a storm of justified protest. I am not sure whether it was the interim Taranaki report that contained the famous holocaust words—[Interruption] It was. Well, that is not a report that this House should be reciting in the preamble to legislation as if it were something we endorsed. It was a report that discredited itself by its extremism. I am sure there was some very sound historical work in it, but the judgment that was applied to that work by the tribunal in the writing of the report means that it should not be given weight, and it should not be recited as if we accepted its authority. It appeared during a period of the tribunal’s outpourings that actually lowered the tribunal’s mana. It meant that the tribunal became something of a mockery after that. The recital of that report as authority immediately precedes the title provision, and Parliament is not doing itself any service by passing law in that form.

The Māori Affairs Committee corrected minor matters of Māori presentation. It went to the trouble of having a translation in the bill rewritten, but it did not look at the substance. The substance of the preamble is what people will look at in the future—not whether there was some clumsy translation.

In this Committee stage, I am glad to hear that National is actively considering whether it can vote for the bill as a whole. I urge Mr Brownlee to take into account, as well, the effect of voting for a bill that implicitly endorses the “holocaust” report, because I suggest that that is the effect that will be claimed in terms of recital (18) of the preamble, which precedes the title.

Clause 1 agreed to, and clause 2 agreed to.

Bill reported without amendment.

Report adopted.

Third Reading