Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill

You know there are some bills that come before this House where 10 minutes just isn’t enough time to talk about all of the issues and the things that need to be put on the table in relation to the law, and here is one of those bills, where I regret that I don’t have 20 minutes to really work through all of the things that are wrong with this bill. I will be moving—so that the Labour Party can think about this before—at the end of the speech for an extension of time of another 10 minutes, and so that is for them to decide.

There’s two basic points in relation to the specifics of this bill that I want to make. But there is also a broader point overall as it pertains to this bill that I want make.

The first point I want to make is in relation to—as Christopher Luxon has described it—the core. If there is any substance in this bill, and it’s not a huge amount and we’ll come to that, but to the extent that there is substance in this bill, the core of it around the non-rateable Māori land and the rates remissions in relation to Māori land, my point there is what the Government has done is hugely problematic. It is hugely problematic. It’s a bit like so much law we see in this Parliament from the Labour Party, where, as Chris Luxon, again, has pointed out, they just haven’t thought it through. They’ve got the visage, the frontage, but there is nothing behind it. The thought, the grunt, the intellectual rigour is not there.

I want to say two things. At one level—you know, they can’t both be right, but I’d suggest actually they quite possibly are here. On the one hand, what we’ve got is a law in relation to non-rateable Māori land and rates remissions that isn’t needed. It’s quite simply not needed. I think that’s the Lawrence Yule point that Chris—you can do it today. The Auckland Council is doing these things. We could argue about whether or not they should, and I’ll come to that, but it is a slogan here in a law that already any council in New Zealand today, anywhere, can do. So you just wonder why they would put this law in place when it’s window dressing. As Chris Luxon was saying to me earlier today about the entire Government, it’s the Disney frontage, and you walk through it and there’s nothing behind it. Minnie Mouse isn’t even there. I say Minnie Mouse is gone. She’s on a cigarette break. But there is a second—

💬 Paul Eagle: Plenty of other mickey mouses on the other side.

Well, don’t talk about “mickey” or “mouse”, OK? But there is a second point that’s problematic, and it’s quite simply this. If there was any reality to this bill, if there is actually something there—which I suspect is what the Labour Party says there has to be. I mean, I suspect they’re not going to get up and say—well, they haven’t actually said anything, really. But they’re not going to get up and say, “Well, this bill’s got nothing to it.” That would be shameful. They’re going to say, “No, no, there’s a real reason to it.”

To the extent there is, I say—and before they get the dog-whistling comments, I’m not dog-whistling. That’s not my game here. There is the appearance of different treatment for Māori land owners than for the rest of the landowners where the situation otherwise might be basically identical, right. It might be the same situation where they’ve got land locked up in multiple owners, etc., etc. The various issues that we have in Māori land might happen in relation to other Pākehā farmers and the like. So why is it that we would just do it for one side and not the other?

Maybe that’s something just—you know, call me radical. Call me Michael Bassett. Maybe that’s something that we kind of should be thinking about. I suspect the other side just isn’t. It’s not just Māori land owners who have unproductive land, who own land collectively, or who may benefit through a series of specific facts from rates remission.

I’d make this point as well—or I’ll stay with just this first point—and that is this: the Government is piling on other costs on landowners at the moment, whether it’s through the environmental stuff of David Parker or whether it’s through—

💬 Christopher Luxon: National policy statements.

—policy statements up the wazoo. All of that stuff is adding cost on. Māori land owners are getting a break; other New Zealanders are not.

So this bill does things that aren’t really necessary. To the extent it does something real, I’d say it’s highly problematic when you get into the detail of it.

But, secondly—it’s my second point—it doesn’t do the hard things, the real reform that Māori actually need. It’s a poor excuse, I say to Meka Whaitiri, to the people in her electorate who need real change, actually—who need real reform in this area. And do you know what the tragedy really is? The reform is there; they just need to pick it up and pass it. It’s not difficult. It got a good way through in a couple of parliaments ago. I can tell you. I can tell you what happened there. I was the Leader of the House in not the last Parliament, but before that—

💬 Hon Member: 51.

—in 51, 49; who’s counting?—and I could see that Te Ture Whenua Māori land reform law should be passed. It would be an intergenerational game-changer for Māori in New Zealand, and I’ll say something—I’m not sure it’s been put on the record before. I went to the Māori Party. In the end—it’s not what they say; it’s what I say—from the bullying of the Labour Party, when I offered them urgency to pass that law that would have made a substantive difference, they got scared out of it by the Labour Party Māori members of Parliament. In the end, they weren’t quite sure that they wanted to do it because they were getting all this gibe from the other side—at that stage, this side of the House—and so it didn’t pass, even though it should have.

What that bill would have done has been summed up very nicely by Chris Luxon. It would have allowed the utilisation of Māori land for wealth creation, for horticulture, for honey, for houses—for all the things that New Zealand does so well. It would have allowed, in Tauranga, in the King Country, in Northland—the areas where there’s multiple landowners, and we don’t even know where some of them are if you’re on some of these Māori trusts—the ability to free that up so that sensible governance and decisions could be made in relation to that land to create wealth for Māori in New Zealand.

That’s a real elephant, or moa, in the room, and I want to say let’s be straight talking about this. We have a situation in New Zealand today where the briefings to incoming Ministers for every department in the Government have “Treaty this”, “Treaty that” on every page—they, literally, do.

💬 Ingrid Leary: I wonder why.

But it’s window dressing—well, it’s window dressing, I say to the member over there. It’s window dressing if you’re not going to do the real things that make a difference. The poverty is getting worse. Inequality has got worse in the last year, probably, than it has in a couple of decades, and I accept COVID’s had a role. The rich have got richer; the poor have got poorer, relatively speaking, and that includes Māori. The statistics are getting worse, and here’s an area—probably one of the biggest single things we could do in relation to Māori and Māori land—and it’s not being done. It’s not being done.

We had Te Arawhiti in, in the Māori Affairs Committee, and they talked a nice game. Ultimately, all I could see was a department that is increasing its numbers by hundreds in terms of staff that is receiving, on average, well over a hundred grand a person a year for process, for Treaty talk, when one of the real things that could be done, that would go a long way, actually, over generations to do something about the poor Māori statistics we see, is here in this area. But not some silly little law that kind of does what’s already being done, and that’s problematic in its way, but it’s very small. It’s a slogan looking for some reality behind it.

How about this Parliament actually pass te ture whenua Māori land law reform bill? That would be something that makes a real difference for Māori, and—in my remaining three seconds—actually, Gerry Brownlee has it in the ballot and could make that difference.

Order! Mr Bridges.

Point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek leave for an extension of time to have another 10 minutes in this debate.

That is denied.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to stand and talk on this particular bill, although I wasn’t there in the last term as the Māori Affairs Committee were passing it through or listening to the submissions, but this is the appropriate time to thank all of those people that submitted into this bill to make their voice heard.

But this goes back a wee way longer than the last Parliament. In fact, I remember stories about one of the previous members for the Waiariki, the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell, doing meetings across the country, talking with various stakeholders, especially up North—people like John Carter, who really championed this. He brought local communities together, he brought Government together, and he made everybody sit up and listen to the problem, which was that there was so much pain in having undeveloped Māori land because of ratings issues that he felt like he wanted to do something. He was propelled into action, and so he brought that to Government. He brought that to the various people at the time. We’re still talking about this now, but, actually, it’s in the right place. It is where it is.

We’re on the second reading of this bill. As I understand it from the previous Māori Affairs Committee, they examined the bill, they made some recommendations that the Minister has indicated she is happy to support. This one, particularly around the rating of multiple land blocks, classifying the origin of Māori land blocks, establishing when a local authority may be satisfied, preventing the sale of Māori land that was converted to general land under the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1967, the powers of the chief executive to write off rates, separate rating areas on Māori land, and registration in the emissions trading scheme as not a use of land—this is an example of Government actually doing its duty and actually working with Māori land owners to help them to achieve their aspirations.

Although we’re still learning about history in schools, I’ve learnt that Māori have had a very traumatic time, when we look back in the history books of New Zealand, and have been rated off their Māori land for many years. Much of New Zealand has been lost through this particular mechanism of rates.

So this is a very contentious issue, and Māori—they sit up when we start talking about rating on Māori land. But I know that there will be a lot of people out there that will be looking forward to us passing this because it will mean that Māori land trusts and incorporations will actually be able to look to the future, be able to unshackle themselves from the ratings which have held our people down for far too long, and be able to achieve the aspirations that our ancestors so rightfully wanted way back at the start. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora. Tēnā koe e te Whare. Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 was meant to facilitate the occupation, development, and utilisation of Māori land for the benefits of its owners. I have some sympathy with my colleagues from National because it does—the ture whenua needs so much work—and I also must acknowledge the disappointment that must have been felt when we thought that the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s member’s bill was pulled out. I was actually excited for that opportunity that we could engage properly with that, and when they realised they’d mixed up the numbers, we didn’t have that opportunity. So I hope that—even though of course the Greens will be supporting this—we have the opportunity to do a lot more work on it.

So we understand this bill will wipe out land rates arrears for pieces of landlocked land and unusable land that whānau have not been able to engage with. We’ve also heard that it’ll help make rates fair and equitable for Māori land owners. We still appreciate that it enables Māori Rāhui kawenata lands to be non-rateable, like other general conservation lands.

We know from working with our own council back home—with council and many of our other landowners—that one of the biggest problems is dealing with council. Now, this is on top of all the other problems we often have in dealing with councils to do with sewage, to do with treatment of mortuary waste, to do with the cleaning up of our streams because of particular businesses and companies not following the conditions of the remits that they’ve been given to do work in our rohe.

As someone who has yet to succeed to my father’s multiple shares in various Māori land blocks, only because I have not done all the paperwork since he passed, I’m aware of the problems that a lot of our whānau have with the fragmentation and a lot of people having tiny amounts of shares, that when they try and put them together, then they’re facing a massive rates bill. We’re pleased that this will be addressed, because that fragmentation is something that really stops our people coming together and doing something together with that land.

So for these reasons, and I’m sure many more, I would like to commend this to the House. Kia ora.

The ACT Party believes in natural rights, private property rights, and that these should be protected from undue interference by Government, and that includes the rights of Māori land owners. We also support the rights of landowners to build on their own land. We do believe also that property should be treated equally under the law and that the rates that fund local council and infrastructure, roading and drainage and waste water, all those other things which our communities depend on to keep the three waters safe—that it’s fair that everybody pays the same amount. They must pay their fair share.

Now, this bill would establish a rates remission regime favouring one group over another, and that’s unacceptable to the ACT Party. But turning unproductive land, Māori-owned land, into productive land is important. However, it’s just not up to the Government to provide that favourable tax treatment. There are other mechanisms available. So, to be clear, ACT does support the development of Māori land by its owners and we support the development of housing on Māori land. We also would support any legislation that truly modernised the rating rules which affect Māori land, but this bill does not propose to do that.

We know that there are many, many people around New Zealand, as well as people who are party to the ownership of Māori land, who have problems paying their rates. There are mechanisms, there are systems so that they can apply for remission or timed payment. In many cases—in Auckland, for example, where I live—we can pay our rates by instalment in the same way as we pay our water bills and our power and our phone bills, and it’s through instalment measures and other flexibility like that that it becomes possible to pay what would otherwise be a very large bill once a year. So there are opportunities for people and landowners to actually get back on track and pay their rates.

Now, in Auckland, where I live, we had an experience of a homeowner, a landowner, who didn’t pay their rates for many years. Auckland Council spent a lot of time trying to negotiate with that landowner to pay their rates. We know there are mechanisms already available to local government to seek to recover rates, to negotiate in good faith, and to give as much flexibility as is needed in order for that ratepayer to fulfil their obligations to the community that they live in.

In Auckland, there was a wonderful woman, an activist by the name of Penny Bright, who, while I might not have agreed with all of her political views, certainly had the best interests of Aucklanders at heart. One of the reasons that she refused to pay her rates was because she did not believe that she was adequately represented, and I know there are groups in the community who believe that they are not well represented at local government level yet. It remains to be seen if that condition will be remedied by other bills that have recently passed through the House; I highly doubt it.

But Penny Bright was an activist. She felt, because of her objections to paying rates, which were philosophical and went back many, many years, that she wouldn’t pay and that she shouldn’t pay and that no one was going to make her pay. Then, unfortunately for Penny, she became very ill and she has since passed away, and I think that’s a great loss to Auckland because she was a wonderful, independent voice. But Auckland Council, despite the fact they were dealing with somebody who had a very large reputation and a big following in her community and amongst her supporters, and somebody who was ill, actually continued to negotiate with Penny in order that she fulfil her obligations and pay her rates. It was only because she reached the very final stages of her life that they decided to forgive and forgo that rates bill that she had accumulated over many, many years. Otherwise, there’s no doubt that Auckland Council would’ve taken the same action to recover those outstanding rates as they do with others who are in default.

So these mechanisms exist. There is a high bar, but they are not to be dismissed. They’re there for a reason, and we know that in local government—despite the fact that many people feel they’re not well represented—the people who I know who are elected members and who work in local government generally do have a great deal of compassion for the people who live in their communities and want to see them achieve their potential. I think that’s where ACT differs greatly from the Government on this. Rather than just wanting to sweep this issue under the carpet, an issue which has existed for decades and decades and has developed, really, because of some fundamental issues around property ownership, access to capital—

This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 16 March 2021.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 5 p.m.