Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill

I call on Simon Court, who has three minutes and 41 seconds remaining.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The ACT Party supports the development of Māori land and we support the development of housing on Māori land, and the modernisation of rating legislation which affects Māori land—but this bill does not deliver this, and for that reason the ACT Party opposes this bill.

ACT believes in natural rights and private property rights and that they should be protected from undue interference by governments—that includes local government—undue interference from being able to build on your own land, because that is what every New Zealander, whether they are a leaseholder or a freeholder or have a shared interest in that, is seeking: to be able to build on their own land without interference.

ACT believes that all property should be treated equally under the law and that the rates that fund the local council and infrastructure apply to everybody, and that everybody who receives the benefits of the infrastructure and those services should pay their fair share. This bill would establish a rates remission regime favouring a group which has other means and mechanisms in order to seek rates relief.

It is important to turn unproductive land, or land with potential, into productive land. But it is not up to the Government to provide those favourable tax treatments. It is for that reason that ACT opposes this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and it’s a pleasure, always, to talk in the House. Just can I acknowledge our Minister of Local Government, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, for bringing this to the House and getting traction, because this isn’t about a race-based philosophy. What this is about is reducing barriers. I know when I see Māori land around Aotearoa New Zealand—1.4 million hectares, much of it unused, undeveloped—and owners who have aspirations for the use of it being unable to develop this land, facing an array of challenges, unique at that—but the worst thing is that they are subject to rates and they go into arrears because these things just have not got the use and the potential of it for them, at ease, to make the land profitable or usable in whatever way that they feel fit. So these legislative changes are part of a wider programme to support Māori land owners, trustees, and their whānau to realise their aspirations.

The pinnacle of this, or the essence, is that it will eliminate the problem of rates arrears accumulating on land that really derives, as I said, no benefit, and, at the most, no economic benefit. I’m hopeful, and the bill sets this out, that it will enable owners of Māori land to discuss development opportunities with their council—and, you know, local government at the moment, mm-mm—without fear that they will be asked to pay rates first. This isn’t about having your conversation with your local authority about paying the pūtea first; this is about having a conversation about what can your land—and if you were a local authority with some decency and dignity, regardless of any use of land, you would see potential for your community of that and think, “What can we use this land for? How can we help landowners realise potential?” Because what’s good for them ultimately should be good for the district, city, or region where that land is, I feel. I think that this bill does that.

Look, I travel around parts of my electorate where there is land that fits this, and it is riddled with issues. I am hoping that this piece of legislation goes some way to supporting the conversation not to be about how much you owe us—people are sick of local government having those conversations—but about what your land can do for your whānau, your community, your city or district. Being on local government myself, I have seen land all over the place, wondering what the potential of that land could be. Often I don’t know who owns it, what the ownership structures look like, but for Māori-owned land, here is a solution, legislatively, that will make it possible.

I sit on the Māori Affairs Committee. It’s a warm and welcoming select committee to all views, but I know that despite a few barriers in other parts of the kaupapa of that select committee—with Māori wards, for example—this has got, hopefully, full support from—I can see the MP for Bay of Plenty nodding his head, looking at me, saying, “Yes, yes, and yes.”

💬 Todd Muller: No, I’m not nodding. I’m “hmm”-ing.

Oh, OK. Sometimes you get confused without your glasses on, but I’ll put them back on. This is a good piece of work. It’s well overdue. Others will traverse the history of this and how it has impacted whānau, iwi, hapū over the years—in fact, over the last century. This brings this process to a halt. It pulls the conversation into realising potential, rather than having a conversation about moni and pūtea, and I’m hopeful that in the years to come we will see that aspiration is realised. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand also to speak to the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill tonight in its second reading. The National Party is opposing this bill strongly. I take the point that the member who’s just resumed his seat, Paul Eagle, has brought up in this debate tonight, around 1.4 million hectares of land that is available for development that is Māori-owned land, and I have to compare that with the amount of land that is in private ownership by other ethnic communities, or other ethnic people, including Pākehā, and I have to wonder why this particular bill targets one ethnicity over another. I know we all want our land to be productive, but why is this particular bill targeting Māori-owned land and not all land? If we were truly looking at the potential of land across this country, we would be promoting the same outcome for all land that is undeveloped. I’ve got some in my backyard that, if the Department of Conservation estate would stop seeding it with gorse seed, we would be able to keep it developed. But do we have a rates remission proposal for that? Absolutely not. And I have to ask why. Why, on the other side of the House, do you not support all undeveloped land, and why is it particularly targeted at one group?

In the bill—the purpose of the bill—it states it’s to support the development of Māori land, but it’s exclusive. And when we think about some of the other legislation that has been going through this House recently—the elimination of the democratic process around the establishment of Māori wards—and then we turn our minds to the three waters proposal that is happening, where we’re talking about waste water, storm water, and drinking water, and then we think about some of the other controls that we have around significant natural areas that are happening on private land, you start to see an accumulation of legislation that looks exactly like State control by stealth. So we are heading into this regime where, actually, private property rights are being degraded, and I think we’re heading into very dangerous territory.

The amazing thing about this piece of legislation is that it’s not actually required, and the reason it’s not required is that councils already have the ability to remit rates, and they do that through their own rates remission policy. So where is the need for legislation? Councils write off rates every year. But the unintended consequence—or maybe it is the intended consequence of this piece of legislation—and I’ll take you back to how the pie is broken up in local government. A council has to look at its intended costs for a year, and all of the projects, maintenance, the new assets they’re developing, and then they put a cost on that. They work backwards from the cost of the expenses for the coming year, and they set their rates based on that. So the less ratepayers that you have that are contributing to those public assets, the more that is landed on the people who actually do pay their rates, and so what we’ve got here is a bit of a cost transfer into those people who are the multiple owners of Māori land. If we think about 1.4 million hectares of land that is available, then there is a huge amount of equity tied up in that land, and surely the cost of rates is not the barrier to development; it is probably more a willingness, or an unwillingness, to take on financial risk and do that work on that land.

Councils already have a huge rate burden, and all we are doing is diluting the amount of people that are available to pay for those public assets, we are increasing the financial burden on those people, and I contend that this is grossly unfair. Everyone in this country has the God-given right to pay their fair share, and this bill does nothing to support that.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We know that the introduction of rating whenua Māori—policies relating to the rating of Māori land for over more than a century—were one of the primary tools of the colonial State stealing land from tangata whenua. The Native Lands Rating Act in 1882 introduced rates on Māori land, much higher rates than a similar European-owned land—up to 300 percent higher. These rates could be difficult to pay, not just because they were high but because it was difficult for those living on the whenua to collect rates from those living elsewhere. When rates were not paid, the land could be seized by local bodies. Setting higher rates that Māori couldn’t afford to pay led to the huge amounts of land in Aotearoa being stolen from its tangata whenua owners and confiscated by the colonial State. In other instances, lands were being valued low so that European settlers would find it easier to buy them.

Up until 1978, local councils could still steal whenua Māori for rating offences. We often talk about the history of Aotearoa being recent history, but this really proves it: councils were stealing Māori land until the 1970s. As a result of these insidious colonial policies and continued breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, less than 5 percent of Māori land is still in Māori ownership.

This bill is a positive step forward, put forward and championed by Te Uroroa Flavell and Te Paati Māori as part of te ture whenua reforms. We are pleased that despite wider te ture whenua reforms yet to be realised, Minister Mahuta has progressed this important and widely supported part of the reforms.

The key changes in the legislation are: local authority chief executives will have the power to write off unrecovered rates arrears of any land, including rate debts inherited by deceased owners of Māori land; most unused Māori land will be non-rateable—this will remove rates arrears debt on unused Māori land—Ngā Whenua Rāhui kawenata, Māori land that has been set aside for conservation purposes, will be non-rateable; a statutory rates remission process will be available for Māori land under development, offering rates relief and encouraging development. These measures are long overdue and have had Te Paati Māori’s wholehearted support for many years.

Ko te pae tawhiti, while the changes in this legislation represent a huge step forward and will benefit many Māori land owners, we must not stop here. Te Paati Māori’s vision is for the reassertion of our mana motuhake, our tino rangatiratanga over our own affairs, our own people, and our own lands. Te Paati Māori commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I open this evening with a whakataukī from Te Whiti o Rongomai from Parihaka: He puāwai au nō runga i te tikanga. He rau rengarenga nō roto i te raukura. Ko taku raukura he manawanui ki te ao.

[I am a descendant from the righteous endeavours, a healing herb from within the sacred emblem. A sacred emblem is a symbol of my unwavering dedication of prosperity, good health, and wellbeing.]

This whakataukī speaks to our support for the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill that we are discussing this evening, because this bill will eliminate the problem of rate arrears accumulating on land that the owners derive no economic benefit from. This will enable owners of Māori land to discuss development opportunities with their council without the fear that they will first be asked to pay their rates arrears. It is a barrier to the progression of where we’re at as a country. Quite often, I speak about our nationhood, about being on the right side of the law at this point of our pathway as a country, and what we saw in the Māori wards debate is opposition to the progression of who we are as Aotearoa New Zealand. And now is the time for us to progress Māori interests, to enable Māori land and the Māori economy, and to support those to progress the things that we want to, not to create barriers.

This evening, I want to speak to Te Kaunihera o Tāmaki Makaurau. I know that this has been through the Māori Affairs Committee last year, before my time, and the select committee made amendments to the bill at that particular time. Those amendments that they recommended were the rating of multiple blocks, clarifying the origin of Māori land blocks, establishing when a local authority may be satisfied, preventing the sale of Māori land that was converted into general land under the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1967, the power of a chief executive to write off rates, separate rating areas on Māori land, and the registration in the emissions trading scheme is not a use of the land itself.

I took the time to read the submission from Te Kaunihera o Tāmaki Makaurau, our Auckland Council, and it’s my job as an Auckland-based electorate MP in Northcote to share their thoughts in their submission, the things that they achieved. Across the House and across our Labour team, it’s important that we understand what our councils are doing and what their vision is for laws such as this. And in fact, they’re doing quite a lot. They’re doing the mahi of what we’re asking them to do. And this is a step towards a fairer system that enables Māori, and particularly enables Māori, iwi Māori, to engage with council in a meaningful way.

The Māori land in Auckland has 265 properties in Māori freehold land title, covering 8,600 hectares of land. This represents less than 0.1 percent of the Auckland rating base. That’s not much but it’s an opportunity for Māori to engage meaningfully with our local council to talk about solutions and opportunities of how they can get involved and they can start to develop their whenua. “Auckland Council supports the proposed amendments set out in the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill (the Bill). The proposals align with the council’s current policies regarding Māori land rates. The Bill also provides council with new powers that will enable us to address long standing issues”—they say—“with rating Māori land. In particular, Auckland Council supports the proposed amendments to: expand the categories of non-rateable Māori land, [to] empower local authorities to write off arrears”—yes, that’s right, to empower our local authorities—“[to] treat rating units of Māori freehold land used as a single economic unit as a single unit for rating purposes to reduce the number of fixed charges that apply, [that we] enable Māori freehold land to be apportioned on request into separate rating areas so that separate occupiers of the land can be rated directly only for the portion of … land [that] they use”. For Tāmaki-makau-rau, this is an opportunity to work with Māori, and we’ve seen steps. We’ve seen their aspirations in Auckland for Māori wards. They celebrate the work that this Government has done. So thank you very much. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a short call on the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill, second reading. Before I get into the substance of the bill, can I acknowledge my opposite, the Hon Damien O’Connor, who has just come with me from the DairyNZ function. He spoke first, David Parker was continuing to speak, and whilst I do find David Parker at times laboriously boring when he gives his speeches around essential fresh water, I do want to put on the table that this idea that we’ve got to finish our little dinner break at 7 o’clock and come back here—we need to sort this, I think, Damien. I don’t know about what I think, but a one-hour dinner break when we’ve got stakeholders out there spending a huge amount of money to come and connect with Parliament—I know this is the Speaker’s call and it’s a Business Committee conversation, but, frankly, I think it’s wrong. And I see the Hon David Parker arriving to his seat. I’m lamenting, Minister, that I never had the opportunity to hear you speak because the dinner break got called. A minor point, it’s not this bill, and I know I’ll be told shortly to get back to it, but, actually, there is a serious point in the observation that part of this role of Parliament is to be accessible to the people and having one hour feels to me that we’re short-changing them.

I will now move on to the substantive issue at hand. I don’t disagree with the broad conversation around Māori aspiration in terms of their land, ensuring it becomes more productive, and the opportunity to partner with local government to help facilitate that conversation. I acknowledge Rawiri Waititi’s very fulsome outline of the issues of history of this country, and it’s an important part of context for this debate. But what is constantly overlooked in this conversation is that the ability for councils to sit with local Māori and work together around how they can make the whenua more productive for the local Māori is not constrained today. Those conversations can happen, those conversations do happen, and if, as part of those conversations, it is identified by the local council that there is a rationale and a reason to remit historical rates arrears, that can happen today. So there is no constraint. So framing up this bill through the lens of freeing up Māori capability, freeing up Māori land productivity, and partnering with local government and that somehow the current state fundamentally precludes that, from the National Party perspective, that is an error.

The specific issue that I’d like to talk on today, clause 50 amends Schedule 1, provides that rating unit of Māori freehold land that is entirely unused is non-rateable. First point: that can happen today. Second point: that Maureen Pugh, I think, very lucidly outlined, is that it brings to a sharp focus the fact that a particular group who has land that is non-productive should have an automatic right of it not being rated, but other groups are still, essentially, open to council individual perspective. We think that is wrong and, as Maureen Pugh well says, what that does is, essentially, puts greater onus on those who are paying rates to pick up the slack.

But the real issue that I want to put on the table this evening is that this is playing around with the edges, because the real opportunity to unleash the productive capacity of Māori land was captured in Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill. And rather than dealing with that complex, challenging, but, ultimately, enabling bill to deal with the core problem, the Māori Affairs Committee of the previous Parliament—two Parliaments back—decided it was too hard and it couldn’t get progressed. So rather than picking up that challenge, despite being in Government, despite having a large Māori caucus, the previous Government said, “No, we’re not going to progress te ture whenua, despite it being the key legislative instrument that would unlock the productive capacity of Māori land. Instead of focusing on doing the real heavy lifting, we are going to play around the edges and put in a specific piece of legislation to formalise what is already happening in local government around the country.” And it is very typical of this Government to speak high rhetoric but actually not deliver fundamental change that will enable unproductive land, in particular in a Māori context, to be enabled and to be released into the true capacity that it has. Because that is the harder issue. That requires deep thinking. That requires building a broad stakeholder and community support.

So instead of promoting and pushing that as an option, we return back to a piece of legislation which, from our perspective, is ill-directed, largely facilitates what’s already happening, establishes a precedent which we do not think is helpful, giving a complete free pass for one group in society but not the other, and is, ultimately, not going to deliver on the core challenge that sits in front of this country and, in particular, our Māori communities around New Zealand, which is: how do we create the conditions for their whenua to become as productive as the owners of the whenua wish it to be? Thank you, Madam Speaker.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe, otirā, e ngā mema katoa, tēnā tātou katoa. I’m pleased to take a call in support of Te Pire Whakatikatika Kāwanatanga ā-Rohe (Rētitanga o te Whenua Māori), or, in our reo tuarua, the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill. Can I first acknowledge the Minister of Local Government, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, for bringing this bill to the House.

I guess I want to, in my contribution, contextualise this bill in the wider suite of Māori land reforms that this Government has put in place under her leadership, and the previous Government, in terms of the amendment to Te Ture Whenua Maori Act, in so far as Māori land owners wanted—i.e., a quicker succession process in the Māori Land Court, the establishment of a facilitation service, things that Māori land owners wanted; not what the Opposition wanted but what Māori land owners wanted. So that’s what this side has done. We’ve made those amendments to Te Ture Whenua Maori Act.

We’ve also established the $100 million Whenua Māori Fund. This is where we start putting, on this side, practical resourcing around Māori land owners. I’m responding to some ill-informed comments made from that side of the House, in so far as Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill is concerned. We are supporting this bill, but it must be seen in the wider context. Members from that side of this House have come and said, “Here’s the answer to Māori woes when it comes to Māori land—Te Ture Whenua.” As you can see, it is a well-conversed bill that several Parliaments ago, I sat and challenged the Government of the House on.

I want to correct some statements around the Māori Affairs Committee in not passing this bill. That’s not correct. This House stopped that bill because the member, the Minister that sat in that seat, the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell, ran out of time. We put an absolute challenge to him that if we’re going to pass something that Māori land owners feared, and there is plenty research both in the submissions to the select committee, but what people said publicly—so all I want to do, because I’ve got a short call on it, is correct the record.

Māori know what they want to do with their land. They absolutely know what they want to do with their land, and what Minister Nanaia Mahuta’s bill is doing is amending the back arrears so Māori land owners can develop. Does that mean that once they develop, they won’t pay rates? No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t. It means that those that have been alienated, or underutilised land, have now the opportunity, by removing an absolute impediment, which is rates.

Now, I want to turn to the committee’s—because I was on the Māori Affairs Committee, I want to thank all the councils that came before the Māori Affairs Committee and those that submitted that look forward to the passage of this bill, councils that submitted. When you look at the minority view that the Opposition put in this bill, there were four reasons that they gave that they weren’t supporting it. One: a lack of time. So that was one of their reasons. There was a lack of time in that, and I was waiting to hear from the members. One was around—this is the solution to multi-ownership of Māori land; no understanding about the tikanga and whakapapa that we have to whenua. So multi-ownership is not a reason why you actually change the law around Māori land, but that’s what they gave. They also said this disadvantages councils who are already doing it. Well, that’s not what councils said when they came before the select committee.

So, look, I just have to respond because there are people that are making some comments. They think that Te Ture Whenua is the way forward for Māoridom. I want to stand in this House and say it’s absolutely not. It’s the programme or reforms that this side of the Government has, honestly, put through, which are those amendments I have mentioned. It is the $100 million Whenua Māori Fund, which will help unlock potential around Māori land. But this bill also enables the building of much-needed whare on Māori land. So it’s with all those reasons that I support this bill to the House. Kia ora tātou.