Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill

I move, That Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the bill.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. E te Whare, tēnā koutou katoa. Whatungarongaro he tangata, toitū te whenua.

[As man disappears from sight, the land remains.]

Whenua is of vital importance to Māori. It is essential for Māori that land is retained through generations. It is whakapapa. The vital relationship that Māori have with land is recognised as whanaungatanga, and if Māori can act as guardians of the land’s natural and physical resources, that is kaitiakitanga. There are more than 27,000 blocks of Māori land under the present Te Ture Whenua Maori Act, comprising 1.4 million hectares, about 5 percent of the total land mass of New Zealand. It has been estimated that up to 80 percent of Māori land is underperforming for its owners. In many cases, this is because of structural issues which stem from the existing legislation. Under current legislation, fragmentation is getting worse, not better, and there are thousands of owners who remain disconnected from their land.

Even if whānau, hapū, or iwi have managed to hold on to some of their lands through confiscations, war, or have succeeded in having their ancestral whenua returned, the odds are still stacked against them to build a single house upon it, to develop papakāinga, or to operate enterprises on that land. Picture this: in many parts of the country on one side of the road, you can see farms where the title was granted by the Crown and is thus considered general land. The property on that side of the land is productively developed and farmed by its owners. In part, this is because owners of general land have easy access to mortgage loans and other financial assistance. Owners of general land have easy access to finance, because banks can call in the mortgage if they fail to service it and can sell the land to recover their costs. On the other side of the land, Māori freehold land owners, or land that is Māori customary land, face big challenges in developing and building on their land. The problem for lenders is that it is a big risk to provide lending in respect of land with multiple owners. This is because banks cannot call in whenua Māori if the loan is not paid as the finance institutions cannot sell the land to recover their costs.

I note the Kāinga Whenua loan scheme, which is an initiative between Kāinga Ora and Kiwibank to help Māori achieve landownership on multiple-owned land. However, that also has its limitations as it puts limits on the type of house that can be built, purchased, or relocated. It must be a one-storey house of at least 50 square metres. It must be on piles so it can be moved, and it has to have reasonable road access. As a consequence, far too often, Māori freehold land tends to remain underdeveloped. It’s not because Māori land owners don’t want to live and work their whenua but it many ways Te Ture Whenua Maori Act in its current form does not empower them to make the decisions they need to improve the land or to build housing and papakāinga.

This bill provides clearer governance structures such as trusts, incorporations, or external administrators to administer the land for the benefit of the participating owners. It also provides accountability mechanisms to ensure that those who are entrusted to govern the land for the benefit of iwi, hapū, and whānau do so competently and can be held to account for any breach of duty. This would be likely to give financial institutions greater confidence in lending to multiple-owned whenua Māori land for papakāinga intergenerational collective housing as well as agricultural and other enterprises on that land.

There are two key aims at the heart of this bill. Firstly, the bill will strengthen Te Ture Whenua Maori Act to keep Māori land in Māori hands. Secondly, this bill will empower iwi, hapū, and whānau to make their own decisions about how they wish to maximise the potential of their whenua for their benefit and the benefit of future generations. This legislation supports the enhanced performance and productivity of Māori land, which has the opportunity to provide billions of dollars of additional economic and cultural benefit for the owners. Māori land has the potential to produce up to $8 billion in additional value for the Māori economy. This bill reflects a policy shift to more clearly support land utilisation and productivity as determined by the owners themselves. National’s objective with this bill is to keep Māori land in the undisturbed possession of its owners and its occupation, use, and administration by them for their benefit. Laws and policies must emphasise and consolidate Māori land ownership and use by the whānau or kin group. It is, however, important in determining where we need to go to examine more closely where we have come from.

Over the years numerous reviews of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act have emphasised that the law for Māori land needs to be an enabling law so that the participating owners can make decisions without having to get court approval. Multiple reviews have repeatedly determined that the law is required to be a protective law too so that Māori land is retained by Māori. The law needs to give Māori land owners a clear and accountable governance framework within which to develop their land. Moreover, the law must include a better dispute resolution support structure for Māori land owners, and the law needs to have options to address fragmentation.

This can only happen by replacing the current Act, not just tinkering with it. There have been more than 180 statutes relating to Māori land over the last 168 years—180 statutes and 168 years, and, unfortunately, that volume of legislation reflects the tendency of politicians to fiddle around the edges of this important issue rather than deal with comprehensive reform of it. This bill is based on the fundamental principle that Māori land endures as a taonga tuku iho by virtue of whakapapa, that tikanga Māori is fundamental to matters involving Māori land, and that the Treaty of Waitangi is central to the application of laws affecting Māori land. The bill is also grounded in the idea that Māori land owners have the right to decide for themselves how their land is governed and how it is used, to take advantage of opportunities to develop their land for the benefit of present and future generations, and to have disputes managed in a way that maintains and enhances relationships among the owners and members of the whānau and hapū.

As of 2018 the Māori economy was worth over $68 billion. Over the past decade, the Māori asset base has been growing at 10 percent a year, much faster than the overall economy. The Māori economy is on track to reach $100 billion by 2030. A PricewaterhouseCoopers study prepared for the Ministry for Primary Industries in 2013 suggested that the benefits of improving governance and management of Māori land could increase financial benefit to Māori by up to $8 billion and create up to 3,600 jobs over a decade. The growth of the Māori economy is a great success story. This bill would support and accelerate the growth of that economy by improving the performance and productivity of Māori land by and for Māori. Unleashing the potential of Māori land is crucial to setting up Māori for success in their post - Treaty settlement future.

National believes that when Māori succeed, New Zealand succeeds. The New Zealand National Party has a proud tradition of supporting Māori to unleash the potential of their whenua, their land. Sir Apirana Ngata, the legendary National Party native affairs Minister during the early 20th century, embarked on a programme of enabling Māori to develop their land. Sir Apirana Ngata pressed ahead with land development schemes and initiated schemes across New Zealand where he could find underdeveloped Māori land in local communities willing to work it. Through this legislation, National is backing Māori aspirations and broadening opportunities by enabling Māori to unlock the strategic potential of their resources.

National wants to boost the Māori economy and improve outcomes for Māori by supporting Māori in their self-development and self-determination. This bill reforms and restates Te Ture Whenua Maori Act into a modern, fit for purpose law which strengthens the protections of whenua Māori and unleashes the productive potential it can provide for iwi, hapū, and whānau. Whereas the current 1993 Act has the Māori Land Court as its central focus, the reforms proposed in this bill will place the legislative focus on the land itself and the rights and authority of the owners. This bill reflects a policy shift to more clearly support land utilisation as determined by the owners themselves. This is done by providing a new framework within which owners of Māori land will themselves be able to determine, design, establish, and operate effective governance arrangements for their land. The new framework establishes a clear and explicit governance environment, providing certainty for those working within it, flexible options for governance structures, the ability to reflect tikanga Māori in governance arrangements, baseline thresholds for certain decisions, and appropriate measures for Government accountability.

The bill would achieve the dual aims of protecting Māori land and supporting the productive utilisation of whenua Māori in several key ways. First it will allow engaged land owners of Māori land to make governance and utilisation decisions without needing approval by the Māori Land Court. The current regime is structured so that a number of decisions cannot be taken by Māori land owners themselves because they are subject to endorsement by the Māori Land Court. Currently, this ranges from long-term lease decisions to the establishment of trusts and incorporations to ratify any decisions of assembled owners. This serves to disempower owners and makes decision-making processes unnecessarily complex for most of the decisions effected.

The bill would also continue and strengthen safeguards to support the retention of Māori land in Māori ownership. Thirdly, the bill would unlock access to landlocked land. Many Māori land owners, particularly rural land owners, are unable to maximise the potential of their land due to where their whenua is located. Approximately 27 percent of Māori whenua is landlocked. When whenua is landlocked land owners must have either really good neighbours who will let them drive over their whenua or they can’t actually get to it other than by walking. The law as it currently is requires Māori land owners to approach surrounding neighbours and negotiate and formalise reasonable legal access. The lack of reasonable access to whenua is a huge legal and practical obstacle to the development and utilisation of whenua.

This bill is a significant step forward, and I would hope to see support from the Labour Party, the Māori Party, and the Green Party. I have written to all members of the House seeking their input on this, and I hope they will at least support this bill through to select committee.

Sitting suspended from 6.03 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to also take an opportunity to thank my colleague on the Māori Affairs Committee for bringing this forward. We have a very collegial understanding on the Māori Affairs Committee, and we try to check our politics at the door and make sure that we’re actually tackling the real issues that our people want us to be able to face. Unfortunately though, this isn’t one of them. For that reason, I’ll not be supporting this bill.

This is a bill that deserves a little bit of a history lesson because that’s where this bill started. It started way back in 2016. It was brought to the House. It was introduced by the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell. He had gone out there and had done a little bit of consultation with the community and then was ready to ram it through the House. Fortunately, that wasn’t able to happen. It went to the Māori Affairs Committee, and the members at the time voiced their concerns. There was a submissions process, and there were people that are very highly regarded in Te Ao Māori that also voiced their concerns against this too.

I want to note the submission from the judges of the Māori Land Court, who actually put in a submission against this bill. They were very fearful of the upheaval and the huge leap that was going from legislation for which—way back when Te Ture Whenua Maori Act, the first Act, was put in place in 1993—there was a lot of work that was put into that legislation. This isn’t the same. Although it’s a long bill, it didn’t have that same kind of negotiation that it had out there in the community, especially amongst Māori stakeholders.

At home—back home in the Bay of Plenty and the Waiariki and Rotorua—we have lots of Māori land. At the time there was concern raised from the community—a lot of our Māori land owners—who were saying “We don’t know about this bill. We don’t know enough about this bill. We don’t like it. Sure, there’s things to tweak in the ture whenua system, especially in the court system, but we think that we can do that with smaller, more incremental changes, rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water.” That was the sentiment of the submission that came in from—again—the judges of the Māori Land Court and also members of the community that engaged me on that conversation too.

This bill is almost an identical copy of that bill, which gave so much concern at the time. There was significant concern from iwi and from Māori all around the country, and also you had organisations like the New Zealand Law Society and the Human Rights Commission that actually fronted up and said this is not a good piece of legislation. Yes, we need reform, but this isn’t the bill to do it.

Sadly to say, it was actually an issue that we took on the campaign trail in 2017 and the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell was voted out because of this legislation. There was a real fear in the community that he was moving way too fast on this and hadn’t done the ground work. I’m sad to say to my colleague this is a cut and paste, and it has not had the groundwork done on it. It still is very identical to the bill that came before the House back then, and, for that same reason, we have to oppose it. This is not good legislation.

In the meantime, what we have done as a Government is implemented small changes at the Māori Land Court. Can I give a little shout-out to the people that live and breathe life in the Māori Land Court—my mother being one of them. She gave 20 years of her life, up until her retirement last year, to Te Kōti Whenua Māori. When you work as a case manager in that environment, the work is heavy. It is very heavy.

One of the things that I know that her colleagues wanted was actually a more streamlined system. They said, “We want for not every case to come before court, because we don’t think that a judge needs to preside over everything that happens in the Māori Land Court. We think that that can be done in a streamlined, more administrative way.” We’ve made those changes since we’ve been in Government. We also didn’t want to come into Government in 2017—having turned this bill down and opposing this bill—to not actually do anything. So we put in place a series of reforms. Our Minister the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, when she was leading the Ministry of Māori Development, made sure that these changes were put in place—a more streamlined administrative system so that not every case has to go before the Māori Land Court judge.

The ability to actually create an environment where you don’t go there just to talk about your land grievance but actually you go there to talk about your land and also what opportunities there are for you to be able to build on your land and do some productive things, which everybody wants—that’s currently happening with the service that we’ve got. We bolstered the efforts of Te Puni Kōkiri to be able to assist the Māori Land Court to be able to help Māori land owners to realise their aspirations, whether it’s papa kāinga developments in housing or horticulture opportunities and being able to do some really innovative stuff in that way. We’ve made some tweaks to the system. They’ve been good tweaks to the system. There isn’t the call for this reform.

I need the member that’s bringing this to the House to understand this: there is no call for this reform. The people that work inside the Māori Land Court understand the changes that we’ve gone and made as a Government. We did it in two tranches. They’re very happy with those changes, and we need to make sure that we’re actually listening to the voices of the community and those people that are at the coalface in this. There isn’t the call for change.

For that reason, I again—with, I’m pretty sure, our members on this side of the House—will be voting against it, because we believe that the Māori Land Court has got an absolute job to play, remembering that the history of the Māori Land Court isn’t an easy one—

💬 Simon Court: We’ll take the win, from the member. “Pretty sure” is a back down.

TĀMATI COFFEY: I don’t know what he just said.

💬 Simon Court: You’re “pretty sure” you’ll be voting against it, so that’s a back-down. So there’s still—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Order! You’ll get your turn.

TĀMATI COFFEY: He will get his turn, and it’ll be pretty predictable about what he might say.

The Māori Land Court actually has a turbulent history in Te Ao Māori—remembering that this came at a time when the Māori Land Court was put in place to actually individualise titles on Māori land. Collective Māori land that was owned by tribes suddenly had to be individualised, and, actually, there was a lot of pain and a lot of heartache through that system. In fact, I know, as chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, that in the establishment of the Māori Land Court there were petitions flooding into this House of Parliament from Māori all around the country saying, “Our land is being taken. Our land is being taken. You need to listen to us.” Unfortunately, this House didn’t act as it could have and should have, and much land was taken through that process. We’re still making up for it now.

But the Māori Land Court has actually turned into a museum and an archive of knowledge. It has the minutes of our grandparents and our great grandparents standing in those courts of law fighting for their rights, fighting for their lands, and talking to us about whakapapa, about who owns what, and about which boundary is the boundary between my section and that person’s section. It’s become an absolute treasure trove of knowledge, and for that reason I have the utmost respect for the system as it stands.

Can we do better? Of course we can—of course we can. But having to go through this and doing monumental change when it isn’t called for is the wrong thing to do. I appreciate that the member thought that there were some more legs in this bill and that he could just dust it off the shelf and put it back into the parliamentary system. I understand that. I get that. He probably just needed a member’s bill and thought this was the right thing to do. But this was a really challenging piece of legislation that led to the departure of the Māori Party from this House in 2017, because Māori and land is a very, very sensitive topic, and you don’t take it lightly. We’ve had to fight for the amount of land that we’ve got these days. We’re still fighting those fights. So to be able to touch legislation like this and think that you’re going to get support without the call, without the groundswell from the people at the front line, and without the Māori community backing you, actually makes this bill pretty hollow.

For that reason, I won’t be supporting this bill, but I do again thank the member for bringing this to the House so that we can have that discussion. But things haven’t changed, and there is still huge concern about the content of this bill, and there’s been not much change between the original legislation back in 2016 and this legislation that’s being presented before the House right now. For that reason, I do not commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Kia ora. As is the custom, I congratulate Joseph Mooney for having his bill drawn from the ballot—I’m still crossing my fingers after 18 months—and it has come up on the Order Paper so many times, I think I wrote the notes for this last year. So I’m glad that it can be addressed tonight one way or another. I certainly agreed when you spoke first before the break that when Māori succeed Aotearoa New Zealand succeeds, so kia ora.

To add to the whakapapa outlined by my colleague Tāmati Coffey, we note that this comprehensive and weighty bill is effectively the same one introduced by the National Government following the review of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act in 2013. I understand it met with a lot of opposition at that time and was subsequently withdrawn in 2017 by the Hon Nanaia Mahuta.

I’m on record as supporting a complete overhaul of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. It has so much wrong with it, I believe, and to date we’ve only seen piecemeal incremental changes to it: different laws that take small chunks and try to make sense of it. The previous Government, of course, went on to pass the Te Ture Whenua Māori (Succession, Dispute Resolution, and Related Matters) Amendment Bill in August 2020, and the current Government has passed the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill and the Local Electoral (Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill. All of these we did support.

So this bill, we note, has drawn upon advice of the review panel of March 2014 and submissions on an exposure draft that was extensively consulted on back in May 2015. It does seek to improve the performance and productivity of Māori land, to repeal and replace the current law relating to Māori land, and to allow Māori land owners the right to do more and improve that performance, and, absolutely, it correctly identifies it is underutilised land.

We note that it intends to prescribe a clear decision-making process and provide the Māori Land Court with more discretion—we support that aspect of it—as to whether the partitions will assist owners on Māori freehold land to retain, occupy, or develop this land. However, as I’ve mentioned, in other bills and in any pieces of legislation that come in, the Government determines how Māori must account for what they’re doing in their decisions on their own land, and there remains that paternalistic aspect of this bill, which seeks to determine what Māori should do once they have access to their own land. I would so love to see a bill which just gives Māori land back to the owners—the original owners—and allows them to just do what they like with it. Hence Hoki Whenua Mai and #LandBack.

I would like to say that the policy statement at the beginning of this bill is actually really beautiful. I thought that that was really well written, so I just mihi to that, but I think this bill does not live up to it. I don’t think enough has been done to it that makes it really, really fit those goals.

We were vocal opponents of previous iterations of this bill because many Māori viewed it as having been rushed and having had inadequate consultation for them when it was initially introduced. As Mr Coffey has identified, hapū and iwi across the country did not support it because they felt that it didn’t uphold their tino rangatiratanga and that the whenua was still not being properly protected through its provisions. They felt that even though so much work went into this, it still didn’t actually resolve some of those issues around providing active protection and accessing landlocked land.

So our position is always that all these land reforms need to be led by whānau, hapū, and iwi. I don’t know that necessarily it shouldn’t go ahead because there’s not a groundswell of people saying we should have this at the moment, but these are longstanding issues. This will always be an issue. We feel that the concerns that have been raised by those iwi, hapū, and whānau have not been addressed in this bill, so tonight we’re not able to support this and we do not commend it to the House. Kia ora.

E te Māngai o te Whare. Otirā, tēnā koe, Joseph. Congratulations on getting your bill drawn from the members’ ballot. Like Tāmati Coffey who just spoke prior, I will not be able to support this bill or commend it to the House. I’ll just outline my reasons for that.

So my involvement with whenua Māori goes back at least a decade, first in the Waitangi Tribunal where our hapū claims were taken to the Waitangi Tribunal. One of the first claims that was filed were our issues with the Native Land Court and now the Māori Land Court. So I am acutely aware of the types of issues and challenges that whānau have with Māori land.

But also, more recently, when I was a councillor on the Far North District Council, and we were dealing with the issue of rates on whenua Māori. The challenges that the legislation presented in terms of the rates arrears on whenua Māori, and how that inhibited many whānau in their desire to utilise their land, whether that be for housing or for economic development or other purposes. I also sat as a commissioner on the papa kāinga plan change for the Whangarei District Council.

So the reasons why I am not supporting these wholesale changes to Te Ture Whenua Maori Act is because I think that a lot of the issues have been in other pieces of legislation, which this would not have addressed, but it is also in the lack of policy. And really—and I was talking about it with the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who has also had extensive experience with Māori land—it’s the lack of funding available to whānau to be able to do things on their land. We shouldn’t have to change the legislation for them to be able to access the funding.

So I want to talk about the things that this Government has been doing, which I think addresses some of the issues that this bill was proposing to change. So, first and foremost, I’m very proud of the legislation introduced by the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, the whenua Māori rating amendment bill. That legislation was over a hundred years old, and, as I said, from my experience on the Far North District Council, knowing how much Māori land had rates arrears on it when this was land that had never been used, never been able to be utilised, was one of the reasons why whānau believed that they couldn’t now be in a position to either do housing or development on their lands because of the huge rates arrears that were on their whenua. Now with that legislation, councils are able to write off those rates arrears, not have to wait for the six years to be able to do that. They can write that off. And that is one of the major barriers, I think, to whānau being able to progress any of their aspirations with their whenua.

At the time, the Minister said that the bill was part of a wider set of initiatives that the Government is working through that aim to provide Māori landowners with tools to support them to use, develop, and live on their land, and to support whānau to reach their aspirations and the full potential of their land, removing obstacles so Māori and local authorities can develop strong relationships and remove those historical rates arrears and apply a non-rating clause to land that we know isn’t currently being utilised.

But in the minute that I’ve got remaining I want to talk about a couple of other initiatives. We did pass amendments to te ture whenua to address more streamlined succession. There’s an alternative dispute resolution process in there where whānau can use tikanga-based mediations. These are some of the things that this bill proposed, which we have, in fact, already changed in legislation. But most recently, the change to the Kāinga Whenua Loan Scheme cap from $200,000 to $500,000 I think is more realistic for what it costs for whānau to build houses on whenua Māori. And then the final one is the Te Ringa Hāpai Whenua Fund. So, in 2019, we had $100 million contestable fund for whānau with aspirations to develop their whenua, and in Budget 2022 an additional $10 million to realise their aspirations. So I want to commend the Ministers, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta and the Hon Willie Jackson, who have been doing a huge amount of work in this area with policy and legislative changes and funding to support whānau to realise their aspirations. I think that’s what is desperately needed. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. ACT likes this bill and we are supporting it. We commend Joseph Mooney for bringing it to the House and congratulate him for getting it pulled from the ballot box. It reflects a commitment to property rights in a Māori context, and it’s important for allowing Māori to realise their full potential and opportunities in the rights of land ownership.

Currently, large tracts of Māori-owned land are underperforming for their owners and this is largely due to the constraints stemming from current legislation. If we can improve the performance of productivity of Māori land, it has the potential to provide hundreds of millions of dollars for the economic and cultural benefit of its owners, their whānau, and their hapu, while at the same time ensuring that there is better guardianship of the land—better than letting it go to gorse and not being utilised at all.

This bill would mean that Māori land owners will be able to make beneficial changes and still keep their taonga. But best of all, they won’t have to go through the Māori Land Court process if 75 percent of the owners are in agreement on progressing their land use.

For those at home that are wondering why we need to legislate, let me explain it this way. Māori land can be difficult to work with and much of the reason why is because there can be many owners with disagreeing views on how to utilise that land. Banks are often not tempted to award mortgages because they cannot use the land as security, and those that do get standard home loans often have to put their homes on piles, ensure that there’s road access, so that those homes can be uplifted for removal if the mortgagor defaults on their payments. Māori land passes from one generation to the next. That is, its transfer is based on bloodlines, not sale and purchase agreements, nor marriage. This can become a problem when the parcels of shares to a block of land become smaller. Of course, that happens as each generation grows.

My sister and I will inherit my father’s Māori land when he passes. He and his four brothers inherited their share from their father. So my grandfather’s share was broken into five parts. The share that my grandfather inherited came to him after it was broken down into six parts for sharing with his brothers. That means that the share my great-grandfather had has been split amongst his six sons. Those shares are then split again amongst their children and then again amongst their children, which is my generation. My share will then be split among my four children. This is our whakapapa.

You can quickly see how a parcel of land can produce multiple owners over just a couple of generations. Once you get many owners, it becomes harder to agree on what to do with the land and get financing for initiatives. The volume of land that we’re talking about here is large. It’s 5 percent of the total land mass of New Zealand, comprising 1.4 million hectares—or 27,000 blocks—that are held as Māori land, and much of it is underutilised.

The Māori economy contributes $68.7 billion to our GDP, a figure and achievement that should be shouted from the rooftops. But Labour doesn’t celebrate it at all and will hinder the growth of Māori by not supporting this bill. There is so much untapped potential here. Māori should be able to grow and realise that potential with their whenua asset. Where Māori can contribute $68 billion from their hard mahi and innovative ideas, imagine how much more can be produced for their whānau, hapu, and iwi if they can actually use their land. Living costs might just be affordable for many, including our elders. The bonus will be in the potential further contribution to the country’s $68 billion GDP already being delivered: an estimated $8 billion and the creation of over 3,000 jobs.

This is a sort of boost to our economy that can contribute to making it healthy again, a necessity in these trying and expensive times. There is so much innovative potential being lost when 80 percent of Māori land is not being utilised due to bureaucracy. This bill seeks to alleviate that bureaucracy and open up Māori land for whānau opportunities. We commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak in the first reading of this bill, and probably the last. But I want to congratulate Mr Mooney, a new member to this House, and I was initially very impressed when I saw 393 pages full of a member’s bill had landed into the Bills Office, but on closer inspection, this was just a copy and paste of a bill which did not follow the passage through this House. It was, effectively, removed by the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, and for very good reason.

As has been outlined by my colleagues, on the issue of Māori land, I’m sure the whole House agrees that we want to ensure that Māori land can reach its optimal production value and have benefits that can accrue back to hapū owners and regions, so it’s very important. But there is a long whakapapa to Māori land, especially Māori land legislation. The 1993 Act, as Mr Coffey mentioned, was some 20 years in the making. So there is a lot of policy development and a lot of consultation, just in terms of the very nature of he taonga tuku iho that is Māori land.

As we know, the history of our country is set out in every Treaty settlement bill that comes through this House. It talks about the modus operandi, of which the Native Land Court, or the Māori Land Court, was a big part at the time, which actually helped divest and take land away from Māori, so much so that, as Mr Mooney mentioned, there’s only, what, about 5 percent, if that, of the total land mass of Aotearoa left which is te ture whenua Māori.

So this issue needs to be looked at very carefully. Policy development and consultation with Māori has to be right from page one, not from just putting forward a 393-page bill on a members’ day, and I’ll give a case in point. We’ve already dealt with certain parts of this bill, as has been mentioned, with the Hon Nanaia Mahuta. We did it in stages. We took targeted amendments to ensure that we followed a proper process and proper policy development to ensure that we could improve certain aspects. So if I look at this bill, I think it still contains Part 7, and that’s already been dealt with by a separate piece of legislation around the administration of estates. Likewise, the rating of whenua Māori in Part 16 has already been dealt with. We’ve already passed legislation through this House dealing with these specific issues. So it’s not fit for purpose. I think better effort should be done in terms of proper consultation and policy development.

I remember when this came through the House. There was an uproar from Māoridom in terms of the pace and the far-reaching implications of the provisions of this bill, and so it was, rightly, discontinued. But a more staged approach of more targeted reforms, which we are doing as a Government, is the preferred way.

There are a lot of successful examples of Māori land interests that are doing very well. Passing a law is not necessarily the panacea to ensuring that there are optimal economic benefits accruing from Māori land. Quite simply, a hillside remains a hillside; marginal land remains marginal land. But there are examples such as the Tuaropaki Trust in Mōkai up in Taupō District—over $1 billion in an ahu whenua trust operates under te ture whenua Māori law. We can look at all the host of Māori incorporations, as well, that are doing very well around the country, also operating under the existing law and also doing very well.

In terms of the fragmentation, yes, fragmentation is an issue. But it’s long been provisioned that we can create trusts—whānau trusts—to group up those interests, so it’s not as if there’s this uncontrollable fragmentation that takes place. We can go to the Māori Land Court and deal with those issues.

So this isn’t fit for purpose, but I acknowledge Mr Mooney for bringing it to the House, and, yes, I’m sure you might have better luck with another piece of legislation. I commend this—I don’t commend this bill, sorry. Oh, rewind—rewind! We oppose this bill. Aroha mai.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I just acknowledge the previous speaker Rino Tirikatene, for his good work, and a wee correction at the end there—that’s a good start to the evening.

Can I acknowledge and applaud the member who’s brought this bill to the House, Joseph Mooney. I have the pleasure of sitting on the Māori Affairs Committee with Joseph, and he does a good—

💬 Shanan Halbert: He’s a good man—good man.

—job in terms of—he is a good man—representing Māori issues.

In terms of this particular bill, though, you’ve heard from previous speakers on this side of the House that we won’t be supporting this member’s bill. We don’t feel it’s fit for purpose, and I say that because it is almost an identical copy of the 2016 Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill that was put forward then; it was discharged later in 2017, and that was primarily because of just the overwhelming concern from all involved. So, without knowing in detail what went on back then, I am somewhat surprised. But none the less, it’s good to be talking about Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill.

It’s interesting. I’ve learnt a lot about Māori land and laws, and how the whole thing interacts and connects. It’s complex—there’s the word. Having the Chatham Islands in my patch, we’re just going through the Treaty claims settlement process with the Moriori and Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri and getting an understanding about how when people land there, they go, “There’s plenty of land”—lots of gorse too, but lots of land none the less—“owned by Māori and tied up with”—

💬 Joseph Mooney: Lots of pigs.

Lots of pigs, too—nice poaka to eat, but we’ll talk about eating and that another day. But getting an understanding about the complexities of Māori land and how it’s tied up has taken some time. It’s good land that I see there. Look, it’s got the potential, and I feel that in terms of some of that targeted reform that we have done since 2018 to now in terms of legislative reform, some of that’s happened.

I give an example here, where we’ve got, say, for example, better provision for housing. There was a targeted amendment done to the Act to support the Māori Land Court and its processes to strengthen that regulatory framework. Those amendments included just that simplification of and for the succession of Māori land, new provisions for whāngai and an emphasis on tikanga of the relevant hapū or iwi, and new processes for a dispute resolution with new mediation provisions.

That’s key, because I mentioned the word “complex”, and it’s been vital to try and simplify that or get some clarity and to do that quickly, because it is locked up. There is the need to say that, well, if we are going to get some progress, then those targeted reforms to the 1993 Act just show that rather than just doing a wholesale reform like this, those targeted measures do actually work, and there are some good examples there around how that can happen. I mean, there were more in 2019 and 2020, where they were talking about additional—or they impacted the valuation and rating of Māori freehold land, too. So that happened in 2021, covering a whole lot of things ranging from rates arrears to remission of rates—that’s a biggie. You find that people have found that the complexity and the know-how is just too tough.

So I guess that whilst I applaud our member on the opposite side, what I’m saying, with some really practical examples here, is that there are some targeted reforms happening already. They will do a job. It doesn’t show a need for this, hence the reason why we have said it’s not fit for purpose. So, unfortunately, I do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to this bill this evening, and I too want to congratulate Joseph Mooney, who has a done a lot of work around this bill, shaping it, progressing it though caucus, preparing it, and bringing it to the House here tonight, and, indeed, having it drawn. I recall a very senior person in this House making the point of what a privilege it is to have a bill drawn from the ballot box and that, over the many decades that he had been here, he hadn’t actually had a bill drawn. I also recall the comment behind my “Maybe you should have put one in the ballot box.” But that’s a different story.

Joseph has brought his legal background to understand the detail to this bill, and that’s clearly shown through to us here in caucus, and despite the comments and the commentary that I’ve heard tonight, it’s not clear to us and it’s certainly not clear to me that the issues that te ture whenua was looking to address 14 years ago are at all well addressed here today. I want to look back and just reflect on some of the background that brought us here. Indeed, if we look at some of the commentary that Labour was making back in 2018, they were commenting and suggesting that they would do exactly these sort of reforms that we have here in Joseph’s bill here tonight.

In 2008, Labour policy was “to help Māori realise the economic potential of Māori land by reviewing Te Ture Whenua Maori Act”. Three years later, in 2011, the same Labour Party said, “The most effective way to ensure the wellbeing of Māori is to grow the position of Māori in the economy. Māori are no longer passive bystanders in the New Zealand economy; they are active participants. The challenge for Labour is to grow this figure, to grow the Māori economy, for the benefit of all Māori”. Then Labour proposed in 2011 that they would review ture whenua land legislation to simplify the development options for multiply-owned land. So, you know, Labour had been proposing for many years to do exactly what this bill is doing here, and the fact that it’s not in their name really shouldn’t be relevant if there’s good work that might come from this. I would suggest there is.

When the Hon Chris Finlayson took this over, the commentary’s been made that maybe—and maybe I didn’t hear correctly—there hasn’t been enough dialogue with Māori, and then that Te Ao Māori were unhappy with the outcomes 2016 to 2017. I would make the point that when Chris was Associate Minister to Pita Sharples, he had discussions with very senior people in Māoridom—Toko Kapia from Ngāti Apa, Matanuku Mahuika from Ngāti Porou, Dion Tuuta from Ngāti Mutunga, and Dame Patsy Reddy were all involved with an exposure draft that was quite rare to actually put out, and had widespread discussion.

I think there are several parts of this bill that particularly interest me that I see no redress and answer to today. The section in Part 3, looking at kaiwhakamarumaru, which is for disabled people to have a say in the management of land and Māori affairs—this bill replaces the jurisdiction of the Māori Land Court to establish a kaitiaki trust for owners under a disability with a new jurisdiction to appoint kaiwhakamarmaru to act as managers for owners needing protection; being owners under 18 years of age or owners who, in the opinion of the court, partly lack the legal capacity or competence to manage their own affairs. This seems like a good thing and, to me, it seems like it’s still an area of weakness.

The other area I’d point to is a tidying up of the part of the old Act that talks about the disposal of Māori land, which says that freehold Māori land can be disposed to a “preferred class of alienees”, and this is an odd sort of aggregation of terms. Children descendants of owners; that makes sense. Whanaunga of an owner; that makes sense, as well. There’s about eight items here. The one I’m looking at is descendants of any former owner. What it misses here is former owners. So what this bill does in clause 109, page 88, in Part 4 is specifically address that. Just by way of example of a hole that needs fixing that clearly Labour hasn’t fixed, this bill would fix here tonight on its progress through select committee—and the redress here is in clause 109(1)(iv): “any former owners of the land, and descendants of any former owners of the land, including the land when it formed any part of a former parcel;”. There’s a solution right there to a problem we have here today.

This bill addresses many, many problems, actually. I recall the discussion with Marama Fox, actually, around a whāngai, and she was very adamant, very strong, actually brought very good ideas to the table—I happened to be in the Māori Affairs Committee that day—and that is also addressed by this bill. It still stands out there hanging, to my mind, under succession, so I think this bill does address a lot of existing issues in Māoridom, and it’s a bill that the National Party will be supporting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As you know, I hail from the mighty Mōkai Pātea, and across the beautiful hills and maunga as I look towards Aorangi I consider the amount of Māori land that still sits with us—a very small percentage of what my iwi originally had. But I look to it and I think, how are we going to develop the many, many acres that we currently do have? What I do agree on, in a sense, is the importance of how we unlock whenua Māori—yes, how we use that as an economic base for our iwi and to establish our future.

This bill seeks to repeal and replace the current law relating to Māori land, to allow land owners, and their whānau and hapū to improve the performance and productivity on their land. So it’s quite an aspirational statement there, which I tend to agree with to an extent. My friend Joseph Mooney, who is on the Māori Affairs Committee with us, is a good man, and I said that before—he is a good man and he had considered this. I’m unsure, however, to the extent of how Mr Mooney has considered this particular bill. It has a chequered history and, you know, I’m encouraged that he’s gone back so far to look into that chequered history. But something hasn’t quite landed with him to realise that it was not a successful one at the time, and it’s certainly not a successful one now, my friend. When we look into this we look back to the submissions, and at this particular time we have the submission from Te Ropu Wahine Maori Toko i te Ora—the Maori Women’s Welfare League. It says, “The Maori Women’s Welfare League opposes Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill in its entirety.”

💬 Chris Bishop: Oh yes. And who’s the CE of that?

Maybe the noisy one across the room might want to do a speech on this at some point and respond to it. But I am encouraged by National’s attempt to reach in to building better Māori policy, because they do need to do something drastic in that area, so good on you, Mr Mooney.

But back to the Maori Women’s Welfare League—they opposed this bill. They said there’s no rational basis for wholesale reform and repeal of Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993. They talked about Māori land being a taonga, and we’ve heard tonight how sensitive the discussion on Māori and whenua Māori is. They go on to say in the submission, “The process undertaken in respect of this bill falls well short of the most basic requirements of genuine consultation, let alone the higher duty that exists under the Treaty of Waitangi where the subject matter is Māori land.” Now that’s one submission from one of the most influential Māori organisations in Aotearoa. They did not support this bill then, and they certainly don’t support this bill now.

If we look to another submission, the submission of the judges of the Māori Land Court to the ministerial advisory group at the time, they called this a “high risk approach to law reform”—“high risk approach to law reform”. And maybe that was about the speed—I think Mr Coffey earlier talked about “ramming it through the House”; and I’ll remember that for future legislation that comes through here—but that the bill will completely rewrite and replace the existing legislation with two particular Acts. That Act at the time came about following lengthy discussions with iwi Māori—lengthy and meaningful discussions with iwi Māori.

So I’m a bit confused, Mr Mooney, this evening—and, you know, “A” for effort, my friend, on putting a piece of Māori legislation through the National Party. Good on you, and keep it up. Let’s do more, but let’s ensure that we do the groundwork that we need to at the particular time where we have the support of Māori groups, of iwi Māori and hāpu—that they support such legislation before we put it back into this House. In the research and the previous submissions, you should have learnt from that time. I encourage you to put more forward, and kia kaha—thank you for this, but I do not commend this to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real privilege, as tangata Tiriti, to take this last call for the Labour Party on this member’s bill. Like others, I want to congratulate the member Joseph Mooney for having the bill drawn from the ballot. I cannot support this bill, not around so much the substance of the bill, because I was not on the select committee, but it’s very apparent from listening to the contributions tonight that the process around the bill is not tika and it is not pono, and that concerns me, and it is evident in the lack of support for the original bill which occurred in 2016. There were heavyweights including Māori land owners, trusts, and incorporations, Māori Land Court judges, the Human Rights Commission and the New Zealand Law Society, which all came out against it.

We have heard tonight about the considerable work that has been done by this Government to address some of the issues that were in that original piece of legislation. It’s a tribute to the Māori Affairs Committee that my colleague Arena Williams has written to Mr Mooney on 8 June 2022 to outline in great detail why she doesn’t support his bill. It shows the collegiality of that committee, which I’ve had the privilege of experiencing myself on the times that I’ve sat on it.

But in summary, the Government, on 19 September 2019, introduced a bill comprising three targeted amendments, including te ture whenua Māori succession, dispute resolution, and related matters.. On 12 April 2021—additional reforms. There’s been ongoing legislative reform work in terms of a Māori Purposes Bill that is scheduled for introduction this year. Work has also resumed on the development of a Public Works (Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill to adjust the ways in which the Public Works Act 1981 relates to and impacts on whenua Māori. Other substantive reforms are being extracted from the 2016 bill and developed and implemented in the context of amendments to that 1993 Act. That’s all a significant amount of work, and we can see the level of ambition that the member’s bill has sought to achieve with 393 pages of proposed legislation. That’s really unusual for a member’s bill, and I would suggest ambitious, and, perhaps echoing the words of Elizabeth Kerekere, wondering about whether it is a slightly paternalistic approach, given that Māori are not at the centre of leading this charge.

So I’d like to finish with the words of Minister Willie Jackson, who spoke on this bill previously in the House, and he said, “Māori have a deep spiritual connection to whenua, which is a taonga tuku iho, a treasure handed down from earlier generations to be nurtured and cared for by the next generation. Māori are the kaitiaki of this taonga which provides a source of unity and identity for tangata whenua.” I respect those words. I respect that Minister, and also, actually, the previous members from this side who spoke—and a special shout-out to Rino Tirikatene who has moved down into Ōtepoti. So just want to acknowledge how strong we feel having Rino there and the contributions he made earlier tonight with the Kāi Tahu legislation, member’s bill, that he is getting through.

But going back to the bill, I respect that process around what is tika and what is pono for tangata whenua to sort out their own affairs in relation to land that directly concerns them. It is not for others to bring this forward without adequate consultation and draw the opposition of such heavyweights as the Māori Land Court judges, the Human Rights Commission, the New Zealand Law Society, and the Māori Women’s Welfare League, as we heard from my colleague Shanan Halbert.

So there is work to do. We’ve heard that from Paul Eagle tonight. There has also been a substantial amount of work that this Government has already done pursuant to the 2016 bill being withdrawn, and there’s been significant progress made. But a member’s bill is not the way to do that and certainly not a member’s bill that hasn’t gone through the correct tikanga, the correct process. I think being Dutch I’m perhaps a little bit more forthright in how I say that than my Māori colleagues on this side of the House.

I again congratulate the member for having his bill drawn and echo the words of Shanan Halbert to say, “Keep going. Well done.”, and fantastic work by the select committee and tautoko to their collegiality. I don’t commend the bill to the House.

I call that good man Joseph Mooney—five minutes in reply.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I just wanted to thank everyone who’s contributed to the debate tonight and just respond to a couple of points.

The National Party wholeheartedly recognises that Māori land is a sensitive issue and that’s why this bill has been very, very careful and has actually done a lot of work to strengthen the protections for Māori land, for Māori whenua. So this would ensure that there’s further protection to make sure that that land is not alienated from Māori. That’s been a very, very key component of this bill.

But equally, it is focused on how to unlock the potential of that land for Māori. Because we hear constantly that Māori cannot build on their own land, they cannot develop their own land. You know, we’re talking about 5 percent of New Zealand which is in Māori ownership but cannot be utilised properly. That is an issue that has not been solved; I have not heard from the opposition tonight on how they propose to solve that issue.

Look, I note back in 2011, the Labour Party said the most effective way to ensure the wellbeing of Māori is to grow the position of Māori in the economy. The National Party wholeheartedly agrees with that position and that’s what this bill is all about. Labour’s 2011 manifesto further observed that Māori are no longer passive bystanders of the New Zealand economy; they are active participants.

In 2018, the Māori economy was worth over $68 billion. Asset values have increased significantly since then. It’s on track to be worth $100 billion dollars by 2030. That is fantastic and we want to support measures that can actually encourage that development. If we can help solve this issue of 5 percent of New Zealand land mass—1.4 million hectares of land—that is owned by Māori so they can utilise it themselves, they can enhance the protection of that but also develop it and decide what is best for it; that was what we want to do and that is what this bill is about.

I’ve heard just a couple of speakers talk about paternalism, and this bill is actually quite the opposite. This is about enhancing the tino rangatiratanga of Māori in respect of the governance of their own land. The current Te Ture Whenua Maori Act unfortunately has an element of paternalism in it in that the Māori Land Court is required to make decisions in respect of pretty much everything in respect of Māori land. So that is actually paternalistic, and we with this bill are actually trying to solve that issue and take it away from paternalism and give that power to Māori to decide what is best for them and the development of their own land.

I do thank the member for Manurewa, Arena Williams, for writing to me today and for detailing at some length the reasons why she would not be supporting the bill. I would just say that this is not the same bill as the one she campaigned against a number of years ago. This bill has been the result of an extensive consultation, including the circulation of exposure draft for submissions, which is not usually done.

The current version of this bill is the result of over 21 drafts, considering feedback from submissions from numerous reports, consultations, 20 hui across the country, and a select committee report. The real way to solve the issues that have been raised by the Government—the Government parties and Green Party—tonight is to actually send this to select committee so we can hear from submitters about how to solve these issues because these are complex issues.

These have not been solved yet, and the issue still remains. Māori cannot, for example, build papa kāinga on much of their land. That is something that’s just not good enough in 2022 and this is what we want to solve.

I do want to thank Nicole McKee from the ACT Party for engaging with me. I wrote to every member of every other party in the House, and she was the only one who actually came back to me before today and interacted with me on this bill. It shows, I think, the value that the ACT Party places on actually trying to solve these issues.

I acknowledge that the Government parties want to solve these issues as well, but it would be good if we could move past just being partisan on these issues and actually look at how to solve them. Because, I mean, fundamentally, we don’t want to just kick the can down the road for another generation to try to fix. We need to actually do the hard mahi now for this generation of Māori land owners so they can get on the ladder and utilise the land for the betterment of their tamariki and future generations.

I do acknowledge Nanaia Mahuta has put some measures in place, but the valuation and rating of Māori freehold land, for example, is a symptom of the problem, not a solution, because Māori can’t actually utilise their land to develop and use it for their own purposes. Thank you, Mr Speaker.