Ririnui Mita: Whanganui Iwi (Whanganui (Kaitoke) Prison and Northern Part of Whanganui Forest) On-account Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
Ririnui Mita: Whanganui Iwi (Whanganui (Kaitoke) Prison and Northern Part of Whanganui Forest) On-account Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:674;Page:19993] 
Hon MITA RIRINUI (Labour) 
: 
Tena koe. Otira kia ora tatau i roto i te Whare. Ahakoa kua oti ra te Wiki o te Reo Maori i tera atu wiki e tika tonu ana kia korerohia to tatau reo tuatahi o te motu i nga wa katoa. Hoi ano ra kai te Kaihautu tena koe tena tatau katoa. Ae tautoko ana i tera korero. 
[ 
Thank you. Greetings indeed to everyone in the House. Even though Maori Language Week finished last week it is very apt that our first language of this country is spoken at all times. So salutations to you Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson and to all of us. Yes I support that sentiment. 
] 
It is obvious that the Labour Opposition will be supporting the Whanganui Iwi (Whanganui (Kaitoke) Prison and Northern Part of Whanganui Forest) On-account Settlement Bill and for obvious reasons. Those reasons are that the real work the really difficult work that is required to bring a proposal like this to the table with all its tentacles intact is the testing part for any Government. I was a little bemused shall I say by the contribution of the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations to the bill in that he spent something like 80 percent of his time attacking the Labour Opposition in terms of our performance when we were in Government. 
Charles Chauvel 
: 90 percent. 
Hon MITA RIRINUI 
: I stand to be corrected—it was 90 percent of his contribution and it took only 3 minutes. I think it is very important that at times like these when these difficult settlement bills come to the House we acknowledge in full the part that all parties play in this level of success. 
I was disappointed—I did say I was bemused but I was disappointed—with his contribution. You see to get a proposal like this to the table requires a hands-on approach from the Minister. It does not require continual interaction by officials to the point of nausea or to the point where the claimant community becomes absolutely fed up. We learnt that in our time in Government and that is why under the previous Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations the then Attorney General the Hon Dr Michael Cullen a hands-on approach was required. I think that everyone in this House would agree that once that approach had been taken Treaty settlements actually accelerated. I have yet to see a settlement bill from this Government introduced to this House that it actually started from the beginning—in other words where it has actually walked amongst the claimant communities in order to get a buy-in to its policy. 
Hon Parekura Horomia 
: Paul Quinn’s got through. 
Hon MITA RIRINUI 
: I have not seen that happen yet and I am sure the member across the House Paul Quinn of Ngati Awa descent is familiar with what I am talking about and what it takes to make settlements a success. It is really necessary also to acknowledge the huge contribution that the negotiating team of Ngati Apa played in the success of this particular bill. I have praised them in this House on many occasions. They were a young team they understood the importance of collaboration when it comes to settling Treaty grievances and they understood the need for collaboration when it came to post-settlement arrangements. 
There are some people in this House who would think that the biggest problem that W’anganui had was the “h” in Whanganui. Well I do not agree with that at all but that is an issue that is important to them locally. If that was going to be the silver bullet for the ails of Maoridom I would put an “h” in Tauranga but we know it would not fit. The former chair of the Maori Affairs Committee laboured on that point for quite some time—that is that essentially the major contribution from the Government representatives on the Maori Affairs Committee in relation to this important bill was where the “h” in Whanganui actually fitted. Well whether or not one puts an “h” in it I pronounce it the same way: W’anganui “h” or no “h”. The problem is not my pronunciation; it is actually the English language and the way it spells the word “Wanganui”. But we have all learnt to live with that as my colleague the Hon Parekura Horomia echoed in this Chamber this evening and it is time to move on. 
I think everything we need to say about this bill has been said over and over and over again and it is now time for us to congratulate all of the parties involved and also the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations. Although he has yet to prove himself to be able to be engaged upfront with the claimant communities it still needs to be acknowledged that this is a major achievement for his portfolio. I am sure that in the future he will have many more challenges to confront as he deals with negotiation groups particularly from the Bay of Plenty. 
I have no more to say in relation to this bill. It has been a long long journey for the W’anganui cluster and I am sure that along with many of us in the House they are actually quite pleased that it is over. I notice that this bill was introduced to the House in September 2009. It is now July 2011 so we have to ask why on earth it took so long if it is such a simple bill. It cannot be blamed on filibustering at the Committee stage because all the Labour Opposition was attempting to have clarified was whether the Government actually understood what was involved in the bill itself. This is an on-account settlement and we all needed to be clear about what that meant. It was important that at the Committee stage—and this is what the Committee stage is for—we asked all those questions. If the Government or the Minister in the chair cannot answer those same questions then we will continue to ask them until there is total clarification about what in this case “on-account” means for this legislation. 
So as I said earlier on the Labour Opposition is very proud to support this bill simply because all the hard work out there in the communities where the rubber hits the road was undertaken by the previous Labour Government. Kia ora tatau. Kua oti ra. 
[ 
Greetings to us. It is done. 
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