Roche DeniseDENISE ROCHE (Green): E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe. E Te Whare tēnā koutou katoa. I rise to take a short call on behalf of the Greens on this bill. I had the privilege of sitting on the Māori Affairs Committee for some of the submissions on this bill to support my colleague Marama Davidson who has already spoken.There were about 150 written submissions on this bill and about 47 or so oral presentations. I have to say that the quality of those presentations was pretty phenomenal particularly given the absolute complexity of the original legislation. The purpose of the bill—it has been stated by the Minister as well—is essentially to protect Māori land rights of whenua taonga tuku iho to retain control occupy and develop their land as they see fit. We have grave concerns that the bill that is coming back to this House will not actually do that. We have a number of concerns and they are broken down into the process that has been followed and then the content of the bill—or lack of content.Firstly the process. Other speakers on this side of the House have referred to it. But this is the first piece of legislation on Māori land since 1993 and my understanding is that that law was passed then after a careful process that took 20 years. This bill is extremely rushed in comparison. Yes there were hui beforehand and there was some feedback. But given the complexity of this bill I do not think that was enough and certainly that is what we have heard from iwi katoa right across the land.Then we come to the content. This bill comes back to the House after 16 different drafts and there are significant changes in this bill that is being debated tonight from the one that was introduced in the first reading. That is good and bad. It is good in that the select committee worked incredibly hard and I acknowledge the chair Nuk Korako and I acknowledge the Māori members from this side of the House who went to huge lengths to debate—and at times some of those debates were fairly fierce—points in this bill to make it better for when it came back to the House. But again we have concerns about this because what comes back is not what has been consulted on. If we are going to have this far-reaching legislation that changes that legislation from 20 years ago then iwi Māori should have had time to discuss the changes that have been made by the select committee and they will not get it.I have to note at this point that I join with others on this side of the House—actually right across the House—in thanking the officials for the advice and the quality of the advice that they gave because of the complex nature of many of the clauses in this bill. It certainly helped me a lot while I was sitting in.Then there are the bad parts of this the content. Essentially we have got some really grave concerns about the Māori Land Service. Others have actually referred to some of the submissions—particularly the one from the Māori Women's Welfare League—that basically said that the legislation as it is being presented is based on what the law should look like rather than on what is wrong with the current law. We saw no compelling evidence—in fact no evidence—that there was something wrong with the Māori Land Court. To the contrary we heard that there were some major issues with concern about the loss of continuity and legacy around changing the Māori Land Court. It is impossible to agree to a piece of legislation when the final details are not published and we do not know how the land service will work.We are also concerned that this bill will not result in iwi not being alienated from their land because it does nothing to address the Public Works Act and the confiscations of Māori land under that. It is too important for Māori land to mess with and pass through legislation that has not been dealt with appropriately and has not been thought through. For these reasons we will be opposing this bill.