Delahunty Catherine: Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress and Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress and Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 13 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10547. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare he mihi nui ki a Tauranga Moana nau mai haere mai ki Te Whare Pāremata![Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Acknowledgments to the House and a huge one to Tauranga Moana; welcome come hither to Parliament House.]To the kuia and kaumātua here today the whānau here today and the voice of the pēpi we heard in the Chamber urging us to remember that this is about mokopuna katoa the next generation welcome welcome. Thank you for being here for this moment of history your history which Te Rōpū Kākāriki wishes to honour and acknowledge. We wish to support the bill all the way through its process and to honour and acknowledge the extraordinary effort of Ngāi Te Rangi Ngāti Ranginui me Ngāti Pūkenga hapū katoa o Tauranga Moana [and all subtribes of Tauranga Moana]in your incredible survival commitment to change and willingness to rebuild a future in Aotearoa alongside us Pākehā despite a painful history which has been touched on already by the Minister for Māori Development the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations and other speakers this morning.I just wanted to acknowledge a quote from Charlie Tāwhiao: “For [more than] 150 years … five generations of [our] people have been carrying an unbearable pain that this weekend will end and allow us to get on with the work of moving forward. We’re very pleased to hear that the Crown has acknowledged that up until now it has not properly dealt with the injustices we have suffered—that it now recognises we had control over our tribal area up until it started the war with us in 1864 that caused real suffering for many of our people.” I think that that is a really important quote in terms of understanding the history of Tauranga Moana. In the little that I know as someone who lives up the road in Hauraki this is a wealthy beautiful fertile amazing part of Aotearoa. Nowhere is as unique as this settlement or has had some of the unique dispossession that took place—the violence that has been visited on this area.I just want to acknowledge that war is a good way to steal land. What actually happened in 1864? We who have been taught such limited history think that there was a battle at Gate Pā. There was generosity and honour shown by tangata whenua warriors. Those things are true but that is not the reason there was a war. The reason there was a war is described well in a historical account. “Conflict in the Tauranga district between the Imperial troops and Maori warriors became … inevitable when in January 1864 three ships landed almost 700 soldiers at the tiny settlement known as Te Papa. At the time the government claimed that its intention was to prevent Maori from Tauranga and the East Coast lending support to the Kingite forces in the Waikato by sending men and supplies to the Waikato. However the government was also keen to increase the amount of fertile land available for settlement. Provoking a fight in the Tauranga district would provide a reason to confiscate productive land.”That is the truth of the matter: provoking a fight would provide a reason for raupatu. As the Minister said some 50000 acres were taken in raupatu and in subsequent forms of legalised theft right up to the late 20th century including the infamous Public Works Act. I just want to honour the survival and the determination of Tauranga Moana iwi and their commitment to work together where they share common interests to develop a future. It is not a simple matter. Others know this better than I and we will hear more no doubt through the select committee process but it is a total tribute to those people.My deep concern about this is that Pākehā do not understand. I would venture to say in Tauranga it is the same as everywhere else: this wealthy place with many wealthy and comfortable homes where there are many Pākehā people living comfortable lives in the context of an extreme dispossession that they do not understand. I was disappointed when the Minister of Education said that Land Wars education in Aotearoa is a choice for schools. It was not a choice for tangata whenua in 1864. It was not a choice when the Public Works Act took their land. It was not a choice to engage in the Treaty settlement process. It was a necessity in order to consider the future for mokopuna.How is it a choice for my culture to not know these things? How are we holding our heads up and saying we will not teach our children what has happened? How can the settlement be full and final if we do not have the understanding in my society of what happened and why it happened? How are we going to get the buy-in? It really disturbs me because I know that Tauranga Moana iwi have worked very very hard to create this with the Crown but my culture is still ignorant.I recently went to the freshwater consultation process and I was horrified by the blatant ignorance and racism of my own people in talking about relationships with natural resources. As we know natural resources are at the heart of this settlement in the sense of the damage that has been done particularly but not only to two awa in the rohe. I was there when the Rena foundered and I helped scrape oil off the beaches and that is a continuing hurt for Tauranga Moana. So this is a contemporary issue.How will we have a relationship? How do we manage our resources?The Green Party believes that education of everybody—tangata whenua tangata Tiriti katoa—in Aotearoa is not a choice but a necessity as a peacemaking parallel process alongside this important process that we are here to do today. If we do not follow those things we are going to have a whole lot of people floating around with their ignorance on the news and on their talkback shows hurting other people misunderstanding their place and being ignorant about history.I believe it is Parliament’s responsibility to do better than that. As we are doing better than that today with these processes we have to do better than that with education so that every citizen in Tauranga Moana understands what happened at Pukehinahina and Te Ranga understands what rohe they are in and knows the names the places the history the meaning of why we are here today and how this is about giving back 2 percent of what was taken. This is not to paralyse my culture with guilt but to inform us with the ability to engage with respect with history to give a deeper understanding of our own place and a recognition of the value of Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a place where we can all stand if we stand with honour and respect. But if we do not educate our own while the tangata whenua are bending over backwards to build a relationship then it is on our heads. It is our failure. We as elders of this country—those of us who are over the age of 25—need to take some responsibility for this.There are many interesting and moving parts to this settlement and one of them is the maunga of the rohe: the beautiful Ōtānewainuku Pūwhenua and Mauao—these peaks and their story. I was a young person when I was told the story of the mountain that fell in love and then could not have his beloved. The patupaiarehe tried to help him throw himself into the sea. If we understand that story we understand that what has driven so much of the Treaty settlement process is law and is economics but it is really love of whenua love of maunga love of awa from the tangata whenua side. We all need to know the story and feel the love that actually supports Tauranga Moana as identity for everybody based in and started with the stories of the tangata whenua which are more than stories; they are whakapapa.So it does disturb me a little—and and no doubt it will come back after the select committee process—that the maunga peaks are not being returned. Recently we had a Department of Conservation briefing about what conservation land was available for settlement and I was disturbed by that briefing in the sense that my culture just seems to refuse to be as generous as we need to be. It is more than the peak; it is the maunga. It is more than reserve status; it is full return. That is what we would like to see in many of these settlement bills. It is more than right of first refusal; it is a generous return of a theft because when you steal something the thief is not normally giving it back. Kia ora koutou katoa.