SpeechROTORUA DISTRICT COUNCIL (REPRESENTATION ARRANGEMENTS) BILLFirst ReadingTĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): I move That the Rotorua District Council (Representation Arrangements) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the bill and at the appropriate time I will move an instruction to the committee that it report back to the House by the end of May.I would like to have the House's indulgence just for a moment and talk about a beautiful little place in the middle of the central North Island a place that once upon a time people travelled to from all around the world—prior to COVID obviously; well prior to COVID—to come and see the hot lakes to come and see Māoriland to come and see the geothermal paradise of the world. It is a place that is very dear to me—me and about 65000 other people. It's a place that we call home and it's a place that actually has really meaningful roots. You see when the township of Rotorua was established it was a partnership that was envisaged by the local iwi—by Ngāti Uenukukōpako Ngāti Rangiwewehi Ngāti Whakaue—and the Crown at the time under the auspices of judge Fenton who was a Native Land Court judge at the time. It was their aspiration in working together that they would create a city that they would be able to be proud of.Part of that arrangement was the gifting of reserves of lands and reserves all around Rotorua for the establishment of the town so that the people could really see that partnership in action. You see by that point we'd had a lot of tourists through already and there was a real need to be able to settle down the unruly tourists but to also create a bit of order. So the people at the time who got together who negotiated that agreement they were very forthright in what they wanted and what they wanted was a really decent partnership. I want to acknowledge that actually the agreement that they came up with was essentially a co-governance co-management arrangement—that's right. You see back in the day they said the agreement was that the Crown would lease the township out to the public for 99 years on behalf of the owners. The agreement was split into 16 clauses which set out the area for the township how the ownership would be determined and the reserves that were gifted by the owners to the Crown for both races survey costs rates and the composition of the town board.Now while the township scheme was widely publicised and initially successful in attracting leases the delay in the establishment of the proposed railway a national economic downturn as well as a very significant eruption that happened at Mount Tarawera in 1886 led to a string of defaulting leases contributing to an enormous loss in expected revenue and the Crown stepped in and took full advantage of the situation at the time. In 1889 the Crown sought to purchase shares from the owners in the block and the alienation of the block from the last few owners and the vesting of the township block—the Pukeroa Oruawhata block—in the Crown was completed through the compulsory acquisition of shares by the Thermal Springs Districts Act 1910. The Crown later sold these interests between 1930 and 1950 opening up the township lands to private ownership. Over the next few decades Ngāti Whakaue sought answers from the Crown over the failure of the township scheme and the care of those gifted reserves.You see it all went pear-shaped and for a long time the locals in Rotorua have sought redress for what happened all those many years ago to the point where in 1993 the council actually sought to work through better relations with their Te Arawa brothers and sisters. So they established the Te Arawa Standing Committee which was a committee of council made up of Te Arawa representatives and chaired by the mayor. You see what happened though was that the committee only had power to make recommendations to the council and that was supposed to be the primary means of council engagement with Te Arawa. Over time naturally Te Arawa became very disillusioned with the Te Arawa Standing Committee. They realised it had a lack of impact and a lack of teeth and many sought new and innovative ways to be able to interact.That led to a working group in 2012 being formed to try and get that true representation. What happened was that Te Arawa in 2014 proposed what they called the Te Arawa partnership board otherwise known as Te Tatau o Te Arawa. The Rotorua Lakes Council resolved by majority decision to adopt a version of the model. So what does it do? At the moment Te Tatau o Te Arawa have appointed representatives from Te Arawa on all of the committees within council. What's more than that they actually get voting rights and full participation rights in that as well. It's a commitment to working in partnerships.But last year something significant happened as well. Last year this Labour Government chose to prioritise Māori wards all around the country to make sure that we had guaranteed Māori representation at those tables. Our people back home they got really excited about that idea—the idea of not just sitting on committees not sitting on advisory committees that are unpaid with no teeth; they got excited about the true idea of a meaningful partnership which was envisaged way back in the day when the Fenton Agreement was signed which was never really honoured. For that reason a bit of work was undertaken last year about what exactly Māori wards would mean for the people of Rotorua and the council came up with this which is the Rotorua District Council (Representation Arrangements) Bill. They had a meeting recently to decide exactly how they wanted that to look. They took that out they socialised that with the people of Rotorua and what they did was they came back with what was a less-than-ideal arrangement. They voted in council for something that they didn't really want but what they thought—because we're savvy back in Rotorua—was that we would come up with our own local bill which would enact the actual partnership the meaningful partnership that we want to see in Rotorua.So what that arrangement looks like is one mayor elected at large; one Māori ward with three seats across the whole of Rotorua; one general ward with three seats across the whole of Rotorua; and four at-large seats which can be voted for by anybody if you're on the general or the Māori roll. As well as that the continuation of the Rotorua Lakes Community Board and also a Rotorua Rural Community Board as well. They called me up and said Would you be the local member that will take this to Parliament? Because we believe that it's the right thing to do. Will you do it for our city?" And I said to them "I will do it for our city." More than that I want this to come to our Māori Affairs Committee of which I am the chair. But we started this work last year. With the Māori wards legislation that I'm so proud that we've been able to implement across the country we are getting Māori sitting at decision-making tables. And this year the year for local government decision-making the year for our elections we're going to start seeing a change in the make-up of councils all across Aotearoa.The relationship that Māori have with our council back home in Rotorua is an evolved one. We've been living in and around and with each other for a very very long time and it's with that depth of knowledge it's with that depth of relationship that I bring this local bill to the House today. This is partnership. This is what we want. This is what Māori have always wanted. This is what Ngāti Whakaue Ngāti Rangiwewehi Ngāti Uenukukōpako envisaged when they back in the day negotiated the terms and conditions for the Fenton Agreement. They always envisaged that there would be a meaningful partnership between Māori and the Crown. It was never honoured then. In the various iterations that we've had since it's never really been honoured and this—this—is what they want. The Treaty of Waitangi guarantees us as Māori tino rangatiratanga and the mana motuhake to be able to make decisions about what we want how we want to be represented. I'd like to say that we would have already had that but we haven't and that's why we're here now. It's part of a larger conversation because there are councils all around the country right now that are talking about the idea of co-governance. It's a very important kaupapa. I know that many councils will also this year be asking themselves the same questions: what is the ideal situation for us?We should never forget that the city's foundation of Rotorua was built upon a unique relationship between the Crown and tangata whenua—the good the bad and the ugly. The Fenton Agreement should be remembered as being an integral part of our shared communal history as a city but this local bill is going to take us into the future. It's going to make sure that Māori are sitting around the decision-making table to be able to make great decisions for the future of the town that is the geothermal paradise of New Zealand. Thank you. I commend it to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The question is that the motion be agreed to."