Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. Ki te Whare e tū nei tēnā koe. Ki ngā mema Pāremata i tēnei pō tēnā koutou katoa.[Mr Speaker thank you. To the House that stands here I acknowledge you. To the members of Parliament this evening I greet you all.]I rise with a sense of responsibility to take the call of the Māori Party who are not here tonight.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! You cannot say that any member or party's not here.ARENA WILLIAMS: Aroha mai Mr Speaker. In the absence of the Māori Party I will be taking this call to speak on an issue which—[Interruption] sorry—is of great importance to many Māori organisations who organise themselves as incorporated societies when they become post-settlement governance entities. I'm talking of course about organisations which have gone through a process of representing their iwi and have become organisations which require a legal character require a body to represent those members or beneficiaries and an incorporated society is a common vehicle for them to do this. This is a particularly important bill for ngā iwi Māori o te motu because of the way that litigation because of these incorporated societies rules being out of date and not fit for purpose in the current governance environment has created needless litigation needless disagreements between whānau and hapū and iwi Māori. It's something which I think many governors and leaders within te ao Māori will be very keen to see progressed by the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and would commend his efforts in this area.I wish to make three points in my brief contribution and the first is the power of bringing tikanga into the rules of the incorporated societies. The second is about clarification of the roles of governors in incorporated societies and the third is in clarifying the need for dispute resolution provisions. But first I want to congratulate those Māori organisations which have organised themselves as incorporated societies who have brought us to this point who have changed the law through case law with time with effort with the effort of volunteers and with a considerable amount of money to clarify the rules in this space for everyone who uses incorporated societies—none more so than very sophisticated iwi organisations like Te Whakakitenga o Waikato which through the years between 2016 and 2020 saw a number of heavily litigated disputes which were of no value to the iwi itself but were born out of a piece of legislation which was not fit for purpose and hadn't been properly clarified by Parliament to meet modern requirements of organisations which through the development of case law in this area have come to owe the duties akin to those of company directors to their members.That litigation was sophisticated litigation. It required a number of hours to get to the heart of the issues in those cases and this raft of measures would allow organisations in the position that Te Whakakitenga o Waikato was in at that time to progress these issues much faster and with much less time and effort and money spent particularly with the introduction of the ability to include tikanga in the rules of the incorporated societies. This is something that I think the Minister should be commended on with action in this area because it brings the ability for members to bring disputes about their rules within a tikanga Māori framework which is so important for the iwi organisations that use these. It also provides an avenue for the courts to inquire into whether tikanga was perhaps followed and that on this side of the House is something that we Māori Government members support and want to see the Minister interrogate further and the select committee do more work on at the select committee stage. That is why—and my apologies for my error in my introductory remarks—I commend this bill to the House.