Tirikatene Rino: Ngā Punawai o Te Tokotoru Claims Settlement Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Ngā Punawai o Te Tokotoru Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 12 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16644. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga):Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou rau rangatira mā huri noa i te Whare.[Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Greetings to you collectively esteemed leaders throughout the House.]I am delighted to speak in the second reading of the Ngā Punawai o Te Tokotoru Claims Settlement Bill and in support of this bill. Today we are dealing with Ngā Punawai o Te Tokotoru a grouping of three iwi—Ngāti Rangiteaorere Ngāti Rangiwewehi and Tāpuika—of the Te Arawa confederation. One of the issues with omnibus Treaty bills is that they do not really give members long enough to really get into the nitty-gritty of the bills in this Chamber. Here we have three iwi but I understand that for expediency the practice is now to group the iwi together so that their settlements can move expeditiously through the House and we are seeing that also in the case of my own electorate at the top of the south. Although that is the case it does not really give us much time to really get into the details which I believe that these iwi do deserve. Having made that point I will get into the submissions.It was a pleasure to go up to Rotorua to listen to the submitters on this bill. In relation to Ngāti Rangiteaorere as was touched on by the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations there were submissions made on the mandated post-settlement governance entity Ngāti Rangiteaorere Koromatua Council exercising rights on behalf of absentee landowners. One submitter Kiri Pōtaka-Dewes opposed that action and on the other side the esteemed Māori lawyer Donna Hall requested that the bill be amended to allow the post-settlement governance entity to hold the mana for those owners and exercise those voting rights. It is really a can of worms and that is why it is good that that has led to a review taking place now of the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act.Currently the shares of absentee owners are administered by the Māori Trustee and to actually allow another entity to take on those rights would require changes to the Te Ture Whenua Māori Act. That Act is currently being reviewed and there are discussions taking place about other entities such as post-settlement governance entities looking after the rights of absentee landowners. We do commend that and we look forward to maybe seeing an amendment bill coming through this House although with the election date—Hon Christopher Finlayson: It’s not an amendment; it’s a complete rewrite.RINO TIRIKATENE: A complete rewrite?Hon Christopher Finlayson: Oh you wait.RINO TIRIKATENE: Well I am looking forward to that then. Who knows? It may be introduced in this parliamentary term.Hon Christopher Finlayson: I hope so.RINO TIRIKATENE: Oh we look forward to that Minister. That is a good development that has taken place as a result of the submissions on this bill.There was one submission regarding the low amount of commercial redress compared with what other tribes are getting. That is a common submission that we hear and it is very valid. I understand that the commercial redress for Ngāti Rangiteaorere is something in the vicinity of $750000. After 175 years of whatever grievances they have held they have settled for a princely sum of $750000. You do not need a degree in quantum mechanics to figure out that there is not much cash in the Treaty pūtea.I know that the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations is probably doing his best trying to fight for some more pūtea there but I am reminded of this country’s biggest fraud trial currently taking place in the courts. Bill English had plenty of pūtea back then for that great tribe of the South Island “Ngāti” South Canterbury Finance and the many hapū of investors of that tribe. It was not a problem then to find $1.2 billion for “Ngāti” South Canterbury Finance. That is $1200 million to bail out that company which is now the subject of the biggest fraud trial. I contrast that with Ngāti Rangiteaorere—$750000 to settle all of their historical Treaty grievances. That submitter is right. They are not getting enough. We would hope that the Minister will do his bidding and show a bit more pūtea for a lot of these iwi that are in the Treaty settlement pipeline.I want to turn to Ngāti Rangiwewehi. There were a few submissions but one kaupapa took my interest and that was about the manuscripts of Wīremu Maihi Te Rangikāheke and the issue of intellectual property rights. Much of the country’s early Māori history and knowledge about art spirituality and myths come from the collection of early colonial writings most notably the work of Sir George Grey. But Grey was simply a collector of stories who edited the works and then took the credit for the works. These works were really the work of Māori who had reading and writing ability thanks to the influence of men largely missionaries such as Selwyn Williams and Hadfield. Men such as Mātene Te Whiwhi in Tawanui up in the north and Te Rangikāheke were the unacknowledged gatherers of information in manuscript form.Ngāti Rangiwewehi sought acknowledgment for Te Rangikāheke for the work he had done. It is a matter of intellectual property rights. The Te Rangikāheke manuscripts followed the old Governor Grey around the world until in the 1920s the manuscripts found their way back to Aotearoa. They have since been held in the Sir George Grey Special Collections in the Auckland City Central Library. It was the hope that the manuscripts could be repatriated to the Rotorua Museum of Art and History but the Auckland library was unwilling to do this. There have been discussions between those two institutions and Ngāti Rangiwewehi about the possibility of some sort of arrangement that will enable the manuscripts to be put on display in Rotorua. In the meantime the Crown in this bill will acknowledge the influence Te Rangikāheke had on the writings of Sir George Grey. It is a matter of intellectual property rights and giving recognition where it is due. Hopefully we will see more examples of this recognition as other tribes negotiate their settlements also.Finally I just want to touch on the people of Tāpuika. The Tapuika Iwi Authority asked the Māori Affairs Committee to include in its settlement a school site Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Mataī to be vested in them. To cut a long story short the site is not available unfortunately to Tāpuika. The Crown has been in negotiations with the Waitaha tribe since 2008 and has done a settlement so several school sites in the Tāpuika region have already been used in other negotiations. The land at Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Mataī has however been offered back to Tāpuika but on a right of first refusal basis. They have agreed to that.In finishing I give a mihi to the members of Ngā Punawai o Te Tokotoru the three iwi there the three springs—that is a fine name which references the geothermal nature of the land these three cousins belong to. That is a constant theme that I like to integrate into my speeches—that understanding the whakapapa and the genealogy is to understand Māori history. The whole of our history is because of whakapapa and the more one understands those finer threads the more detail is available to students of Māori history and indeed the history of our country. With those words I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.