Coffey TamatiTĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to also take an opportunity to thank my colleague on the Māori Affairs Committee for bringing this forward. We have a very collegial understanding on the Māori Affairs Committee and we try to check our politics at the door and make sure that we're actually tackling the real issues that our people want us to be able to face. Unfortunately though this isn't one of them. For that reason I'll not be supporting this bill.This is a bill that deserves a little bit of a history lesson because that's where this bill started. It started way back in 2016. It was brought to the House. It was introduced by the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell. He had gone out there and had done a little bit of consultation with the community and then was ready to ram it through the House. Fortunately that wasn't able to happen. It went to the Māori Affairs Committee and the members at the time voiced their concerns. There was a submissions process and there were people that are very highly regarded in Te Ao Māori that also voiced their concerns against this too. I want to note the submission from the judges of the Māori Land Court who actually put in a submission against this bill. They were very fearful of the upheaval and the huge leap that was going from legislation for which—way back when Te Ture Whenua Maori Act the first Act was put in place in 1993—there was a lot of work that was put into that legislation. This isn't the same. Although it's a long bill it didn't have that same kind of negotiation that it had out there in the community especially amongst Māori stakeholders.At home—back home in the Bay of Plenty and the Waiariki and Rotorua—we have lots of Māori land. At the time there was concern raised from the community—a lot of our Māori land owners—who were saying We don't know about this bill. We don't know enough about this bill. We don't like it. Sure there's things to tweak in the ture whenua system especially in the court system but we think that we can do that with smaller more incremental changes rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water." That was the sentiment of the submission that came in from—again—the judges of the Māori Land Court and also members of the community that engaged me on that conversation too.This bill is almost an identical copy of that bill which gave so much concern at the time. There was significant concern from iwi and from Māori all around the country and also you had organisations like the New Zealand Law Society and the Human Rights Commission that actually fronted up and said this is not a good piece of legislation. Yes we need reform but this isn't the bill to do it.Sadly to say it was actually an issue that we took on the campaign trail in 2017 and the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell was voted out because of this legislation. There was a real fear in the community that he was moving way too fast on this and hadn't done the ground work. I'm sad to say to my colleague this is a cut and paste and it has not had the groundwork done on it. It still is very identical to the bill that came before the House back then and for that same reason we have to oppose it. This is not good legislation.In the meantime what we have done as a Government is implemented small changes at the Māori Land Court. Can I give a little shout out to the people that live and breathe life in the Māori Land Court—my mother being one of them. She gave 20 years of her life up until her retirement last year to Te Kōti Whenua Māori. When you work as a case manager in that environment the work is heavy. It is very heavy. One of the things that I know that her colleagues wanted was actually a more streamlined system. They said "We want for not every case to come before court because we don't think that a judge needs to preside over everything that happens in the Māori Land Court. We think that that can be done in a streamlined more administrative way." We've made those changes since we've been in Government. We also didn't want to come into Government in 2017—having turned this bill down and opposing this bill—to not actually do anything. So we put in place a series of reforms. Our Minister the Hon Nanaia Mahuta when she was leading the Ministry of Māori Development made sure that these changes were put in place—a more streamlined administrative system so that not every case has to go before the Māori Land Court judge. The ability to actually create an environment where you don't go there just to talk about your land grievance but actually you go there to talk about your land and also what opportunities there are for you to be able to build on your land and do some productive things which everybody wants—that's currently happening with the service that we've got. We bolstered the efforts of Te Puni Kōkiri to be able to assist the Māori Land Court to be able to help Māori land owners to realise their aspirations whether it's papa kāinga developments in housing or horticulture opportunities and being able to do some really innovative stuff in that way. We've made some tweaks to the system. They've been good tweaks to the system. There isn't the call for this reform. I need the member that's bringing this to the House to understand this: there is no call for this reform. The people that work inside the Māori Land Court understand the changes that we've gone and made as a Government. We did it in two tranches. They're very happy with those changes and we need to make sure that we're actually listening to the voices of the community and those people that are at the coalface in this. There isn't the call for change.For that reason I again—with I'm pretty sure our members on this side of the House—will be voting against it because we believe that the Māori Land Court has got an absolute job to play remembering that the history of the Māori Land Court isn't an easy one—Simon Court: We'll take the win from the member. "Pretty sure" is a back down.TAMATI COFFEY: I don't know what he just said.Simon Court: You're "pretty sure" you'll be voting against it so that's a back down. So there's still—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Order! You'll get your turn.TAMATI COFFEY: He will get his turn and it'll be pretty predictable about what he might say.The Māori Land Court actually has a turbulent history in Te Ao Māori—remembering that this came at a time when the Māori Land Court was put in place to actually individualise titles on Māori land. Collective Māori land that was owned by tribes suddenly had to be individualised and actually there was a lot of pain and a lot of heartache through that system. In fact I know as chair of the Māori Affairs Committee that in the establishment of the Māori Land Court there were petitions flooding into this House of Parliament from Māori all around the country saying "Our land is being taken. Our land is being taken. You need to listen to us." Unfortunately this House didn't act as it could have and should have and much land was taken through that process. We're still making up for it now. But the Māori Land Court has actually turned into a museum and an archive of knowledge. It has the minutes of our grandparents and our great grandparents standing in those courts of law fighting for their rights fighting for their lands and talking to us about whakapapa about who owns what and about which boundary is the boundary between my section and that person's section. It's become an absolute treasure trove of knowledge and for that reason I have the utmost respect for the system as it stands. Can we do better? Of course we can—of course we can. But having to go through this and doing monumental change when it isn't called for is the wrong thing to do. I appreciate that the member thought that there were some more legs in this bill and that he could just dust it off the shelf and put it back into the parliamentary system. I understand that. I get that. He probably just needed a member's bill and thought this was the right thing to do. But this was a really challenging piece of legislation that led to the departure of the Māori Party from this House in 2017 because Māori and land is a very very sensitive topic and you don't take it lightly. We've had to fight for the amount of land that we've got these days. We're still fighting those fights. So to be able to touch legislation like this and think that you're going to get support without the call without the groundswell from the people at the front line and without the Māori community backing you actually makes this bill pretty hollow. For that reason I won't be supporting this bill but I do again thank the member for bringing this to the House so that we can have that discussion. But things haven't changed and there is still huge concern about the content of this bill and there's been not much change between the original legislation back in 2016 and this legislation that's being presented before the House right now. For that reason I do not commend this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The question is that the motion be agreed to."