Roche Denise: Hawke’s Bay Regional Planning Committee Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Hawke’s Bay Regional Planning Committee Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5691. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green):E te Māngai tēnā koe tuarua ki ngā mema o tō tātou Whare tēnā koutou katoa tēnei te mihi ki ngā tāngata katoa i te Whare.Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa.[Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Secondly acknowledgments to members of our House and I pay a tribute to everybody in the House. Greetings to you all.]I am speaking in the third reading of this bill and I maintain that it is a privilege. But I am speaking on the bill for the Green Party in the place of Catherine Delahunty who was the Green Party MP on the Māori Affairs Committee which was hearing the submissions on this bill. She was spokesperson on the issues raised in this bill as it progressed through the House.In the second reading of this bill the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations the Hon Chris Finlayson explained that this bill will establish the Hawke’s Bay Regional Planning Committee which implements the Government’s decision to establish a statutory body called the Hawke’s Bay Regional Planning Committee. The establishment of this committee will give effect to the commitment made by the Government in the Ngāti Pāhauwera deed of settlement and recorded in the Maungaharuru-Tangitū Hapū deed of settlement to work with iwi and hapū in the Hawke’s Bay region and with the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council to agree on details of this planning committee in order to introduce legislation.The bill ensures that the relevant iwi post-settlement governance entities and Crown-mandated entities will be entitled to appoint representatives to the planning committee. We support the concept of the Treaty settlement process creating mechanisms for genuine sharing of decision making that respects the rights and responsibilities of mana whenua hapū and iwi—and the Crown for that matter—as a Treaty partner.We are supporting this bill but we are also compelled to point out as others have that this bill could have been more aligned with the settlements that commit regional authorities to more than simply allowing a regional advisory committee on Resource Management Act issues. We acknowledge that there are certainly complexities around Kahungunu Inc. and iwi katoa but we maintain that the Crown has an obligation to lead the regional authorities away from advisory tokenism and we fear that that may well be the result of this bill. So we say that the Crown should lead authorities towards a genuine relationship between the regional council and iwi based on the rights and the obligations outlined in article 2 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.My colleague Catherine Delahunty notes that this genuine relationship is a slow process. It is a gradual process of leading the horse of Pākehā dominance and resistance to the pool of water as well as making that horse drink. Iwi Māori know this well as do those who have spent decades teaching Te Tiriti o Waitangi to tauiwi katoa—that racism is rife and disquiet still exists from Pākehā around Treaty settlement bills and bills like this that try to give some effect to some aspects of Treaty settlement.If I were to hazard a guess—because I do not really understand it—I would suggest that that racism stems from a fear of sharing power. And it stems from a sad and widespread lack of understanding of the history of our land where really few Pākehā actually understand the losses that were suffered by iwi and hapū in the Hawke’s Bay area and across Aotearoa.We maintain that in the end tangata whenua of the rohe deserve a whole lot more for their historical suffering—the raupatu marginalisation and the economic servitude and low-paid jobs on land that was stripped from their grasp. They deserve the full right to the things that they never handed over: rangatiratanga and mana motuhake.We note that the Hawke’s Bay Regional Planning Committee is a committee with powers and functions relating to the Resource Management Act. We note that iwi are already advisers to the council and that the advisory committee is effectively already operating. We would have preferred to see a co-governance co-management model. I note as would many in this House who have already had to deal with co-governance and co-management that it is not an easy process. Those of us from Tainui and Raukawa and the other river iwi—we know this. The difference is that this committee will make recommendations but it will not make decisions.Having said that may this bill be celebrated as a step—not as the final deal but as a step—in the right direction. It is a tribute to the negotiation team and to the tenacity of that negotiation in a context where the parameters are frequently changing. We see this as a beginning. As well as the end of this process through the House it is a beginning and certainly it is not full and final. We see it as the beginning of a permanent negotiation for decolonisation and justice. We note and we acknowledge that this should be and is a time for optimism for the iwi of the Hawke’s Bay area and we look forward to seeing how this plays out. We sincerely hope that true decision-making and power will be handed to iwi in due course as a result of this bill. Nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa.