Mapp Wayne: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:20198] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I turn to the apologies and acknowledgments set out in Part 1 of the Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill and in particular to the text of the acknowledgments in English. Clause 8(3) states that the Crown acknowledges that the return of land to individuals rather than to iwi and hapu was a breach of its obligations and caused harm. In particular clause 8(3)(e) states: “This was not consistent with customary tenure and made those lands more susceptible to partition and alienation;”. 
I would suggest that in many circumstances—not all circumstances but in many—the collective ownership of land without variation has caused serious problems. It is difficult in a modern economy for people to advance their interests if all their property is owned collectively. The reality is that in the modern economy people do not act as iwi or hapu to a marked extent. By and large individuals are responsible for their own economic welfare. I believe that the Hui Taumata 2005 recognised that by putting so much stress on the advancement of skills—skills that are acquired by individuals. People have to study for themselves in order to gain an education. 
When that theory is applied also to land we are aware that farms are not farmed by large groups; they are farmed by small groups of people—typically individual families. That is why the huge strength of the New Zealand agricultural base has been the family farm. Notwithstanding the fact that there has been an increase in the size of farms the family farm is still the building block of our agricultural success. 
I would suggest that for Maori in part the individualisation of title gave people opportunities. Rather than harming them it actually helped them. People say that it then led to partition and alienation. One of the requirements of a modern economy though is that people can actually sell things and not just retain them so that people can use their resources in ways that suit them. That is not to say that there is not a place for iwi-owned lands. I recognise that. But it is wrong to suggest that all land under the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act should essentially be held collectively. That would actually be harmful. Some land may have to be and indeed should be held collectively; a fair measure of it should not be. 
Indeed an increasingly recognised problem is the growing number of owners of quite small parcels of land. That is not helpful but one of the strengths of the partition and individualisation of title is that it enables people to sell and to seek new economic opportunities. I acknowledge that those opportunities were not always available to Maori in the past for a variety of reasons but surely in the 21st century they are. 
As I said in the debate on the preamble those acknowledgments essentially have a Rousseauean view of Maori—that of the noble savage if you will. The view simply does not meet contemporary needs or dare I say it the needs of that time either. Economies and peoples are dynamic. Our acknowledgments and statutes should also recognise that reality. 
What we are often seeing now is land actually undeveloping. One of the reasons it is undeveloping is because in many cases land that was held a generation or two ago by one or two individuals—normally the head of a family or whanau—is now held by large numbers of people. So we are seeing those same farms which are essentially family farms in the traditional sense of that term now being owned by large numbers who are the descendants of those people of two or three generations ago. 
That is actually harming the development of those farms because what they do not have is reinvestment. People are not willing to put a portion of their income—for example a person using his or her income as a teacher—into the development of the farm. Large amounts of money are expended on the administration of what is after all a family-sized unit that may perhaps have 300 owners. It is not efficient; it is not effective. 
We need to acknowledge therefore that it was not always harmful—although in some cases it might have been—for titles to be partitioned and individualised. In many cases that actually laid the foundation for Maori farming enterprise. It enabled a whole lot of Maori back in the early part of the 20th century in the first 50 years to build individual farms and that has laid much of the foundation of the economic strength of many Maori families. Yet today—and I know this from personal experience—some of those farms are going backwards because they are no longer owned by a small number of people; instead they are owned by a large number of people. I noted the proceedings of the Hui Taumata and saw that some of that was recognised which is one of the reasons people are saying we should move on from the Maori Land Court. 
That is one of the problems with the way we are doing treaty settlements. Unlike ACT National is not saying we should not do treaty settlements. We say that we should do them and we want to accelerate them but the way we do them is crucially important. The way the acknowledgments are made should not just reflect the past but should also reflect aspirations for the future. I believe that those acknowledgments and apologies do not embrace the fullness of the task ahead of us. They are too one-dimensional. 
The Government knows it will have more of those settlements to do over the next 2 or 3 months before the election and my request is that it takes a broader view and reflects aspiration and looking forward as well as looking back. I fully understand that both elements are important but I do not see them reflected in this legislation and that is a pity.