Mahuta Nanaia: Maori Trustee Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Mahuta Nanaia: Maori Trustee Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:654;Page:3025] 
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato) 
: 
 I am pleased to rise to speak in the third reading debate of the Maori Trustee Amendment Bill and to reiterate the comments of my colleague and previous Minister of Maori Affairs the Hon Parekura Horomia that we support the bill. 
I want to pick up where Mr Henare left off when he was explaining some of the background in terms of Labour’s work on this legislation. It was always with a view in mind that we had two bills introduced in tandem with the broader objective of trying to improve and accelerate Maori development. That is a very important point. Mr Henare himself gave recognition that this bill is not the panacea for all the woes that exist within Maoridom and I reiterate that. The context of trying to move the Maori Trustee office as a stand-alone entity should exist within an environment that is more conducive to accelerating Maori development. There are no two ways about that. People who have been following this debate could be forgiven for thinking that there was some confusion in the Committee stage about the broad parameters of our debate because certainly Labour members were continually putting forward a futuristic context for how the Maori Trustee office could contribute to Maori development and we were pilloried by the Government for that very perspective. But we still hold true to that. 
The intent of introducing this legislation was to enable the Maori Trustee office to be a stand-alone entity—which was a very good move—to increase transparency and accountability for the distribution of retained earnings and to look at how management fees were being apportioned. Those were all fine things to be achieved—including the provision for a deputy trustee—all good moves within this bill. But—and this is a very important but—it should be viewed within the context of other connecting bits of work to help improve and accelerate Maori development aspirations. Parekura Horomia as the previous Minister of this portfolio well identified that as a natural consequence of dealing with the issue of trying to find shareholders the solution may in part lie in reviewing Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. It may in part lie with the Maori Trustee’s office itself improving its opportunity to identify shareholders who have continued to remain unidentified. A part solution was raised by Tau Henare. He suggested we should look at Baycorp’s register to identify some of these unidentified shareholders. But I suggest to the Minister that an iwi register could be just as useful. Some of the reasons why many of these owners are not identified is that they have to succeed to their land and there is a cost to go through in that process. Is it worth it for them to go through that whole process? So we have to make those connections again. Some of the solution could perhaps lie in reviewing Te Ture Whenua Maori Act to see how it could better remove some of the impediments. 
I also want to draw on some of the issues that were raised throughout the debate about the retained earnings of the Maori Trustee. Again a lot of criticism came towards Labour for proposing that rather than just letting that sum sit there in abeyance not being utilised at all we should use it to accelerate Maori development. Let us utilise it to accelerate Maori development aspiration pretty much in the same way that support was given to establishing the Kohanga Reo Trust and the Poutama Maori Business Trust and we have now seen through the passage of time they have had made a significant contribution in their respective areas to advance the aspirations of Maori to lift their opportunities and to support that broader ambition that we certainly have on this side of the House to improve Maori development. It is a good ambition and it requires a number of strategies to achieve that outcome. Again I support all the endorsements that have been reiterated in the House for the hard work and effort of officials of the clerk of the Maori Affairs Committee and of the two Ministers involved in stewarding this bill from its inception to its final passage. Again I urge all members in this House to view this as just one small step in a number of steps that have to be undertaken with a degree of urgency if we are really to arrest some of the difficulties that exist amongst many of our communities in developing unproductive land and being able to lift and support our governance structures governance training and governance responsibilities of those structures in our communities enabling greater partnering opportunities with the Maori Trustee office and other iwi entities and the like of being able to look at some of the impediments on unproductive Maori land. 
I raised through the Committee stage the fine work that the Minister of Maori Affairs’ ministry is undertaking around the issues of valuation and the rating of Maori land which I hope will help inform better the current Minister of Local Government because there are inequities in that process. Sadly I was not in the portfolio long enough to try to deal with that. The Minister already knows some of that history but commencing this very important work within Te Puni Kokiri with a clear framework that identifies the impediments to developing some of the lands that we are talking about I think will make a useful contribution to ongoing policy development in local government. I hope the Minister of Local Government takes account of some of those inequities because on the issue of governance he has no regard at all for the contribution that Maori can make at a governance level to the quality of decision making on councils. 
The real challenge is that local government is an area that affects the everyday lives of people. Maori make a significant contribution to the quality of life in many communities. Maori want to ensure that they retain the opportunity to have a role at the decision-making table. Auckland is a good test case but more important councils recognise that it is probably better to have unproductive lands many of which are in Maori shareholding utilised rather than not. That is why if we look at some of the best practice that exists in councils policies in the area of rating of Maori land have looked to strategies more conducive to development rather than to constrictive strategies which get low land shareholding. So there are a number of solutions that lie within the wider ambit of the portfolio of the Minister of Maori Affairs. I certainly would endorse any of the work that he undertakes in that regard because it is all very important. 
I would like to touch on the Supplementary Order Paper that was introduced as a result of the contribution that I made at the Committee stage. That was around the issue of clarity in terms of delegations between the Maori Trustee and the deputy trustee certainly in the situation where—for the unlikely or unfortunate reason—the Maori Trustee may be suspended so that there is some continuity in terms of the role with the office. I acknowledge the Supplementary Order Paper and think that that is a fine amendment to stop political interference in some of the important functions that are undertaken by the role of the Maori Trustee. 
Finally I reiterate and endorse the comments of my colleague Parekura Horomia on this issue which he knows a lot about—I think he could have spoken for another 10 minutes. I commend to this House the ambitious aspiration that we have that the Maori Trustee Amendment Bill and a future bill that supports Maori development can be something that we all find a common ground on and debate robustly in this House in the future. Kia ora koutou.