Turei Metiria: Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:21889] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 Richard Prebble is wrong. He is completely and utterly wrong in everything he just said. Schedule 12 sets out a statement of Nga Rauru Kitahi values in relation to a toopuni site. It describes what Nga Rauru Kitahi believes is its position in relation to that particular toopuni. It is quite right that settlement legislation to implement a deed of settlement which is about the relationships and the reasons why the settlement is made contains a statement from the iwi concerned as to its beliefs about those issues. That is not to say that the Government agrees with the iwi’s statement or that suddenly we all have to believe it. Mr Prebble is absolutely false and wrong in his statements about schedule 12. It simply enables the iwi for which this bill was specifically designed to have its say. 
Much of the legislation we produce in these settlement bills is directed and determined by the Office of Treaty Settlements via Government policy. Very little of it except for specific names and details about places is determined by iwi themselves. Often the history set out in the preamble of a bill is a description written by Government officials and later agreed to by iwi. So very little content in this bill was actually written by the iwi and the iwi alone. The purpose of this bill is to provide some form of restitution for the wrongs committed against the iwi in the past. Those wrongs relate to more than just land and resources. They also relate to misinterpretation of and disinformation about the iwi’s own history. The failure that we have had in this society over time is not to enable Maori to have the chance to say what their history is themselves instead of it being re-interpreted through the English language or through the perspectives of colonial history and the Pakeha system that we have in place now. That is all that schedule 12 does. It enables Maori to say for themselves what their own history is instead of having it continually recycled through a Pakeha perspective. 
There is absolutely nothing wrong with including this measure in legislation. In fact it shows an incredible maturity on the part of the Government at least—I am saying something nice about Government members for a change—to enable those statements to be made without being fettered or without being filtered through a Pakeha lens. There has been a long history of structural racism in this country which continues today. This is a small step towards recognising that the indigenous people of this country—the mana whenua—have the right to hold and to state their beliefs and to present their history in the way that they see fit without having it be re-interpreted by Pakeha all the time. 
I am very pleased that the bill at least provides some opportunity for Nga Rauru Kitahi to speak for itself and to have its own history put in the bill. That is not mumbo-jumbo. Richard Prebble calls it mumbo-jumbo which is a most derogatory and pejorative description of the history of those people as they have determined it themselves. He cannot accept that their history is legitimate and that the way that they describe it and the purpose for which they describe it are legitimate. That history is absolutely legitimate and I believe that it must be accepted by the House. It is absolutely essential that Nga Rauru Kitahi be given the opportunity to state its history in its own legislation for the purpose of providing it with restitution. The arguments against schedule 12 go to the heart of what structural racism in this nation really is. There is a failure to see structural racism when it occurs and a failure to understand that it is the re-interpretation of the history the reality and the tikanga of the indigenous peoples in this country. It is their right to have their history described in legislation. At least that is one of the few times when it belongs solely and entirely to them. 
The Greens are very happy that schedule 12 is here in the bill. We will definitely continue to support those kinds of statements being made in this form of legislation. It is such a small step yet there is a continual denigration of it.