Smith Murray: Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
Smith Murray: Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:613;Page:10251] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 United Future is pleased to support the third reading of this bill. I would like to start by correcting Mr Ken Shirley. It was a mistake that he was not alone in making because I have heard Winston Peters who I thought would have known better make exactly the same mistake that Mr Shirley made. There are not 750 settlements to go. Each settlement resolves a number of claims that are before the Waitangi Tribunal and the best estimates are that 45 or 50 settlements will be necessary in order to dispose of all the claims. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: So we have only 50 years to go! 
MURRAY SMITH 
: We want to speed up the process and United Future has been pushing very hard to speed it up to a level of four or five claims a year which we think is sustainable. I certainly concur with ACT to the extent that I believe that the process needs to be pushed faster. United Future has succeeded in getting the Minister to commit herself to having 90 percent of the claims settled by 2015 and that is considerable progress on where both the previous National Government and this Labour Government were heading just 1 short year ago. 
I congratulate Ngati Tama on reaching what is a significant event and its whanau hapu and iwi on reaching the point where they will now have a degree of self-sufficiency that has been denied them for nearly one and a half centuries and a resolution of the grievances that have affected them over that time. I have no doubt that to them the apology from the Crown is at least as significant as if not more significant than the recompense they are receiving. The apology provides an opportunity for Ngati Tama to let go of the grievances of the past and to move forward in a new and positive relationship with the Crown and New Zealand in general. The bill provides a combination of an apology and a settlement and that provides freedom—a freedom that is offered to the iwi to put the grievances behind it and to move on and provide a positive contribution to its own people and to the wider interests of New Zealand. 
For the Crown a considerable indictment is conveyed in this bill not only in terms of past offences but of continuing offences and not only in terms of direct offences but also of bureaucratic offences that continued beyond the direct offences. It is important during the third reading to make some allusion to the grievances that were effectively created so that they are put on the record at this time. In particular unjustified hostile actions were initiated against the iwi in 1860. There were confiscations of land. Some 74000 acres of land were confiscated with inadequate consideration around about 1865 and then there were the events at Parihaka in 1881 which we are well familiar with and in which Ngati Tama was also involved. That was followed by bureaucratic offences—the West coast commissions of 1880 returned limited land to the iwi but the amount was small and it was of poor quality and insufficient for its needs. That land was also placed under Public Trust control whereby perpetual leases meant that by 1974—a very recent date—60 percent of the land had been sold and 26 percent was under perpetual leases. The Sim Commission of 1926-27 did not fully investigate the return of the land let alone the return of wahi tapu and other taonga of the iwi. An annuity of £5000 was recommended for all the Taranaki iwi to split between themselves and £300 for the Parihaka offences. Yet not even that amount was fully paid. There was no consultation with the iwi about that recompense let alone an acceptance by them of that despite the Taranaki Maori Claims Settlement Act of 1944 which claimed that there had effectively been such an acceptance. The Crown now admits that there was no such acceptance but this redress has been reached after full consultation with and the approval of the iwi. 
Ngati Tama was a successful iwi before it was stripped of its self-sufficiency and its mana. I and United Future can only hope that with the passing of this bill Ngati Tama can regain its mana and a measure of self-sufficiency. I note that the settlement redress package includes not only the Crown’s acknowledgments and apology but financial redress of $14.5 million and a right of first refusal for a period of 50 years over certain Crown-owned land in the Ngati Tama right-of-first-refusal area as designated together with a site-specific right of refusal over the Tongaporutu recreation reserve. It also includes cultural redress including the transfer of five sites of cultural and spiritual significance and including large areas of conservation land. In addition the package includes 11 statutory acknowledgments and seven deeds of recognition protocols with five Government departments appointment of the Ngati Tama governance entity as an advisory committee to the Minister of Fisheries and the Minister of Conservation and a right of first refusal for a period of 50 years over two species of shellfish—kina and surf clams—if they are introduced into the quota management system. Finally there is an acknowledgment of Ngati Tama’s customary non-commercial interest in paua and in certain other species in the iwi’s area of interest. Those are significant areas of compensation although like most settlements I am sure they will not represent the full value of what was taken. The fact that Ngati Tama has been prepared to accept a less than 100 percent settlement in order to resolve these matters and move forward is to its credit. 
It is also pleasing to see that with a 61 percent participation rate in the settlement mandate and a 97 percent affirmation of the terms of settlement Ngati Tama has provided one of the highest settlement ratification and participation rates to date and that is greatly encouraging. The concern of course is that there was such a low turn-out in voting on the governance entity—a mere 32 percent—although 98 percent of those people approved the governance entity. In looking at the reasons for the low turn-out it seems to have been the view of the negotiator and the two runanga representatives that that was due more to apathy because of the length of time the settlement process was taking than to active dissent. They have raised an issue about possible confusion over two tick-boxes: one being for the governance entity and the other for an advance payment of $250000. They were also of the view that many Ngati Tama voters considered they had expressed sufficient support when they ratified the deed of settlement. Those are matters that the Crown is addressing with a view to trying to get a greater participation rate in future treaty settlements. One of the measures the Crown is trying to explore is the ratification of the deed of settlement and the governance entity simultaneously and that would certainly improve the turn-out figures. 
For the Crown and Ngati Tama the passing of this bill today constitutes the end of the issue. However for Ngati Tama and Ngati Tama Whanau Whanui it is the beginning of the management of the new resources they have been given. In Maori culture we understand there is a strong measure of restorative justice and that it is a better system than the Pakeha-inherited system of adversarial justice. There is now an opportunity for Maori among themselves to demonstrate the superiority of restorative justice principles and to demonstrate that relationships between the different groups within Ngati Tama can be resolved in a way that builds the relationships and actually reaches solutions. If New Zealanders can see that Maori can resolve their own internal grievances by that method that will give us encouragement to change the nature of the New Zealand system to one that I personally believe would be preferable in terms of restorative justice rather than adversarial approaches. Here is an opportunity to prove that. Personal rights and personal agendas need to be set aside for the sake of the iwi as a whole and the country as a whole and respect needs to be given to all. 
I congratulate Ngati Tama again. United Future is very pleased to see this bill going through the House and to support the third reading. We wish the people of Ngati Tama good fortune in the future as they deal with these assets and as they relate together.