Franks Stephen: Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Franks Stephen: Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:623;Page:18815] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I am proud to have been in the Chamber this afternoon to hear that speech from Dr Mapp of the National Party. I think it was the kind of speech that the people of New Zealand were entitled to expect their representatives in this Parliament to make 20 years ago. It is interesting that there are virtually no press gallery members here but that was an important speech. That speech stated in a few minutes the end of the conspiracy—or the cosy consensus—that has for so long existed between the two major parties not to debate the reality of an academic myth that was created some time ago. Dr Mapp effectively said that he has reservations about the apology in this bill and he then went on to adopt what has been the ACT position for some time. I am not trying to score a cheap point here but ACT has been describing the partnership as mythical and the principles as spurious for as long as I have been in Parliament. 
Dr Mapp called for settlements to be justified on the basis of the actual treaty—the document that was actually signed—and what it might have meant to the people at the time not what it has come to mean to a bunch of people looking for a replacement for religion 150 years later. It is interesting that Dr Mapp was as unequivocal as he was. He said that this apology reflects a view of New Zealand as being made up of two or more tribes that are negotiating with each other through their peak representatives and offering each other collective entitlements. I think it was enormously refreshing to hear a National Party member make a speech along those lines. 
In this bill the Crown makes an apology and states in clause 10(8) that it: “… profoundly regrets its failure to acknowledge the mana and rangatiratanga of Ngati Awa.” yet still it makes no effort to state what rangatiratanga is. Why in 2005 is this Government continuing to use a term that has led us only to explore our navels and as one very well-respected expatriate New Zealander put it to talk ourselves into a nervous breakdown? It is a word that is very capable of creating irreconcilably conflicting expectations. On the one hand people see rangatiratanga as being a species of self-government power little short of sovereignty and on the other—the view that I think is the proper orthodox view although it is not held widely by the intelligentsia of this country at the moment—as simply a good description of classical English property rights in terms of the notion that within one’s own boundaries one is king of one’s own castle and lord of one’s own manor. 
Here in this bill the Crown is repeating terms that are deliberately evasive. No one now knows exactly what they should mean. We have the Crown apologising unreservedly for having undermined “the social and traditional structures and autonomy” of some people who actually comprise part of the Crown if the Crown is now the embodiment of our own self-government. The Government that is unreservedly apologising for undermining the social and traditional structures of those people is the same Government that is unreservedly attacking the traditional social structures of the majority. This Government takes pride in scoffing at the traditional religions of this country. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: Rubbish! 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Was Mr Benson-Pope there when his colleague Chris Carter described the Catholic Church in Hamilton as I think “a reservoir of anachronistic bigots”? That was the view he expressed. That is why the Government sticks in the throats of New Zealanders—[ 
Interruption 
] Is Annette King deriding that? She is the same honourable Minister who has decided that we will no longer give health care on the basis of need but will give it on the basis of race. She is the honourable Minister who has decided for votes that it is even OK for New Zealanders to break what Shylock said when he asked: “… do we not bleed?”.