Tirikatene Rino: Maungaharuru-Tangitū Hapū Claims Settlement Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Maungaharuru-Tangitū Hapū Claims Settlement Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:17139. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Korōria harerūria ki a Ihowa o ngā Mano Matua Tama Wairua Tapu me ngā Ānahera Pono me te Māngai hei tautoko mai aia nei āke nei āe. Maungaharuru-Tangitū hapū tēnā koutou. Tēnā koutou kua tae mai nei ki te Whare Pāremata. Nō koutou tēnei rā he rā whakahirahira tēnei. E ngā pou o te hāhī tēnā koutou ā huri noa e rau rangatira mā i roto i tēnei Whare tēnā koutou tēnā koutou ā tēnā tātou katoa.[Thank you. Glory and praise be to Jehovah of Hosts Father Son and Holy Spirit and the Faithful Angels and the support of the Mouthpiece now and forever after amen.Greetings and acknowledgments to you the subtribe of Maungaharuru-Tangitū who have arrived here at Parliament House. This is your day and an important one at that. Greetings to the pillars of the church and to you leaders of a hundredfold throughout this House acknowledgments salutations and greetings to you and to us all.]It is indeed an honour for me to speak to the final reading of the Maungaharuru-Tangitū Hapū Claims Settlement Bill. Can I firstly acknowledge our manuhiri Maungaharuru-Tangitū who have travelled from afar. I understand you had to get up very early this morning in the wee hours and have travelled all the way through to come down here to Pōneke. So I would like to welcome you all.I do want to give my acknowledgments at the start because there are so many people who have been part of this culmination that we are at at this point. I do want to acknowledge the Maungaharuru-Tangitū Trust and in particular Tānia Hopmans and Bevan Taylor the negotiators and the trustees. I would just acknowledge all the whānau and our kaumātua and kuia who are here to witness this historic occasion and to represent their whānau and the whānau who have gone before them who have been on this long journey in taking their grievances forward and who have been fighting for recognition over many generations. I do acknowledge you all for all your mahi and for coming here at this historic time. In particular I started off my speech today with a wee Rātana inoi because I acknowledge the pou here and Fred Reti and Hine Reti the whānau. I know your dad the late āpōtoro Joe Reti who played a significant role as the initial claimant for the hapū. I do acknowledge your presence here today also.Maungaharuru-Tangitū is a collection of hapū. They include Ngāti Kurumōkihi Ngāti Tū Ngāti Whakaari Ngāi Tauira Ngāi Te Ruruku ki Tangōio and Ngāi Tahu but not the one that I am part of. We may have a connection; I am not sure. As has been mentioned in the contributions from Minister Sharples and my colleagues there has been a terrible history that was inflicted upon this people. The trouble started back in 1851. We know about the Crown and its modus operandi in the early settlement of our nation and how it went about purchasing large tracts of land at Ahuriri and Mōhaka. It failed to ensure that sufficient reserves were set aside for the hapū. They were not adequately consulted on any of the purchases and those also included areas like Ahuriri and Te Whanganui-ā-Ōrotu which were never part of the deal.So there is a long history. Maungaharuru-Tangitū is not a familiar name in the history books. This hapū and its history seem to have been bypassed by historians by and large. Most Kiwis know about the history of our country and the land wars in Taranaki and Waikato or maybe the pursuit of Te Kooti through Poverty Bay and the Tūhoe land on the Central Plateau but not many have heard of Maungaharuru-Tangitū and the hapū there or their district or the way they were ill-treated by the Crown. But not today—today is their day and today their history and their grievance are finally being recorded and being recognised by this House. Indeed it is a historic occasion. I do acknowledge the historians in the House too—Richard Boast and his work with this wonderful hapū over many years also.Not too many people have heard of Maungaharuru-Tangitū but they do have a very particular mamae because this hapū was the only hapū in the Kahungunu that suffered raupatu. I would like to talk a little bit about that because that particular mamae is the way the lands at Ōmarunui and Pētane were attained. A group of inland chiefs wrote to the Crown to say they were travelling to Napier to negotiate the end of their participation in the New Zealand Wars only to be stopped by colonial troops and given 24 hours to give up Ōmarunui.They did not. A battle ensued and the chiefs were left to count the cost—23 Māori killed and around 80 exiled to the Chatham Islands Wharekauri Rēkohu where they were detained for 2 years without trial. Members of Maungaharuru-Tangitū who were part of that were also part of Te Kooti’s escape from Wharekauri. When they returned they found themselves in a fight not of their making. They were just part of the rebellion. It goes without saying that because of so-called rebels within the hapū that was reason enough for the Crown to alienate 9000 acres at Tāngoio as raupatu land and land taken as recompense for their disloyalty to the Crown. They then split the land into 12 blocks and gave title to individual Māori owners.We are familiar as I mentioned with the tactics of the Crown in this situation a tactic that it has employed in many other settlements that we have spoken about in this House. Another way to pressure the hapū into selling the land was to forbid the owners from leasing to private owners. This made the land less productive and less valuable and it played right into the hands of the Crown. So the land could not be sold. But it went further. In 1909 there was more legislation that made it possible for individual owners to sell shares in the land to the Government. So by the 1930s by these actions of systematically forcing the purchasing of the land from these people some 100000-plus acres of land had been bought by the Crown and taken from these people. The remainder of the hapū were left without an economic base or a presence in their takiwā. The only land they have left is 3 acres in Tāngoio where their marae is. Think about that—110000 acres down to a mere 3 acres. It was a huge loss. As I say it is the greatest land-grabbing machine—legal land-grabbing machine—in the history of this country that the Crown created as the Native Land Court. That was a part of systematically depriving these people of their whenua.I do want to talk about that landscape that ancestral landscape of these people of Maungaharuru-Tangitū. It is that lovely stretch of coastal land mixed with foothills and a dividing range between Napier airport to the north along the coast past the mill at Whirinaki and onwards to Tāngoio and its dramatic gorge heading towards Lake Tūtira. Nothing expresses this dramatic country of Maungaharuru Tāngoio better than driving from Napier to Taupō. The land is as beautiful as it is dramatic from the fertile Esk Valley and its row upon row of grapevines and its pretty little church to the lakeside settlement of Te Pohue high up in the Maungaharuru Range. Throw in some big rivers such as the Mōhaka and you pretty much get the big idea of the geography that I am talking about.It is this part of the country that the beneficiaries of Maungaharuru-Tangitū whakapapa to along with their relatives and whanaunga in NgātiPāhauwera. It is mountain to the sea in all its ruggedness and glory and the people who should be binding the land together holding it together—the tangata whenua—have been marginalised to Tāngoio which is a very flood-prone area. That is the beautiful ancestral landscape of these people.I am delighted that we can be here to celebrate the passing of this bill. This marks a new chapter for the hapū. I am delighted to be able to mihi to you all and commend this bill to the House because it certainly is a historic day. I wish you all the very best for the future. Nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.