Mapp Wayne: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:20206] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I particularly want to refer to clause 14 and frankly I have to say for a party that has made so much of the inclusion of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi how bad it is that it is not taking a call on this part. The New Zealand First Party is apparently not taking a call on Part 2. 
Dail Jones 
: That is a lie—you wait and see. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: Oh well I will be pleasantly surprised if the New Zealand First Party does choose to take a call on Part 2—[ 
Interruption 
] I tell the member that I do not need cross-interjection. I just wish to make the point that a party that is serious about eliminating references to the principles of the treaty should take calls when they arise as they do in clause 14. National’s policy announced by Dr Brash in the now famous speech at Orewa is to remove inclusion to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi from legislation. I wrote about that in the  
New Zealand Law Journal  
in May of 2003. 
What is wrong with the inclusion of the principles? It is this. The principles do not exist in reality. What one actually has are provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi—clauses that are quite simple on the face of it—both in English and in Maori. Normally one would expect would one not in interpreting an agreement—and the Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement—reference to the terms of the agreement itself; not some judicial fiction invented by the Court of Appeal trying to do its best about some appallingly drafted legislation by the Lange-Palmer Labour Government. Because that is what it all stems from: that appalling inclusion in the State-Owned Enterprises Act which has now infected our law to our disadvantage. 
So we are saying: “Let’s revert back to first principles.” Let us remove reference to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi; and in this case we are in agreement with other centre-right parties in this Parliament—New Zealand First and the ACT party. We do believe in a reference to black letter law—one lets the law say what it means and one makes reference to the terms of the treaty which are precisely the issues raised in clause 14 of the bill. 
Clause 14(a)(i)(A) states: “from the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) or the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi);”. It should be one or the other. Only reference to the treaty is required. That would be of enormous benefit to the law. In substantive terms it would make no difference to the way we do our settlements because we recognise that settlements are for breaches of the treaty—in other words confiscations and other actions that remove the property rights of Maori. That is the very essence of the preamble the acknowledgments and the apologies within this document. Land was confiscated in essence illegally in breach of the terms of article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi. So we say that the rule should be quite clear. In claim settlements one is acknowledging breaches of the law. 
The only reason Maori cannot sue on the basis of the Treaty of Waitangi is that essentially it is outside the statute of limitations; there are other reasons as well but that is the main reason. If for instance the breach had occurred 12 years ago people would simply sue for breach of the law. In reality these breaches occurred much longer ago so one has to make reference to the breach of the Treaty of Waitangi itself—not a document that is part of the law of the land I might add—and that would be the answer to these vexed issues. We say this: the Government makes consistent and persistent errors by continuing to include these provisions.