Sage Eugenie: Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 17 October 2012. Volume:684;Page:5915. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 Although the Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill may not have a lot of legal consequence I think it is very significant in terms of its cultural consequences. There has been a long history in this country of local authorities not paying due regard to Maori interests when it comes to siting rubbish dumps oxidation ponds and sewage plants and those have often been sited by or discharged into waterways. 
I am very grateful to Te Ururoa Flavell for his explanation of the history of this bill. It was certainly brought to the attention of the Local Government and Environment Committee too in the joint submission by Nga Potiki and the Tauranga City Council. The reclamation that the Mount Maunganui Borough Council did was of gross offence to Nga Potiki. That was because the harbour is a taonga. The reclamation and the discharge of sewage were offensive to the values of that ancestral landscape because they did not recognise the significance of the harbour as taonga in terms of both the siting of the waste-water treatment plant on the reclamation and the proposals to discharge effluent into the southernmost part of Tauranga Harbour. Then as Te Ururoa Flavell explained the siting and construction of the pipe took the effluent out to an ocean outfall through an urupa a sacred burial ground. These sorts of things have been done by local authorities repeatedly. It is in this bill by repealing the legislation and repealing the ability for the council to continue with the reclamation that we are putting things right. 
The whole sewage treatment plant and the discharges were opposed vigorously in the 1970s. I think we need to remember that when communities and Maori are active on other issues to protect their taonga and to protect their natural environment they have a very valid point in protecting what is important to them: the natural environment. We should not just dismiss that opposition as getting in the way of development as this Government often does. It was back in the 1970s if you read the Waitangi Tribunal’s report that you had the kaumatua vigorously opposing the reclassification of the waters of the harbour that would have allowed the discharges and opposing the reclamation and Government agencies like the Ministry of Fisheries and the Commissioner for the Environment at the time opposing the reclamation and yet it still proceeded.  
We have moved on since then. It was enormously heartening at the select committee to have one submission on the bill—a joint submission by Nga Potiki and the Tauranga City Council which has of course succeeded the Mount Maunganui Borough Council—supporting this bill and explaining some of the history. Those submitters gave evidence that there is now a much more constructive working relationship between Nga Potiki and the council. That has been manifest in a standing committee on the council to facilitate better engagement with iwi and a commitment by the city council to the establishment of wetlands and other treatment that removes the solids from the discharges that go through the ocean outfall. This is a very good bill. It is a bill that the Green Party supports and it should be passed into law. Thank you.