Katene Rahui: Unit Titles Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Katene Rahui: Unit Titles Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 30 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:10223. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 The purpose of the Unit Titles Bill is principally to update the law in order to provide for the range complexity and size of today’s developments including large-scale projects. 
Unlike some of the other legislation that has come through under urgency today this is a bill that had a long and thorough public consultation process attracting over 100 submissions from the public and interested groups. During the process of consultation some very positive developments emerged including the introduction of new clause 7A which specifies that the bill does not restrict Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993. 
However I would not want to give the impression that there are no outstanding issues remaining with this bill. The bill updates the law regarding subdivision development and management through bodies corporate. We have some difficulties in that the bill provides for corporate housing development but does not address the issue of facilitating Maori housing development. At present under the law there is no capacity to enable the owners of Maori customary or freehold land in a particular area or papakainga to join with one another to collectively manage their lands and do things like restrict the sale of land in order to maintain the integrity of the papakainga. The question we would like the Minister of Housing to consider further is whether a new bill can be developed to take into account special Maori needs to protect their papakainga. 
Another issue we have been considering is the relationship of Maori land to the joint ownership and management of land for the particular whanau hapu or iwi belonging to that land. There are currently serious problems with the subdivision of Maori land particularly where the Maori Land Court will not agree to the partitioning of Maori land. Getting through an application for an individual partition of land is inevitably difficult because of the thresholds of agreement needed. We need to find another way in which to protect lands from misuse and/or sale while also allowing whanau and hapu to develop papakainga housing projects if there is a reasonable level of consent. One way might be to identify land suitable for a Maori housing scheme and to lower the thresholds for partitioning those lands while also placing restrictions on the sale of the partitioned lands. 
I raise those issues in the context of this bill because I have confidence that the newly reinstated Minister of Housing has already established credibility in terms of his commitment to support papakainga housing. The Maori Party has been really proud of the work we have done with him in the Kainga Whenua project. In effect Maori who want to build on their ancestral land will now be able to through the unique partnership of Housing New Zealand Corporation and Kiwibank. Kainga Whenua establishes an opportunity for Maori to build purchase or relocate a house on multiple-owned Maori land. The Crown supports the application Kiwibank lends the finance and the whanau as long as they can demonstrate their whakapapa rights to occupy the land can borrow up to $200000 towards the house building costs or the purchase price of the house. This is such a fabulous initiative that we have every confidence that once this bill which responds to the needs of bodies corporate has been dispensed with today the Minister can turn his attention to whanau hapu and iwi. 
This bill is quite specific about its purpose to provide a new legal framework for understanding unit titles. That is when land is subdivided for development. As I said earlier the main beneficiaries of this bill will be bodies corporate and at this point I have very little information about how well Maori will be represented in this elite group. I suspect that for most Maori the large-scale projects being responded to in the context of this bill are relevant to them by virtue of their experience as tenants. While other New Zealanders have been hit hard by the challenge of property prices and rents that are seemingly out of reach for Maori it has been compounded by issues such as low incomes high debt levels poor access to finance an inability to raise house finance against multiple-owned land and a lack of information about housing ownership options. So we know that Maori are disproportionately overrepresented as tenants. This is a movement that has increased dramatically over the last two decades. The proportion of Maori relying on rental tenure has increased from 38.6 percent in 1991 to 54.8 percent in 2006. 
The Unit Titles Bill is a positive piece of legislation because it provides a socially and economically sustainable basis for the communities of individual owners. It is not by any means the panacea to all our problems but we are supportive of this bill. We look forward to an ongoing and productive discussion with the Minister of Housing about Maori housing.