Williamson Maurice: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williamson Maurice: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7225. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction) 
: 
 I am delighted to take a quick call on this Statutes Amendment Bill. I want to focus only on the one issue for which a lot of my time was consumed and that was the issue that arose 3 years ago now I would say out of the city of Wanganui where a lot of my ancestry the Williamson family all came from. As you leave Marton heading into Wanganui there is a road called Williamsons Line. I had almost a sort of a conflict of interest because I have a lot of aunties and uncles who lived in the area. They were pretty angry on one side of the debate. When I met with local iwi and talked it through they were pretty strongly minded on the other side of the debate that Wanganui actually had an “h” in it for a long time. The electorate that Chester Borrows represents has an “h” in it the river has an “h” in it already but the town does not. 
The iwi showed me a lot of historic documents and I even found a book written by an ancestor of mine from the Williamsons three or four generations back called  
For Better or Worse 
 talking about when they arrived in the area. They spelt the whole place with an “h” back then. Even the local newspaper had an “h” in the Whanganui. So what seemed to me was like this was a huge issue. There were locals who were almost going to secede from the union if we put an “h” in and there were the local iwi and others who believed that the “h” was actually that vital to go in—even though the local iwi with its pronunciation does not pronounce it as an “f” when it is pronounced “wh”. To those of you who have heard Tariana Turia speak in the House she would call it “w’anau” whereas most Maori I hear would call it “whanau”. It is just the way that the pronunciation goes in Whanganui. 
So if you are not even going to pronounce it with an “f” there are a lot of people asking why you need to put it in. But I have never seen such emotional commitment from the local iwi. A lot of the elderly ladies who were there had tears in their eyes saying they felt it was that important to them. I came away from my consultation round saying look this has got to be a bit of a no-brainer. Why do we not just let people do whatever they want? The Government can do its bit—that over time as stationery runs out or new signage needs to go up or the district health board needs new signing on its vans we can stick the “h” in no problem. And when the road signs need to be replaced we can stick the “h” in. So the Government could do its bit. But if you are a private sector company and you want to call yourself the Wanganui Hardware Distributing Company you do not have to. So I came back here full of the joys of spring and thought I had got this nailed and that we would just go with the alternative. You can have it in or you do not have to have it in and gradually I think over time the “h” will become prevalent. I think it will just happen but it will be by osmosis over time. 
I got with my officials and they said: “But Minister there’s no statute on the book that allows you to have alternative place names.” And I said: “But there is. There’s Egmont/Taranaki and there’s Aoraki/Mt Cook.” They said: “No no sorry Minister you’re wrong. They’re dual place names.” So you could go with dual—there is a provision in the New Zealand Geographic Board legislation for dual naming. You could call it Whanganui/Wanganui and that really made a lot of sense. We would call it a double Whanganui but one would have an “h” and one would not. So I said: “Well look why don’t we get something into the New Zealand Geographic Board legislation or the New Zealand Geographic Board (NgaPouTaunaha o Aotearoa) Act 2008 which says that we can have alternatives—one or the other.” I thought that was pretty easy and we asked how we would do this. We could do it through its own bill but that will hardly get through the House. It will not be seen as that important and will sit at the bottom of the Order Paper and languish. Or let us stick it through a Statutes Amendment Bill. It will be non-controversial. Well was I wrong! I was unable to persuade the Greens for nearly 2 years. I sat down with the Greens. I got Tariana Turia to work with the Greens— 
Todd McClay 
: For 2 years? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I did not sit with them for 2 years no but I did sit over a period of time and I tried to persuade the Greens. I could not quite understand what their objection was. I did not know why they would not go with alternative names. The good news is that the Greens have now come onside as they have to for a Statutes Amendment Bill. For those thousands or hundreds of thousands of people listening to the radio this morning on this show you need to know that for a Statutes Amendment Bill to go through this place it has to have universal agreement—unanimous agreement. If anyone disagrees it does not get through. 
So it is a really special moment in time for me. It will not be my finest hour in politics but it is still a special hour to have been part of the culmination of a huge amount of work to be able to come here and sit through the second reading the Committee stage and finally a third reading hopefully today of this bill. The people of Whanganui can now rest easy in their beds at night. Those who do not want to use an “h” do not have to; no one is going to make them. Those who do can whenever they like formally. And Government agencies will now be able to begin. I have given them a very clear directive not to just go out and replace everything tomorrow—no need—but over time to replace their letterhead replace their stationery replace their signage as it gets broken or is requiring replacement and put the “h” in. And now the river the electorate and finally actually the place name will have the coherence that I think local iwi wanted. I thank the House for its time.