Henare Tau: Ngati Mutunga Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Henare Tau: Ngati Mutunga Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:635;Page:6435] 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 I am not going to argue with you Madam Chairperson or the Speaker and I thank you very much for your wise comments. But I think it is an absolute and abject crying shame that the Crown never saw this situation coming. The Crown must have known somewhere along the line that such an amendment was going to come up. 
We were led to believe at the Maori Affairs Committee—and I refer to page 23 of the commentary on the bill—that “amending the bill to provide for the disestablishment of the iwi authority and the establishment of the post-settlement governance entity was not feasible.” I think that was a bit of bum information. The Office of Treaty Settlements and the Government representatives must have known that the new entity was established in the year 2005 on 21 December. So we got some wrong information and that is why we are standing here. 
One of the crucial points of this settlement bill is that the whole of Parliament is in support of it. We are not trying to squeeze any more money out of the Crown. We are not trying to diddle the Crown out of whatever. We are not trying to get one over the Crown. Because some of us have been approached by the people who make up half of the settlement I ask members to please support us in moving the assets from one entity to another which has already been established. We did not know that the entity had already been established when we were in the select committee; otherwise it would not have been in the commentary. 
The question that has to be asked is whether the officials told members of Parliament the truth. The officials can shake their heads but I intend to try to find out at the next Maori Affairs Committee meeting whether we were told the truth or whether we were led up the garden path. I am quite disappointed. We agree with the ruling given by the Chairperson and the Speaker that a new entity cannot be set up as it states in the commentary. That is fine; we cop that—it is not a problem. But I have serious doubts as to whether we were given all the information about this issue as it is stated on page 23 of the commentary on the bill. 
 The bill’s title is the Ngati Mutunga Claims Settlement Bill but maybe it should be called the “Ngati Mutunga Confiscation Settlement Bill”. I refer back to my comments earlier about the text of the acknowledgments and apology and I say we should call the bill what it is not what we are comfortable with so as not to offend anybody. We are talking about the history of a people. This is a people’s story concerning both the Crown and Ngati Mutunga. It is about something that has happened and it has taken many years to reach an agreement between the Crown and Ngati Mutunga. So let us call the bill the “Ngati Mutunga Confiscation Settlement Bill”. As the bill reads now Ngati Mutunga claim there was a breach. Everybody knows there was a breach and a negotiated settlement so let us call it the “Ngati Mutunga Confiscation Settlement Bill”. Kia ora.