Delahunty Catherine: Tūhoe Claims Settlement Bill Te Urewera Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Tūhoe Claims Settlement Bill Te Urewera Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 23 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19471. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. He mihi nui ki a Ngāi Tūhoe katoa. Tēnā koutou ngā rangatira whaea tuākana ngā iwi katoa tamariki mokopuna tēnā koutou.[Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. Greetings to you all in the House and a huge shout-out to all of Ngāi Tūhoe. Acknowledgments to leaders aunties elder siblings the entire tribe children and grandchildren greetings.]I am humbly standing to take Metiria Turei’s place because she was unable to be here today and I feel considerably whakamā. But as a Pākehā it is a proud opportunity also to own the obligations of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the necessity for us to own the history that we have benefited from and that Ngāi Tūhoe have had to fight to survive—and you have. These two bills the Tūhoe Claims Settlement Bill and the Te Urewera Bill are extraordinary achievements and I want to acknowledge the people in the gallery who made it happen and the people back at home. Ā tēnā koe Tāmati me Te Kotahi ā Tūhoe [And to you Tāmati and the confederation of Tūhoe thank you] and thank you to everyone involved. I would also like to acknowledge the Hon Christopher Finlayson and his office because this legislation could not have happened without both parties being prepared to be brave and creative and to challenge the assumptions and prejudices of what a Te Tiriti settlement can actually contain. I would like to acknowledge the negotiation skills of Tūhoe the persistence the radicalism and the creativity that have always challenged our nation to do better than we have done. Today is a great day and it is your day.I would also like to mihi to Te Urewera. It was never a park. That was a label imposed in the 1950s based on an old behaviour pattern since colonisation and it has melted in the mist like all the other attempts to colonise the heart of the motu and the “children of the mist”. The history of Tūhoe and the Crown is turning a corner today because the Crown has finally conceded that Te Urewera cannot be treated as a parcel of real estate. Te Urewera the living entity and the inseparable connection with te mana motuhake o Tūhoe is being acknowledged in this legislation finally. Thank goodness. Thank goodness there is no going back to the failed attempts to burn to kill and to destroy in the wake of Te Kooti seeking refuge in Te Urewera. Thank goodness we are not going back to the failed colonial assaults on Maungapōhatu and the dawn ninja nightmare that was visited upon Ruātoki. We must never go back to those moments.I personally look forward to paying visitor fees hut fees and any other fees to the tangata whenua and the governing body that will manage this area because it is a debt of gratitude that we can visit their rohe and be embraced by their ngahere the magnificent maunga awa roto and trees and the equally magnificent undefeated nation. We owe you apologies and we owe you respect. When the tarseal runs out beyond Murupara it is entering another world and we the Pākehā have always needed a passport even if we did not realise it—a passport of respect and recognition—and I say bring it on. “Sorry” is not all we can say today. It is the job of Te Tiriti - committed Pākehā to say more than “sorry” and we are here to say today that the Green Party fully supports your achievements and the achievement of the Crown.However no Te Tiriti settlement alone will bring all New Zealand citizens into the light. It is going to take a real Crown investment to shift the Pākehā understanding of Tūhoe and Te Urewera. The ugly demonising of Tame Iti the so-called terrorist has been so reminiscent of the ugly demonising of Rua Kēnana in 1916. That is why the Greens do not accept the concept of full and final settlement when the full and final recognition and restitution has not and cannot be paid. When Pākehā understand what full and final is then I am with it. Until that day we need to continue the dialogue. “When will the settlers settle?”—a wise man has put out that challenge to us. The responsibility remains on the Crown and the kāwanatanga for this process that has been set up and it is a great process. It is a permanent framework for powerful and often uncomfortable dialogue. That is what the Treaty process offers us. And we have to stop new breaches taking place—15 October 2007 is not forgotten. The children of Ruātoki have the scars. And the poverty caused by colonisation that I see whenever I travel through the rohe needs to be healed and supported by a permanent commitment from this Parliament to real support as well as settlement.There have been other uncomfortable processes. I would like to acknowledge the leadership of Tau Henare in the select committee for a very very fine job on these bills and also on the complexities around boundaries and borders that came to the select committee which I think my colleague Meka Whaitiri has outlined extremely well. The kāwanatanga processes do not deal effectively with what are tangata whenua boundary issues. We are not capable of that. However I was really reassured to hear from the Minister that the Waitangi Tribunal is not going to marginalise the other iwi. As we have seen throughout the settlement process where there are smaller groups or boundary groups marginalised we can never settle. We need ongoing dialogue and we need a place where everybody can get up and make their claim.I would like to acknowledge that there are great traditional ways of resolving boundary and border disputes which can be undermined by Crown processes. It is really important that we look at the overall Treaty settlement process in this House and make sure that the concepts that the Crown has imposed on the process do not undermine basically tino rangatiratanga ngā iwi katoa o Aotearoa [the sovereignty of all people in New Zealand]. Having named all those things it is my privilege to have attended the pōwhiri at Te Uru Taumatua and once again be in the presence of the dynamic and theatrical wero of Tūhoe to the rest of us and to be moved to tears when Tainui came forward to acknowledge Tūhoe for their support in the Waikato wars. That was a profound moment of learning.Also I recognise in Te Uru Taumatua the synthesis of ancient and contemporary sustainability being celebrated in Tāneatua. It is a symbol of the future and of the settlement that the ancient and the modern can come together through Tūhoe. That kaitiakitanga and rangatiratanga of Tūhoe offers the whole nation—and indeed the planet—a new way of understanding how indigenous leadership will teach us how to heal our planet which we have pushed to the brink of destruction. By acknowledging indigenous leadership and the inseparable connections of the whakapapa of people who take responsibility whether we allow them to or not we can learn and we can change and we can protect our planet. So the Green Party is very very supportive. We really believe that the kaitiaki of Te Urewera will lead us to a better way not only for this area but for the whole country.It says in the settlement that it is not a precedent around national parks but it is a leader and it is about acknowledging the pātaka kai as well as the concept of preservation. Actually pātaka kai is a critical thing for all of us. Some of us just seem to have forgotten that because our fridge is the supermarket. But other people whose fridge is the moana or the ngahere actually have something to teach us about sustainability. If we want to survive as a human species we had better start listening. Kia ora Tūhoe. Awesome.I also want to acknowledge the Pākehā people who have educated some of us about this. The late Judith Binney made an extraordinary contribution. She was able to do that because of the relationships that she was able to form. Relationship is everything. Everything is about interconnection. That is what is strong about the negotiated ideas in the settlement—the relationships that have been established between Tūhoe and the Crown and the local communities. It is great that we have people from Whakatāne—the mayor and others—here today. It is time for Pākehā to be there at the table but not to try to control the table. It is the Tūhoe table and we are welcome to sit at it.Sometimes we can shut up but actually today is a day for Pākehā to speak out and acknowledge the achievement and acknowledge our part of it. We have a role to play in educating our own. That is where Judith Binney with her wonderful books has led so many of us to a deeper understanding. I am not going to say she has led us to redemption yet or even a decent song—you try to get Pākehās to work out what their song is! The collective Pākehā identity is individualism and it is a bit of a problem which you know about all too well. But the opportunity in this settlement is for Pākehā to understand more deeply the taonga that is Te Urewera under the kaitiakitanga and rangatiratanga of the people of the land.Personally at the age of 17 I went to Tūhoe and learnt that I was second nation. What a blessing! What a great learning to stand down the river from Whakatāne and realise I was second nation as cowboys on horseback rode past yelling at me in the Reo and I am this little Pākehā girl who did not know what they were saying. What it taught me was that I had something to learn and I will always be grateful to Tūhoe. As for many of us it has been the most powerful learning because the Reo the mana motuhake and the radicalism have been outstanding and they have really helped many of us to learn. So kia ora for that.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: OK. Kia ora koutou. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou.