Harawira Hone: Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill — Third Reading 
Harawira Hone: Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1705] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Some time ago a feisty young Maori MP objected to the vesting of petroleum in Crown ownership arguing that whether Maori knew about oil in 1840 was irrelevant. He argued that indigenous rights should not be locked into the time warp of colonisation and he argued that the challenge for lawyers was not the exact interpretation of the law but a vision of how that law should be developed. That politician was Sir Apirana Ngata and the time was 1937. Seventy years later Sir Apirana’s words remind us that the true art of law is not just about working to the rules but also about delivering justice. 
The Maori Party acknowledges the flourishing Maori legal profession for developing the skills of drafting practising and prosecuting law in the ways Ngata first spoke of. We recognise the help it gives to Maori politicians of all persuasions in promoting and advancing legislation through the House. We celebrate the fact that there are more than 1200 Maori students enrolled in legal studies. That celebration of course is somewhat tempered by the fact that Maori make up less than 5 percent of the legal fraternity and 7 percent of the judges. 
We have also heard a lot during this debate about how conveyancers and lawyers are supposed to act in the public interest and I have to ask myself whether that is my public. Is “the public” that is referred to the people down at Charlie’s place in Panguru or my whanaunga out in Whangaruru? Are my brother and his whanau out in west Auckland part of this decision-making process or my uncles and aunties in Te Hapua? Or is it some other public that we refer to here? I have a strange feeling that my people are not the public that is often referred to when people talk about the public interest and that worries me. 
Then when I look back into our history I see that in 1841 a Mr William Spain was appointed as a commissioner to examine land claims in Wellington and Taranaki. Our tupuna were presented with the remarkable racist and truly ludicrous spectacle of an English lawyer deciding who of Te Atiawa had land rights and what constituted Te Atiawa custom and establishing a benchmark that bedevils many of the issues we face in the legislation before the House today. In fact the whole matter would have been truly laughable were it not so tragic. Such is the basis of legal history in Aotearoa which assumes that statute law that came on a sailing ship has more authority than laws that came by waka. And such is the basis of many of the legal problems we face today. 
 The real question of course in this bill as in all other bills is what obligation we have to respect Te Tiriti o Waitangi because for all the hullabaloo that politicians raise about its historical importance its constitutional authority and its spiritual significance the Treaty does not even rate a mention in the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill. That is the case even though it was Te Tiriti o Waitangi that gave the Crown the right to set up a Government to establish laws in the first place. In return the Crown was to guarantee and actively protect Maori authority over their lands their fisheries their forests and other treasures and to extend to them the status and rights of British citizens. 
I was very interested therefore when on 15 February the Associate Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations the Hon Mita Ririnui assured the House of the Government’s commitment to the Treaty being included in legislation. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that commitment and I suggest that Minister Burton may want to have a conversation with his colleague in order to ensure they are both singing from the same song sheet. I make that point because it is due to the special constitutional status of Te Tiriti o Waitangi that the Maori Party will be introducing a paper to have an Oath of Allegiance to Te Tiriti o Waitangi included alongside the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen in the Oaths Modernisation Bill. 
The obligation to uphold the rule of law should require every lawyer to take formal education in Te Tiriti o Waitangi its significance as the founding document of Aotearoa its interpretation and its application to current systems policies and events. That education should also include a look at the effects of colonisation at the value of Maori perspective and at partnership land ownership sovereignty and social justice. It is heartening to see in the bill that the Council of Legal Education has chosen to recognise the aims aspirations and involvement of Maori as employees. We would hope that that can happen right across the legal fraternity. We commend the council for its work in that regard. 
The Maori Party is pleased to see the bill reach the light of day because it will mean the opening up of the closed-shop legal profession and it will give our people protection from the legal sharks. We all shudder at the stories of lawyers acting as trustees and choosing court action over resolution simply to fatten their wallets. But in truth it seems that legal sharks have always been part of the profession. Indeed Sir Richard Malins an English jurist made this stark observation way back in 1878: “One cannot help regretting that where money is concerned it is so much the rule to overlook moral obligations.” 
Twenty years ago Moana Jackson presented a report entitled  
The Maori and the Criminal Justice System. 
 One of his proposals was for a parallel criminal justice system for Maori. As we come into a time when politics is being dumbed down by the constant cry of one law for all it is maybe time to look again at how the law embodies and protects cultural values. Mr Jackson reminds us that the law is never culturally neutral and that legal ideals are always the product of a particular culture. He also proposes the view that one law for all should not mean one process for all but rather one justice for all. The Maori Party will demand that that justice includes the active involvement of whanau in all stages of the legal process. 
I point out that as a person who has practised the law—although not being a lawyer—I can say that there is a lot of hoodoo about what it takes to practise law. In the same way I believe there is probably a lot of hoodoo about what it takes to practise conveyancing. The Maori Party also has concerns that this is another law based on one profession sharing with another profession a role that extracts money from people who can ill afford it. 
Debate interrupted.