Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. The ACT Party supports the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill. What is good about this bill is that the Treaty of Waitangi recognises private property rights in its second article. New Zealand is almost unique in the world in that our founding document recognises the property rights of all New Zealanders in its founding document. The Treaty of Waitangi in the English version in the second article says that Her Majesty the Queen of England … guarantees … the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties" which the chiefs and tribes of New Zealand had in their possession. Then as we know from reading our recent history a number of egregious acts were committed not solely by the Crown which dispossessed Ngāti Maru and other iwi and hapū of their lands. We should count ourselves fortunate particularly at this time of great strife in other countries that we regard as our equals whether they be in Europe or in the Pacific where strife between ethnic communities and disagreements over land and access to resources has led to violence and the breakdown of their civil society. So I think it's important that all New Zealanders acknowledge that having the Treaty of Waitangi as a founding document actually gives us an opportunity to focus on sorting out real infringements of private property rights. Reading through the proposal that this claims settlement bill brings to the House there is an apology and redress for the acts of the Crown and the omissions of the Crown—an apology a cultural redress and a commercial and financial redress of $30 million. In terms of the apology there's an acknowledgment of the Crown's actions and an apology for its breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi with regard to Ngāti Maru and that is fit. In terms of a cultural redress the bill includes provision for a number of cultural redress instruments which are listed in detail in the bill. The bill then comes to the substantive matters which is the vesting of properties because despite the fact that the Crown has acknowledged a large number of properties and the extent of land that was alienated from Ngāti Maru unfairly it's not possible for the Crown to restore all of that land because since that event much of that land is in fact owned by others. Other people now have private property rights in that land. So the Crown has to find some other way of giving redress in terms of a financial redress of $30 million and to make available other properties that the Crown has access to. That is land about which the Crown essentially says "While we might have wanted to use it for other purposes it is far better that we give Ngāti Maru this land in recognition of the loss of their lands and alienation of their lands as a result of the Crown's action." and that is fit. So there are properties in the Taranaki area and then there are statutory acknowledgments. That is where in law the role the mana of Ngāti Maru is recognised in legislation and that is fit. There is a deed of recognition where the Crown is required to consult with Ngāti Maru on specific matters that affect this iwi and to have regard to their special associations that they have with places that are important to Ngāti Maru and that is fit. Then we come to the matter of natural resource redress. In New Zealand we have the Resource Management Act and that was intended in 1991 to be the vehicle by which private land owners and the Government and their agencies whether they be a transport agency or a railways department—as it might have been at the time—could apply for consent from local government and then the Environment Court if it was appealed to undertake activities on their private property. Now the Resource Management Act is recognised to have failed to adequately allocate resources and to have imposed costs and burdens on the private sector and the State sector alike and in fact that law is well overdue for reform. The ACT Party has proposed an alternative to the Government's Natural and Built Environments Bill which we'll be presenting in the House later this week. But coming back to the natural resource redress in this bill this bill provides for joint-management agreements between Ngāti Maru and local government—the Taranaki Regional Council—and that is in relation to any exercise of the local authority's functions powers and duties relating to a natural and physical resource. Yet most New Zealanders would expect that resource consent decisions taken under the Resource Management Act are actually impartial and free from interference and influence by those who do not have an elected role and are actually not subject to all of the controls on regional councils for example which limit the exercise of their decision making. Many New Zealanders have raised concerns about these types of joint-management or co-governance arrangements and some of these concerns are legitimate. I could give you the example in Auckland of the co-governance arrangements over Auckland's maunga—our volcanic cones—which has resulted in a large number of trees being removed against the wishes of the local community because it turns out that once these co-governance relationships are entered into many other people who live in that community private property owners and those who care about their environment—their parks and reserves and their natural place—as much as any other New Zealander does from any ethnicity feel that their concerns are not in fact being heard. They have lost the decision-making power over their reserves and in fact even their elected representatives on their local councils have lost their decision-making power.When we see joint-management agreements over natural resources identified in a piece of legislation many New Zealanders are greatly concerned about that. It may well be there are other ways to deal with the private property rights that Ngāti Maru have and that they have demonstrated in the courts than a co-governance arrangement which in many ways is the worst of all worlds because any decision making they have over other people's private property would be regarded as unfair by those subjected to decision making by unelected people and yet it doesn't actually give them the opportunity to do what they see fit with their own property.So in many ways while the joint-management agreement described here in the natural resource redress section of the bill appears to have good intentions it's actually an example of where you get to with poorly thought out principles that are applied to sorting out issues of private property rights. That's why the ACT Party believes that if there is a breach of property rights that should be clearly defined and that if a party does in fact have a property right they should be compensated for that if it's been affected. Otherwise groups that are unelected should not have decision making powers over other people's property and that is definitely a risk as these types of redress measures are advanced through legislation. But the ACT Party will support the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill because we believe in the rule of law. We believe that it does go a long way to uphold the value of private property rights in New Zealand and for that reason we will support it at this reading. Thank you Mr Speaker."