Franks Stephen: Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading 
Franks Stephen: Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:627;Page:21781] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 Once again I am obliged on behalf of the ACT party— 
Lindsay Tisch 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I just seek some clarification. I did indicate to the ACT party that because of time constraints it could take the second call which is a National slot. My question is: will we be able to take the third call with my colleague Gerry Brownlee? That is out of the usual speaking order. We are supporting the bill but the ACT member has to leave so I did indicate that he could take National’s call if we could take the third call which is a Government call. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Normally in this situation National would have to take call No. 5 which is the ACT call. The member of course has already risen to speak and under Speaker’s ruling 25/4 once he has been called he has to continue that call. But the member may seek leave. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: Well I seek leave from the Government that the third call be a National call. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: There is no objection. 
Pita Paraone 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. New Zealand First was not consulted about this change to the sequence of speakers. My understanding is that if the National Party has given its right to ACT then by the normal sequence New Zealand First should follow ACT. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member could object to the leave. But the reality is that I have a list of the order of speakers which has been adhered to and it is a guide. The next speaker now that Mr Franks has been given the call will be a Government member. The Government has agreed that it has no objection to this course of action being taken and it is quite possible that one of those speakers could drop down in the order. But I am really in the hands of the House on this particular issue. The member has sought leave. I will put the question again that the National speaker follow the ACT speaker. Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There appears to be none. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Once again I have to advise that the ACT party is unable to support this bill because once again like other similar bills it has been presented in a form that has this House participate in the endorsement or implicit endorsement of matters that are not appropriate for legislation. In particular this is another instance of the House recording in a number of places reference to the so-called principles of the Treaty of Waitangi instead of to the words of the treaty itself or instead of recording that in addition to reference to the words of the treaty itself. The ACT party has consistently opposed legislation that contains wording concerning the principles of the treaty. This was an interesting day for this bill to come back from the Maori Affairs Committee because it is the day that the New Zealand First Party has released its treaty policy. The leader of the New Zealand First Party delivered a very fine speech and it is a pity that it was not delivered in this House in relation to one of these treaty settlement bills. Many of the warnings that the New Zealand First leader has given in his great rhetorical style apply in relation to this bill. 
This bill goes through a complicated recital of grievance in English and in Maori. It refers five times to breaches of the so-called principles of the treaty—those spurious inventions of 1980 and 1990. It has the Crown on behalf of us all apologise for things that are just part of the normal human condition. It has the Crown state that its failure to ensure that the iwi concerned retained sufficient land for its present and future needs was a breach of the treaty. The treaty does not guarantee that anyone will retain his or her land; it simply states that Maori will retain it for so long as it is their wish to do so. It guarantees that land will be tradable. Because the treaty states that land is tradable it was clearly expected that Maori like any other citizen of New Zealand would be able to decide when and whether they retained their land. 
So we have this Parliament about to push through its next stage a bill that is a negation of the principal assurance of the treaty as stated in article 2. We have a bill that the select committee and the Minister just now have said they are uncomfortable about. We have a bill that the Minister says he wants to contribute to a strengthening of the Crown’s continuing relationship with the iwi. The treaty did not assume a continuing relationship with iwi. It did not assume a partnership. That is a mythical invention of judges who were forced to invent something to cope with some political compromises put through by David Lange. A continuing relationship between the Crown and the Nga Rauru Kitahi people is perfectly appropriate. We all expect the Crown to treat us with courtesy and to want to have a continuing relationship with us. But here we have a Minister who has admitted that this bill is designed to give a privileged relationship to Nga Rauru Kitahi that other New Zealanders do not have with the Crown which is the embodiment of us all. 
I do not know how many times we will be told that it is not yet time for a select committee to try to change one of these bills. Here at least we have New Zealand First and National saying that some of the things in this bill should not be there. The select committee’s minority report states that the recital of spiritual values with reference to “the origin of gods man vegetation and taonga.” deals with matters perhaps of the belief of some members of the iwi but that they should not be included in legislation. We agree entirely with the select committee but what we want to know is why this bill is nevertheless likely to be supported by the members who consider that. When will they stand up for a standard of legislation that does not remove the proud boast we started with: that our Government would be secular and treat all alike and that our Government would protect any spiritual values provided they were expressed in a law-abiding way? 
The New Zealand First and National view is great but I will listen with interest to see whether those parties vote on this bill according to where their mouth is. That is particularly significant today when we have a very eloquent mouth in the form of the Rt Hon Winston Peters articulate a view of the treaty that I think most New Zealanders would endorse. But we do not know whether New Zealand First will vote in the same way as that or whether it will support the kinds of deals that we see in this settlement—deals that are not actually good for the people they are dealing with. They are deals that give mock property rights: rights to be a nuisance rights to be consulted rights to be heard by the Environment Court and rights to require Government officials to come and solemnly pretend to pay attention but then ignore the iwi. They are only rights that put this iwi in the position of many other iwi whereby all that it looks like to its neighbours is a nuisance because the iwi does not get real property rights. It is not getting the ability to use to exploit to change and to sell land. 
Hon Georgina te Heuheu 
: Is that the same for Ngai Tahu? 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: It is the same for Ngai Tahu too. The pattern that has been created here and which only ACT has had the political courage to question and to vote against in this House is a pattern that should have long since been abandoned by the Government and by this Parliament. It is a pattern that actually perpetuates the grounds for future grievance. A future generation of young Maori will look at this settlement and say they were just given the shadow of a settlement and were palmed off with a new generation’s baubles and beads. They will say they were given a fulsome apology and then rights that on their face in the fine letters of the legislation were intended to mean nothing: requirements that Government bodies take account of Nga Rauru Kitahi views but then a few pages later very blunt statements to the effect that “taking account” does not mean anything has to change. In fact the bill goes further than that. It states that those bodies can act or should act as though the submissions have no weight and as though the submissions are not required by statute. 
Why would anyone in this House keep on voting for that kind of fraudulent settlement? It will not seem to be so at the moment because people understand the context of it. Oh yes they will rue this. This bill is necessary to maintain face. This bill is about the Crown showing its regret and that is all those people want. They want to be acknowledged. They want it to be recognised that wrong was done to them—and I have no doubt that wrong was done. But wrong went both ways in so many of those areas. The next generation when it finds an apology that is all one-sided will look at it and ask why if everything was so bad the settlement was so insubstantial. Nothing in this bill tells us we will not have exactly the experience that occurred after the last set of Taranaki settlements. The Sim Commission went there and in good faith tried to settle this issue. The Sim Commission’s recommendations were in fact beefed up by the Labour Government in those days—by Peter Fraser and his Ministers—which thought that the Government should be more generous. Two generations later we find Taranaki has come back again and has said the compensation was not enough—that it did not work. The next time round by looking at legislation like this the people who come to the Government will have a far more substantial ground for doing so because on the face of it this settlement looks ridiculous. ACT will vote against it.