Whaitiri Meka: Ngāti Rangiteaorere Claims Settlement Bill Ngāti Rangiwewehi Claims Settlement Bill Tapuika Claims Settlement Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWhaitiri Meka: Ngāti Rangiteaorere Claims Settlement Bill Ngāti Rangiwewehi Claims Settlement Bill Tapuika Claims Settlement Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 09 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:17161. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti):Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa ngā mema o te Whare nei.[Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. Greetings to us all members of this House.]It gives me an absolute privilege and honour to stand in support of the final reading of this significant omnibus bill. First I need to mihi to Te Arawa waka Te Arawa tangata nau mai nau mai haere mai. Nau mai haere mai ki tō tātou Whare i tēnei wā. Harikoa te ngākau ki te kite i a koutou mō tēnei wā nō reira tēnā koutou ōku rau rangatira. Tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[Welcome to you the canoe of Te Arawa and the people of Te Arawa welcome welcome to our House at this point in time. The heart is joyful to see you collectively at this momentso acknowledgments to you collectively my leaders of a hundredfold. Greetings and congratulations to you all.]In the time allotted to us it is going to be a challenge to recognise the significant day here today in Te Arawa’s history. I do want to acknowledge the people who have travelled from afar to be here today. I particularly want to acknowledge the rangatahi the faces who are joining here in the gallery. You are our future and I do want specifically to mihi to you this day. I am going to try to condense my talk but I want to go on record acknowledging the significant day today in particular the three iwi who have joined us here. I am going to quickly acknowledge the summary history of each three groups so bear with me. It will be a bit of speed reading but I do want to do this in seriousness to acknowledge the work that has gone on to bring us here today.Ngāti Rangiwewehi is a Te Arawa iwi based in the Rotorua area. In referencing their summary of historic background to the claims it describes the constructive relationship that developed between the Crown and Ngāti Rangiwewehi in the 1840s and 1850s. However when the Crown brought war to Tauranga in 1864 members of Ngāti Rangiwewehi went to assist their traditional allies. The Crown regarded Māori who fought in the Tauranga battles as rebels and confiscated 290000 acres of land around Tauranga including land in which Ngāti Rangiwewehi had customary interests. The Crown retained 50000 acres and returned the remainder to Māori. However all customary interests in the returned lands were compulsorily extinguished.Kereopa Te Rau was a member of Ngāti Rangiwewehi. In 1864 during the Waikato War his wife and daughter were killed by Crown forces. In the Eastern Bay of Plenty in 1865 a group of Māori killed a missionary who had previously sent the Crown a plan of the pā where Kereopa’s whānau were killed. In 1871 Kereopa was convicted of the murder of the missionary and sentenced to death. The historic account also discusses the impact on Ngāti Rangiwewehi of the land laws introduced in the 1860s and how in the 1870s Ngāti Rangiwewehi leaders criticised these laws and unsuccessfully called for tribal control of land and resources. In 1880 Ngāti Rangiwewehi were among the Māori signatories to an agreement made with the Crown to establish a township at Rotorua. A committee of local chiefs concluded Ngāti Rangiwewehi had interests in the township block but the Native Land Court did not award Ngāti Rangiwewehi any interests there. The Crown acquired most of the lands of Ngāti Rangiwewehi prior to 1909. In the 1890s the Crown purchased individualised shares in a block in the core Ngāti Rangiwewehi rohe before the block had been partitioned and the specific holdings of hapū and whānau had been defined.In 1896 the Crown applied to have its interests in the block defined and was awarded roughly a third of the block including the most valuable land in the block and freshwater springs near Hamurana which are taonga for Ngāti Rangiwewehi. The historical account concludes with a description of the 1966 taking from Ngāti Rangiwewehi of a block near Ngongotahā. This block which was compulsorily required by a local authority for waterworks purposes contains springs known collectively as Taniwha Springs which are central to Ngāti Rangiwewehi traditions and identity as an iwi. I understand a pump station was built over the springs where it remains today. I would like to mihi to the whānau of Ngāti Rangiwewehi particularly the kaumatuas and the negotiators for the mahi that you have done in bringing the bill to this House.I now want to turn to and acknowledge Ngāti Rangiteaorere. Ngāti Rangiteaorere is a Te Arawa iwi situated on the eastern shores of Lake Rotorua. It is one of the eight beating hearts of Te Arawa—ngā pūmanawa e waru. The summary of historical backgrounds that led to the claims of Ngāti Rangiteaorere describes how Ngāti Rangiteaorere were drawn into the New Zealand Wars from the mid-1860s. Those Ngāti Rangiteaorere who supported the Crown during the wars did so at a considerable cost to themselves. Damned if you do and damned if you do not when you fight on the side of the Crown. Ngāti Rangiteaorere held all their lands under customary tenure when the native laws of the 1860s came into force. However the Native Land Court was not designed to accommodate the complex and fluid customary land usages of Māori as it assigned permanent ownership to a clearly defined area of land. The title determination process also carried significant costs for Ngāti Rangiteaorere.In 1882 the Native Land Court investigated the ownership of the Whakapoungākau Block and awarded much of it to members of Ngāti Rangiteaorere and neighbouring iwi. In 1990 the Native Land Court awarded the Crown 348 acres from the Ngāti Rangiteaorere subdivisions of Whakapoungākau in lieu of survey costs. The individualised interests acquired by the Crown were spread across Whakapoungākau subdivisions but the Crown persuaded Ngāti Rangiteaorere to allow the Crown’s awards to form one contiguous parcel of land. The land awarded to the Crown was flat fertile and easily accessible by road. The land that remained with Ngāti Rangiteaorere was fragmented and much of it was steep and inaccessible.Ngāti Rangiteaorere have always valued the Tikitere geothermal field highly for medicinal spiritual and economic purposes. In 1853 without the consent of Ngāti Rangiteaorere the Crown acquired the sole right to regulate the use of geothermal energy resources when the Geothermal Energy Act 1953 was enacted. Ngāti Rangiteaorere considers that the Crown had no authority to override the mana of Ngāti Rangiteaorere in the Tikitere geothermal field.In the early 1970s the Crown purchased a land swap to extend the Lake Ōkataina Scenic Reserve. This involved the exchange of land in Whakapoungākau which Ngāti Rangiteaorere had significant ancestral connections with for land that they had no such connections with. As a result of this exchange Ngāti Rangiteaorere were alienated from the Whakapoungākau maunga one of their most sacred sites. Tēnei te mihi ki ngā whānau whānui o Ngāti Rangiteaorere. [Bell rung] I knew that was going to happen.To try to do justice to Tapuika can I please mihi to you and acknowledge the efforts that you have made to bring this Tapuika Claims Settlement Bill to the House and acknowledge that you along with Ngāti Rangiteaorere and Ngāti Rangiwewehi have negotiated what I think is not a settlement that we would all agree with but something that would absolutely go towards the future development of you as the people of Tapuika. Like I said in my earlier introduction it was nice to mihi to our rangatahi that have joined us here today. I would like to leave you with the thoughts of supporting you in your settlements today but also I would like to acknowledge that our futures are in their hands and it is good that they are here to join us on the significant day of the third and final reading of this legislation. I look forward to the returns from your settlement being put to good use to firstly preserve the mana—the prestige that Te Arawa is renowned for—but particularly with these young rangatahi coming through to use the opportunities that I know are available to them once this legislation is passed. So nō reira e ngā iwi o Te Arawa tēnei te mihi ki a koutou. I commend this legislation to the House.