Franks Stephen: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
Franks Stephen: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:621;Page:16455] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party in this NgatiTuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill. Each time I have had an opportunity to speak in the House on claims settlement bills I have done so with sorrow. I think the first one I spoke on was within a few months of my coming to this House 4½ years ago. I did not really understand the structure of the bills although I had had occasion to read some of the settlement agreements and at that time I was groping trying to work out exactly what it was that Maori were being offered. Because of the difficulty of the language of the legislation it was obvious that what was being offered was deliberately intended to be obscure. The pattern has changed very little over time—that is still plainly part of these bills. 
The Government may justify this on the grounds that what is sought here is essentially face-saving and I understand Mita Ririnui’s reminder that the people settling the claims are often giving up a very long-held sense of entitlement which to them is of much greater value than what they are being offered in return. However when I see this House being asked to pass law that neither side knows exactly what is meant then I agree with the last speaker from the Greens: we are simply storing up for ourselves another round of grievance in the future. 
What else can the successors of Ngati Tuwharetoa who will be signing this agreement do when they read this without the same sense of history or occasion and when they see they have been offered protocols acknowledgments assurances rights of consultation and all the paraphernalia that the Government now provides in its relationship with Maori? They have been offered all of this as part of a grovelling apology yet in their hands in 15 to 30 years’ time it is simply smoke. It means next to nothing because the only concrete benefit from the rights that are being conferred here—the rights of consultation the rights to be given resource management notices the rights to be involved in setting management plans and doing consents—is the right to be a nuisance to one’s neighbours a right to block and a right to hold up things and to delay negotiations for concessions. Even if people can tell us they were grateful—and I am sure that we all as MPs have heard this—because: “I dealt with iwi this time and it wasn’t as bad as I feared. We got through it and in the end they were on our side.” In the end they are also seen simply as an obstacle—as a necessary phase to be got past as people who have to be talked to placated and patronised—not as people who are respected. They are respected no more than the traffic cop is respected as someone to get past before speeding up again. 
The problem with bills like this is that if the settlements are genuine then there should be tangible clear rights with both sides having exactly the same understanding of what they mean. If that cannot be done then the law should state that. We should not pretend with this kind of agreement that we are offering something more than we can. These agreements look as though they are important. They are justified by those who advance them on the grounds that they are symbolically important but in legal terms they are just an encouragement for another generation to feel ripped off. 
The Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations sits there looking solemn—and well she might because she is not getting any support from the member who is being touted as Maoridom’s hope. Perhaps the Minister could call John Tamihere and tell him that my telephone extension is 6262 so he can communicate to this House just what he thinks of this bill. When Donna Awatere Huata was in trouble ACT did not demand that she stay away from the House. ACT did not try to block her. 
Hon Annette King 
: She was kicked out of the party. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: ACT wants to kick her out because she is not worthy of the honour. She is not worth the name. Who blocked a Privileges Committee inquiry? It was that member’s colleague in the chair. 
Donna Awatere should have gone a year ago and we will deal with it. This Prime Minister wants to keep the vote of Mr John Tamihere. She will keep that vote while she keeps him out of the House because he is an embarrassment to her as he is to every one in this House as long as he is here. It is a shame of course that in dealing with any bill from now on that has to do with Maori matters John Tamihere will be the same embarrassment. It is not Ngati Tuwharetoa’s problem that we raise this in this connection but when that member starts attacking ACT on a ground of integrity we can stand up and say that we dealt with that as soon as we could. As soon as we knew about it we dealt with it. We did not wait. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The member does raise the question of integrity. This bill the Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill actually goes through history and without establishing why says that those who were on the spot at the time those who actually saw what was happening—and it was on both sides of the claim—were wrong and it is right. This bill does not have historical integrity. It has no more integrity than what we saw over the weekend when Major Ropata’s actions at Ngatapa Pa are suddenly characterised as some grotesque semi-holocaust event. Major Ropata was acting as a hero to most of the people in the Ngati Porou area. The Crown engaged his services and was proud of what he did and now the Waitangi Tribunal no doubt is angling to get another grovelling apology for what nearly everyone in that area was proud of at the time. 
I believe we have the same situation here. When Falloon was murdered and the troops came down to arrest those who had done it and were obstructed by some of the ancestors of the people here today there could never have been any expectation by anyone on either side that 150 years later a Labour Government would be here grovelling and trying to extract political advantage out of rewriting history. I am sick of being part of a process that blesses these fraudulent statements of history. It is time New Zealanders stopped dredging around in their entrails and apologising for a past that was not shameful at the time. It was sad but history was very different. 
History has moved on and there is no guarantee and there is no assurance even from the most recent statements even by the chairman of the Waitangi Tribunal that these things will make bygones be bygones. The promise in the early section of this bill that the settlements are full and final is almost guaranteed not to be true when it is so patent that the politicians on the other side of the House will respond to any kind of emotional plea with “deeming” provisions that deem to be facts things that no one can know. No one can now know just who was to blame. No one can know how wrong it was that that land was taken. We can guess but for the Crown in this legislation to actually state categorically that it was wrong is wrong in itself. We should not be opening ourselves up to this. We should not be participating. It is time if we genuinely mean for bygones to be bygones that we said: “That was then this is now.” 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: You have never voted for a single settlement. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: I believe that ACT has voted for them but we have not since I have been here because these bills always refer to the so-called principles of the treaty. New Zealand First has joined in deriding what I am saying. Here are the politicians who have made a career out of demanding explanations of the so-called principles. Those members have been so hot in this House on the Prime Minister for her failure to define them yet every time they vote in favour of bills that have the so-called principles of the treaty in them. This bill still has references to the principles of the treaty. Why not the treaty itself?