Franks Stephen: Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Franks Stephen: Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:623;Page:18847] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I am a little disappointed that the honourable Minister Mita Ririnui has already spoken because I fear that he will not be inclined to take another call to answer some more questions. 
I am a bit baffled by Part 6. It seems to me that it has a very broad definition of the land that it can apply to. It means each cultural redress property—and I see the schedule of those. I cannot tell from the schedule whether they are all properties that will actually be in the ownership of the Ngati Awa governance entity. I see the officials nodding—that answers one concern. It looked to me as if otherwise there might have been the ability to create protected rights over someone else’s property. 
The second point is that while the ability to register the Ngati Awa governance entity land is in the name of Awanuiarangi II it looks as if it is protecting a particular hapu’s interest which I imagine it was intended for; I am not sure— 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: It’s the whole of Ngati Awa. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: It is the whole of Ngati Awa is it? I see. So what this is really saying is that the whole of the Ngati Awa land can be given protection against prospecting. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: If it’s wahi tapu. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Well it is not just whether it is regarded as wahi tapu because the areas that can be included will be Ohope Beach Holiday Park or Whakatane airport and all the commercial redress land which would be vast areas of forest I imagine. I am just not sure. We have not seen an explanation. No one has explained why such a vast area can be arbitrarily made exempt from the normal Crown Minerals Act right of access. Again I am not familiar with that Act but it seems to say that they cannot carry out minimum impact activity. Is there other activity that they could carry out that is not protected? If so what is the purpose of clause 160 because this seems to contemplate that cultural redress land; commercial redress land which could be a lot of forest; Ohope Beach Holiday Park; and Whakatane airport all can be protected against minimum impact prospecting as I understand it would be. Would that include flyovers for example towing a magnetometer in a helicopter? I would imagine that it is very hard to know if one is doing that kind of mineral prospecting whether one has even infringed this section. 
I am a little puzzled. I would be quite pleased to have an explanation as to why this benefit covers only the land that ends up being stuck in the name of the revered ancestor and why it does not cover all the Ngati Awa properties when Ngati Awa could make it cover all its properties simply by putting it all in the name of the revered ancestor. In other words if it was to be something members of Ngati Awa could do—effectively have their own private exclusion from the Crown Minerals Act—why has it been hidden back in this obscure clause clause 160 as something that could occur simply by a unilateral reregistration in the name of the revered ancestor? 
There is no procedure here for testing whether a decision to regard something as wahi tapu is justified. Maybe the courts would imply some sort of reasonableness measure but it does look again as if this provision might not have been properly considered and that people might not have been aware of just how broad an area it could cover or had it in mind that it covered only a few of the special cultural redress properties. It certainly covers an awful lot more than that. I hope the Minister is able to explain it.