Henare Tau: Third Readings 
Henare Tau: Third Readings 
[Volume:636;Page:7026] 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 While everybody is being very very nice to the Minister of Maori Affairs let me break with tradition. 
Nobody had a problem with the amendments in the original bill the Maori Purposes Bill to the Maori Fisheries Amendment Act and the Maori Commercial Aquaculture Claims Settlement Act—those were basically agreed with within about 5 or 10 minutes. There was some interesting discussion about the issue of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 specifying a closing date for claims. I for one my colleague Georgina te Heuheu and the other members of the National Party think it is imperative we do have a closing-off date—not so that we get the issue out of our minds but so that both parties are pushed along the road to quick and sustainable settlements. National had absolutely no problem in supporting the introduction of a closing date. Certainly claimants will be allowed to amend submitted claims up to and including 1 September 2008. I am sure a number of people who have already submitted claims to the Waitangi Tribunal will take another look at and amend their claims. 
The issue for me was the validation of decisions made by former Deputy Chief Judge Norman Smith. The Minister of Maori Affairs said in his third reading speech—I am not sure whether he remembers it—that the judge served only a short time and he basically gave the impression that it was not too much of a to-do. But 80-odd cases were heard by the judge who did not have a warrant. The Minister got up in the House and said that the Government’s main concern was for those whom the decisions affected. Well all I can say is “Yeah right!”. If that were the case then the Minister would have got off his frame tracked down every one of those people who were involved in those cases and had the decency to tell those people—regardless of whether the decisions were right or wrong in law— 
Hon Mita Ririnui 
: They were told. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Oh so that does not matter then? Even the former member for Waiariki— 
Hon Mita Ririnui 
: They were told. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: No they were not told. The former member for Waiariki says that every one of those people was told. Well they were not told and we heard that in the Maori Affairs Committee. We asked the question: “Have these people been told? Have they been informed?”. The answer was a big fat no. The member should not lead the House to believe that all those people were informed because they were not. The big issue for me is that those people were not informed that the judge actually did not have a warrant. I commend the judge for narking on himself. I commend the judge for figuring out that he did not have a warrant and that he had better do the right thing and inform the authorities so to speak. 
But let us move now to an area that I think needs some discussion: the Maori Purposes Bill. For just on 7 years we have had a Minister of Maori Affairs who has brought to the House only an omnibus bill which did not have any real significance in terms of moving Maori people—as my colleague Georgina te Heuheu says—off the poverty lines in South Auckland off the poverty lines in all other places and into quality education and quality jobs. As my colleague Georgina te Heuheu says it is normally the case that Maori do that regardless of what happens in this place. All the Minister could bring to the House was a fix-up bill—because that is all it was a fix-up bill. If the Minister and the Government had thought about the mana and the place of the Treaty of Waitangi then they would have brought to this House a separate bill called the “Treaty of Waitangi Amendment Bill”. Even though the original bill was split in the Committee stage into four separate bills which we are now looking at it is a lazy way of doing it. It is an absolutely lazy way of bringing to the House important legislation and it should never ever have happened. The validation was included in the Maori Purposes Bill in order to sweep under the carpet the errors in the system hoping nobody would notice. There should have been four separate pieces of legislation from the start. 
I want to pick the Minister up on what he said that leads me to my conviction of what I have just said. He said that the Maori Purposes Bill was mainly used for oversights and errors. If it was for oversights and errors why not call it the “Maori Oversights and Errors Bill”? Why will Acts like Te Ture Whenua Maori Act and the Treaty of Waitangi Act include what are now as far as I am concerned oversights and errors legislation? 
If in the 7 years that the Minister of Maori Affairs has been in the job he had wanted to have a look at Te Ture Whenua Maori Act how it has developed and whether we need to have some changes he should have brought something like that to the House instead of leaving it first to the Opposition to do his job for him and second to those in our community who have a whole range of issues about Te Ture Whenua Maori Act to bring those to the House. He should not use the excuse that the Maori Purposes Bill was just an oversights and errors bill. The Minister did Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 and the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 a disservice by putting all these little bits and pieces into—as he said in the House this afternoon—an oversights and errors bill. 
Lastly I am disappointed that National members are basically being forced into supporting this legislation. We certainly do not support the part of this legislation that validates the judge’s decisions made when he had no warrant. We have always had that view. During the select committee consideration and during the Committee stage we were opposed to that one part of the legislation. So we will reluctantly support this legislation in its third reading but we tell the Minister that there is now a member of the National Party with responsibility for Te PuniKokiri—the Hon Georgina te Heuheu—who will be on the Minister’s tail every 5 minutes of the day and every 5 minutes of the night. On the weekends and during the holidays when he is putting his feet up we will be on the job because for the last 7 years no one has been on the job. There has been a big sign outside the office of the Minister of Maori Affairs saying: “Vacant! No work here today.” That is about to change.