Turei Metiria: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
Turei Metiria: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:20692] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 Te manuhiri tuarangi ngakaumatua nga rangatira o NgatiTuwharetoa ki Kawerau kua tae tautoko mai iteneiahiahi nau mai haere mai whakatau mai. 
[ 
To the visitors from afar the elders and chiefs of NgatiTuwharetoa of Kawerau who have come here this afternoon in support welcome welcome alight here 
.] 
The Greens extend to NgatiTuwharetoa congratulations on their achievement in this claim for restitution and redress for the crimes committed against them in the past. We will be voting in favour of this third reading. That said it is always very hard I find to vote in favour of these settlement bills. I know that other parties take a very surface and simplistic approach to them but the Greens understand deeply what a sacrifice their achievement has meant. We recognise the hurt and the difficulty the potential for fracturing caused by a process whereby winners and losers are specifically picked. We support these bills because we will not perpetuate the cycle of legislative and structural abuse that is the treaty settlement process. We will not undervalue the enormous achievement of iwi getting as far as this through the settlement process. 
But our objection to the settlement process is also because we do not want to be complicit in a process that is unjust that returns no more than 1 percent if that of the original stolen resources and that requires iwi and hapu to make sacrifices they should never ever have been required to make. I know that those involved in the treaty negotiation processes across the board feel similarly. But they also acknowledge and work with the duress of poverty that is the settlement process and that the settlement process exploits because they see that steps to rangatiratanga in some form need to be made for their people. We understand that. 
The Greens want to see a settlement process that is developed by Maori. If we are to be committed to restorative justice it is critical that the wronged party has control over the nature of that restoration. Otherwise as with other justice processes the victim will remain disempowered. We completely oppose the notion of time limits to treaty settlements because to impose such time limits purposefully excludes iwi from restoration of the historical wrongs committed against them. The capacity to engage in the settlement process is already critically dependent on Government funding or funding through the Crown Forestry Rental Trust which ties its criteria to the needs and desires of Government agencies. If iwi miss out on Government funding soon they will have no chance of obtaining the redress that justice entitles them to. That is structural racism. 
The bill before us tells a story about the old Compensation Court which tried to provide redress. But because it implemented only the values and processes of the dominant culture at the time it not only failed to provide redress but in returning individual and not collective title enabled the further alienation of land and the loss of precious economic and cultural resources. Those resources have not been fully restored by this bill. The Compensation Court processes described in the bill are written again in what we are doing today. We have to learn from our mistakes. We say that often in this House. We have to learn from our mistakes but this and previous Governments have blindly refused to do so. Maori iwi and hapu suffer as a result. 
I refer to some of the issues briefly raised at the Maori Affairs Committee by other iwi and hapu who have been struggling to have their claims and views heard in the settlement process. There are stories of losing battles to get funding because of the arrangements—ad hoc though they seem to be—between the Office of Treaty Settlements and the Crown Forestry Rental Trust that pick winners and losers. There are stories about claimants’ struggles to get the research to back their tribunal claims and to stand alongside other iwi as independent and capable of negotiating their own claims separately. They are not new stories. Neither will they be the last that the Government the select committee and future Governments hear during the treaty settlement process. 
I acknowledge that claimants’ rights are undermined by this bill. Until the Government—having talked to claimants—reviews and alters the treaty settlement process in accordance with the actual needs of claimants settlements will always be in part at least tools of oppression used against the claimant groups because of the pauperisation that the process requires and used against the other iwi and hapu whose rights are legislated away because of Government haste and political expediency. Part of the structural violence that is the colonisation process is seen in the more recent failures of the Government properly to address related issues. It has not been just this Government either but also previous Governments. 
The bill refers to the pollution of the Tarawera River by the Kawerau pulp and paper mill. The clean-up of that river has not been done. It remains poisonous. The toxic sites remain unclean exposed to the environment and vulnerable to floods. When I was there last year I saw asbestos rubble lying fully exposed on contaminated sites along the main road to the mill. Whose responsibility was it to clean it up? Nobody took responsibility. Who suffered the effects of the pollution? It was the workers and the people who live in the area. Many of them were NgatiTuwharetoa people who have lived and worked near that site for years. Is it a treaty issue? Yes it is. It was only a month ago that the Sawmill Workers Against Poisons Greenpeace and others came to Parliament to tell MPs what was really happening as a result of the poisoning of the environment in their rohe—the sickness the birth defects the intergenerational illnesses. Where is the restoration of these historical wrongs? They are nowhere. 
Today is a very important day for Tuwharetoa and for all New Zealanders as they see the conclusion of this settlement claim for this iwi. Some resources are being restored and that is a good thing. We celebrate that as a good thing. We also celebrate that the iwi is now able to step away from the demands of Parliament from the criticisms the accusations the abuses of Government and members of Parliament in this House and the demands and requirements of Government agencies and will finally be able to concentrate on their own needs and meet their own aspirations themselves as they have always been entitled to do. The Greens want to see a just process that is durable and acceptable because Maori have been part of the development the architecture of it. We want a process that meets the standards set by tikanga Maori and not by political expediency. Kia ora.