te Heuheu Georgina: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
te Heuheu Georgina: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:20188] 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) 
: 
 I am very pleased to follow on from my colleague and contrary to his suggesting that this will somehow be way above what he has suggested that of course is quite wrong. In the National Party caucus we are all committed to the resolution of historic grievances and so each and every one of us basically— 
Simon Power 
: Who was that member who was known for doing all the work? 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: That is right Douglas Graham basically paved the way in this area. He formulated and developed a treaty settlement framework that has stood the test of time and but for this Government with its tendency to push the boundaries further than what the New Zealand public really want that model is basically in place here in the bill before us today. 
As I say we support this debate as we will be supporting the passage of the bill. Two or three issues arose during our consideration of the bill but by and large one of the issues that caused quite major concern arose in one of the schedules in which the Ngati Tuwharetoa Bay of Plenty people wanted to have their association with the geothermal resource recorded in the bill. Fortunately the Maori Affairs Committee as a whole decided that that probably was not appropriate—and I will come to the reasons for that in a minute—and that this was to be a new schedule. It is now no longer in the bill because what the claimant tribe wanted can be adequately accommodated in the deed of settlement. 
The reason that this bill I suppose caused a unique difference was that Ngati Tuwharetoa Bay of Plenty is one part of the total Ngati Tuwharetoa tribe. I am Ngati Tuwharetoa and I hail from the centre of the North Island which is often referred to as Ngati Tuwharetoa the principal part of the tribe. This issue has not arisen in any settlement that we have had to deal with before whereby one has the same stories applying to both ends of the tribe but clearly sometimes the versions do not always coincide. The other issue is that as much as Ngati Tuwharetoa Bay of Plenty may have wanted to tell the main Ngati Tuwharetoa story and have that put into legislation it was felt by the select committee and by National in particular that that might pre-empt the way in which claims were settled when it comes to the settlement of the Tuwharetoa claims where I hail from and there was no reason at all to be pre-empting anything that might be done in respect of any subsequent settlement. 
So that was one issue and I certainly will talk on that in more detail as we go on with the Committee debate. Another issue arose relative to the geothermal resource itself. We had submissions from the Pukaki Trust in the Bay of Plenty which will be looking to do its own settlement. It actually owns a piece of land in which the geothermal resource sits. The trust had some very clear objection to Ngati Tuwharetoa Bay of Plenty being given a statutory acknowledgment over that resource particularly in so far as the resource sits on land that the trust owns. I think that it does in a way highlight a problem that may or may not arise in the future and which the Government should give some attention to. It is that essentially while a group may indeed rightly lay claim to a particular resource in terms of kaitiakitanga or sense of stewardship over that resource the reality is that it will be the case that others within the same rohe or boundary will also be able to lay a similar claim. 
Where neither of those groups has an ownership stake in the land possibly no problem arises but when one of them actually owns the land through which the resource runs then clearly it is a problem. If I own a block of land and there is a resource—in this case a geothermal resource—sitting plonk in the middle and some other group not my tribe says: “Well we’ve got a stewardship right or a cultural association with that resource we want that recognised by way of a statutory acknowledgment.” I would then say: “Hang on it’s sitting on my land.” How does that sit? We had some discussion on this. We were assured that no one particular group is pre-empted from also seeking a statutory acknowledgment over a particular resource a particular site or a piece of land just because another group already has one. That is what we are told. We have to have faith I suppose. I do not know what will happen if one day an issue arises and we find that the statutory acknowledgment granted to one group somehow pre-empts the other group from also being able to raise his or her particular interest in the resource as well. 
So that was another issue that has been dealt with. As usual we had the issue around doubts about sufficient mandate and doubts about sufficient agreement on the deed of settlement itself. National and I think New Zealand First as well regularly raise the issue of how much efficacy there is in the support of a people for a settlement when one is not getting what one might say would be optimum buy-in and that would be at least above 50 percent. The long-term issue with this problem is that none of us would want to see any of these settlements revisited at some future date because some section of a tribe could come back later and say: “Well look there was only a 48 percent buy-in to the settlement and that wasn’t us we’re part of the balance of the tribe that didn’t agree.” 
So I implore the Minister to be conscious of this issue and to make sure the Office of Treaty Settlements is doing everything it can to ensure increased buy-in both for mandating and for ratification of the Government’s entity and particularly for deeds of settlement. Because what we all want to be certain of as parliamentarians is that once a settlement is completed there are no legitimate grounds for bringing it back to the House. 
Other issues that were raised when we were considering the bill during the whole select committee process were things like the fact we are now translating these settlement bills and having quite a considerable amount of legislation in te reo. That in itself adds a focus for debate but the issue we want to be sure of is that the more te reo is used in legislation the more care is taken by those concerned with putting true meanings into the legislation to really ensure that the Maori matches the English.