Henare Peeni: Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHenare Peeni: Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:11009. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau):Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tēnā tātou katoa. E tautoko ana ahau i ngā mihi kua tukuna ki te marea ka tau mai ki roto i te kaupapa o te pō nei. Ka tautoko anō hoki i ngā mihi ki ō tātou tini aituā ngā mate huhua o te wā kua ngaro atu ki runga i ngā marae maha puta noa i Te Motu whānui. Kāti te wāhanga ki a au. Ki te pō haere mai haere ao ake ki a tātou e te hunga ora tēnā tātou katoa.[Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Greetings to us all in the House.I endorse the welcome tributes accorded to the public who have arrived here to be among the matter at hand this evening. And furthermore I support the condolences extended on our myriads of mishaps and the very many deaths of the moment that have occurred on marae throughout the broad expanse of the country. But enough in terms of that from me. I bid welcome and farewell to the night then on the day that follows cast my gaze upon us the living to acknowledge us all.]Thank you for allowing me this contribution on Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill. I want to begin by addressing some of the claims made by Minister Finlayson towards me. I want to start that by saying a classic Ngāpuhi whakataukī which goes like this: He karoro ka tau ki te toka ka tiko ka rere![A seagull lands on the rock defecates and flies away!]I am sure as you grab your earpiece it might be able to translate that for you. But that member said that he has done more than I have in the north. If I had the time I would regale this House with 126 generations of my people back from the beginning of time to myself and the jobs we have done to protect our whenua the job we have done to protect our culture and the job we have done to protect our taonga. I stand here today as an embodiment of the 126 generations of my tūpuna from Te Tai Tokerau representing them here on this important take. I am not one who gets too angry but I just want to address that fact.To the bill: we on this side of the House will not be supporting the bill. I echo the sentiments of my colleagues here on this side and want to in my contribution reiterate some of the points they have made and discuss some of the ideas and thoughts that I have on this particular bill. I want to start by talking about the Treaty settlements just briefly. This House is constantly told about the efforts of this Government to settle Treaty grievances. I want to quote Sir Tīpene O’Regan one of the grandfathers of the early Treaty settlement processes—alongside the father of my esteemed colleague here the Hon Nanaia Mahuta—who said: “settlement on a basis of need rather than of right is almost certainly contrary to the Treaty itself and is a concept that will eventually suffer review in the High Court.” I am afraid to say that this particular piece of legislation will suffer the same fate. We will see it being dragged through the High Court.When we think of the judicial systems that will be there to adjudicate over such a piece of legislation I want to acknowledge and address the words of tikanga that are found in this piece of legislation. Why should we leave the court to adjudicate our customs and our tikanga? You enter into a grey area when you start allowing a Pākehā construct to do that for us as Māori. No court will tell me on my marae what my tikanga is. No court will adjudicate over my ability to govern and to maintain my whenua.I am reminded the efforts of my ancestor a part of the 126 generations I have mentioned here a man by the name of Te Kuhanga who signed the Treaty of Waitangi. He later adopted the name Maihi Paraone Kawiti—the son of Kawiti. He was responsible within Ngāti Hine for establishing what is now known as Te Porowini or the province of Ngāti Hine. What he did over 2 years from 1875 to 1877 was consult with the people through numerous hui in Waiōmio the mid-north. What he did was he gained the consensus of the people who lived on the land within the province of Ngāti Hine. He wrote a book that is known as Te Papa Toku o Ngāti Hine—the lands of Ngāti Hine the ancestral lands given to him to care for the ancestral lands that are now given to me and the members of Ngāti Hine to care for.I want to talk briefly about the papatupu. The papatupu was put in place to protect the land. At the time you will appreciate a lot of land was lost in part due to the pieces of legislation mentioned by Minister Finlayson. I want to acknowledge his efforts and I want to make a commitment to him that that will not happen under my watch. As an administrator of land in Ngāti Hine this very day I with my tuakana member of Parliament Pita Paraone are responsible for the administration of approximately 5000 hectares of Māori land. We have dealt with the Māori Land Court—we have worked with it we have argued with it and debated with it and I have said in this House time and time again that we must ensure it gets the resources it needs to fulfil its job.I am afraid this piece of legislation and in particular the establishment of the Māori Land Service will merely put the cart before the horse. What it will do is set up another process that will look at issues such as succession—succession of shares succession of land. Running a parallel course to the Māori Land Service is everything else that theTe Ture Whenua Māori Bill that is being proposed today will bring. I do not believe that that is a strong robust process. I believe we must fix those injustices of the past. I believe we must review the Māori Land Court. I believe we must resource the Māori Land Court to do the functions that it already currently does and does well. The deficit thinking of this arrogant Government is that there is far too much idle Māori land out there. I can tell you as an administrator of Māori land that our land is hugely productive. We have worked very hard over the past 40 years to make it that way. Is it perfect? No. Is it productive? Hell yes.This particular kaupapa this particular bill Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill is something that gets us all passionate. We have heard the whakataukī we have heard the expressions in this House about how important land is to us. Well just as important is that we get it right. We must get it right.Marama Fox: We offered to work together and you rejected it.PEENI HENARE: We hear the member now spouting that we must work together. My colleague here the Hon Nanaia Mahuta has already stated that if this was done correctly at the beginning to gain full consensus of our people we would not be voting against this. But here we are—but here we are. We are arguing and debating over this particular bill. We know that it will be going to the Māori Affairs Committee and I say to members of that committee of which I am a part-time member depending on what food is being served at that meeting—I want to say kia mataara kia mataara kia mataara. Why? Because we on this side of the House will be challenging this bill. We will be picking it apart to make sure that the lines are drawn very clearly that there is no grey area between tikanga l-a-w and l-o-r-e because in those nuances land has been lost and we will not see that happen again.In conclusion I want to endorse the words of my colleagues on this side of the House and implore the Minister for Māori Development to withdraw this bill to allow our people to digest it properly to allow them to go through it with a fine-tooth comb. If we can wait nearly 200 years for Te Tiriti o Waitangi I will tell you what my tamariki and my mokopuna will be ready to do the same with Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill. I want the Minister to acknowledge the over 5500 people who signed a petition asking this Minister to withdraw this bill to allow our people time. I can say to this Minister that 5500 signatures on this petition are more than those who showed up to the hui over the past 5 years. We want their voices to be heard. We want their voices to be heard throughout this entire process and you can bet your bottom dollar that we on this side of the House will be challenging this process all the way through. Kāti ki a tātau tēnā tātau.