Franks Stephen: Te Runanga o Ngati Awa Bill — First Reading 
Franks Stephen: Te Runanga o Ngati Awa Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:619;Page:15048] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise on behalf the ACT party to address the first reading of the Te Runanga o Ngati Awa Bill. I do not know what the ACT party’s position will be on this bill. At this stage I can give a few indications of the sorts of things that we would hope a select committee report on this bill might address but I have to say that the bill seems to me to exhibit that kind of patronising contempt that George Bush has called “the bigotry of low expectations”. This bill looks like legislation in the same way that plastic pistols look like real ones. But when one looks at the words one sees that it is legislation in form only. I believe that when article 3 of the Treaty of Waitangi said that Maori were to get the same rights and privileges as British subjects the people who entered into the treaty assumed that Maori would not be patronised with pale imitations of real law and real legislation. 
As a lawyer when I look at this bill and try to work out what it is doing I cannot tell what that is even with the explanation. The definitions that usually start a bill are circular. For instance clause 3(1) provides that: “charter—(a) means the charter of Te Runanga; and (b) includes any amendments made to the charter”. The only definition of charter is that it is something that has been adopted by postal ballot of the adult members between 26 January and 1 March. It says what the charter must have but it does not say whether it always has to have those characteristics. It is essentially embodying a charter or blessing a charter in legislation but it might be amended the day after members pass this so that all those protections mean nothing. 
 Clause 3(1) states: “customary rights—(a) means rights according to tikanga Maori … ”. That is a circular definition—what else could they be? Further in the definitions listed the clause states that the people who are to benefit from this bill are those: “(A) descended from a Ngati Awa tipuna: (B) a member of a hapu group family or whanau referred to in paragraph (b);” and I see that paragraph (b) then cross refers to the previous paragraph. 
The quality of drafting in this bill is utterly insulting. I assume it is deliberate that the Minister is not unaware of it and that it is intended as some kind of smokescreen but there is no indication to the House as to why. This House has a whole range of mechanisms that draw on the 150 years of accumulated experiences of New Zealanders and better than that on the accumulated experiences of people struggling with the age-old problems that face all human institutions all around the world. When we draw on those experiences we know some of the things that every human institution faces. We know what some of the more successful solutions are—and they can only be probabilities—and we know some of the things that do not work. 
This bill says absolutely nothing about how conflicts of interest are to be dealt with and nothing about how nepotism is to be dealt with. It says nothing about the kinds of accounts and what scrutiny they will get or what kind of independent audit there will be. This bill says nothing about the utterly essential element of every power structure—and a runanga is a structure for organising and coordinating collective assets—succession. All those matters are dealt with in any responsible legislation that sees some people entrusted with the custody of assets on behalf of others. 
This bill should define what good stewardship is and we know that is what the Crown set out to insist on. We know that when the hopeless Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations entered into office 5 years ago she too was determined to draw on the good work that Te Ohu Kai Moana had done on appropriate governance models. That office had drawn mandate requirements because it knew the kinds of things that happen when money is “easy come easy go”. It knew that all around the world those kinds of redress sums disappear not necessarily through fraud but because the governance of other people’s money when one has not earned it oneself is one of the hardest things for any body to achieve. 
It is very hard to sustain an organisation. This bill seems to deliberately reject the Companies Act as a model. It seems to reject the Charitable Trusts Act Co-operative Companies Act and the Industrial and Provident Societies Act models. It seems to reject every possible model that could be drawn on as a guide to the sorts of things that make for robust long-term governance. Instead we have a fake bill. That is typical of this Government’s approach to Maoridom. It sucks and crawls and pretends it is acting in the interests of Maoridom when it is acting only in the interests of a tiny elite who have their hands on the levers of power. That is what happens when no retirement and succession mechanisms are specified. That is what happens when nothing in a bill states when a charter deed or constitution cannot be changed. When people in companies who have their hands on assets have the power to use them for their own purposes or to cement themselves in power they do so because they are human. Maori are not exempt from that. Sir Apirana Ngata and the others who worked all those years ago to try to create modern governance mechanisms for collectively held assets—to get away from the dreadful problems of trying to coordinate collective asset holdings when tribal entities had lost their power—did not ask for some Clayton’s imitation of a governance model. 
This desperate Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations has entered into a deal because she has given up going for quality and will now do a deal with a governance entity that Parliament has absolutely no way of assessing. Nothing in this bill tells us what will happen if beneficiaries decide that a small clique has power and is running away with it. Nothing in this bill tells us what duties and obligations Te Runanga o Ngati Awa has in administering its assets. But the bill pretends to deal with that. Clause 8 states what the charter must have. It has a nice little list of desiderata but it does not state what model or kind they are nor how one can change them. They have been taken out of the purview of the Maori Trustee presumably because of historical hostility to the interference—as some would see it—of the Maori Trustee which itself was patronising. But governance is for others; stewardship is for others. Since time immemorial in all cultures and all societies stewards have run away with assets unless someone has kept an eye on them. This bill does not tell us who will keep an eye on those stewards. It does not even tell us how we can identify the stewards who they are and what they will be doing. 
The bill states for example that Te Runanga o Ngati Awa must hold assets on trust for the benefit of members. Does that mean all the members? Exclusively the members? Just some of the members? It does not say. It states that it must specify the manner in which the representatives are to be elected. Is that for all time? I ask the Minister what the purpose of this bill is. When the Minister of Maori Affairs sponsors a bill like this one would assume he could answer those questions and that the select committee will give us a report that will explain clearly why this one-off imitation legislation has come before the House to implement a settlement that should require a proper governance entity. 
One day this House will debate yet another round of settlements and Ngati Awa will argue that the Government ought to pay them again because they lost that money and it was utterly predictable that they lost it because the Crown allowed it to go to an entity that had no proper constraints. The next generation will argue that the Crown has set up a situation whereby it must know in all probability that the governance of the entity does not fall into any pattern that has been tried and tested by experience. The governance of this entity will fall into the hands of a self-interested group and will be predictably—[ 
Interruption 
] Exactly. The Hon Parekura Horomia said: “Like companies”. Companies fail and that is why we refine company law year after year. Year after year governance is refined and this House considers amendments so we can draw on the lessons of experience. Now the Ngati Awa are being thrown into limbo. Ngati Awa will be free to relearn all those lessons. But the money will be gone.