Finlayson Christopher: Te Arawa Lakes Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
Finlayson Christopher: Te Arawa Lakes Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:634;Page:5520] 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) 
: 
 National opposes the third reading of the Te Arawa Lakes Settlement Bill for reasons already advanced by my friends the deputy leader and Mr Henare. We say this bill is a very poor piece of work and we have done our level best to address some of the concerns that we had with the bill particularly in the Committee stage and I will come back to that in a few minutes. 
 It is an important debate and it deserves more than some of the vulgar and crass contributions we have heard from various members this afternoon such as Sue Kedgley the “Empress of Oriental Bay” who accused the National Party of racism which I think is pretty unfair and totally contrary to the facts but the facts never really worry Mrs Kedgley very much. Then we had the contribution from the member for Rotorua Steve Chadwick who has just sat down. When she is sitting in the Chamber she has that beatific smile and looks so sweet and angelic but when she opens her mouth the poison comes vomiting out. We had that from her this afternoon when she accused National members of negativism. 
Perhaps worst of all in the context of what we have just heard was the parsonic contribution made by Mr Copeland. He did not bother to come down to listen to the contributions made by Mr Brownlee and Mr Henare—and very good contributions they were—but simply popped in like the Archangel Gabriel descending into the Chamber and then proceeded to tell us that we were hair-splitting. 
Gordon Copeland 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The member is in his first term but I think he should have read the Standing Orders a bit. References to the absence or presence of individual members of Parliament is contrary to the Standing Orders. I ask that that be drawn to his attention and that he desist from such comments. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The member is quite right. He cannot make reference to the absence of members. 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: I am most grateful to the member for his guidance. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I do not think that was called for. The member can stand withdraw and apologise for making that remark. 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: I withdraw and apologise and will continue on— 
Ron Mark 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I apologise most sincerely to the member for interrupting his speech but the interplay that you have just seen and administered over is precisely the point I was making in my point of order. If we are to allow a speech in te reo to be given fully without interpretation at the moment it is not known if a person has caused offence or is speaking outside of the Standing Orders and therefore the speech is permitted to continue. There seems now to be one standard for debate in English and another standard for debate in te reo Maori; that surely is wrong. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: Mr Mark I heard the point of order—[ 
Interruption 
] There is to be silence during points of order. I heard the point that you made to the Speaker and the Speaker made a decision. We have had this issue raised before and the presiding officers have made various rulings. We have had a previous dispute about exactly what you are saying. But the member had made prior arrangements and he wanted the speech to flow. I can assure you Mr Mark that we have dealt with that matter and we will continue to deal with it. I emphasise again that the Speaker made a very clear ruling and she had dealt with it. 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: Obviously I am not commenting on your ruling because it is made but I was going to say in the course of my speech that I really enjoy the contributions of Mr Flavell. It really would be good if we could get simultaneous translation of speeches in this House. The Standing Orders Committee has been dealing with this issue and I know that Mr Tanczos raised it months ago. This debate this afternoon illustrates why we have the issue. 
But I want to go on and say something about the huge contribution made by National to Treaty settlements because while Sue Kedgley talks about justice we actually achieved it right throughout the 1990s. The first and most outstanding Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations was Sir Douglas Graham. His record of achievement was simply outstanding: the fisheries settlement the Ngai Tahu settlement and the Tainui settlement. National is not opposed to Treaty settlements but we are opposed to this bill. I lay down a challenge: let any Labour speaker stand up in this place and challenge the record of the National Party on Treaty settlements vis-à-vis the Labour record which is poor by comparison. 
The Committee stage of this debate was a disappointment and there was no attempt by the Minister to address some very important issues. Mr Henare has dealt very comprehensively and carefully with mandate issues so I am not going to dwell on those. But I say—and I will be a prophet of doom—that if mandate questions are not got right there will be no end to strife between the Crown and iwi. I confidently predict—it may not be during my lifetime it may not be for 50 or 60 years—these issues will come back because there are outstanding mandate questions that were not properly addressed and National had some real concerns about that. That is a justice issue—for the benefit of Mrs Kedgley—if ever there was one. 
There were important definitional issues that were not properly addressed. I see my friend Mr Paraone starting to grimace and he is right to grimace because there were those vague references to the Treaty of Waitangi— 
Barbara Stewart 
: It wasn’t a grimace. 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: It looks like a grimace to me—and there was no attempt as Mr Flavell said to explain this new term “Crown stratum” that appears in this kind of settlement legislation for the first time. That grimace is because of New Zealand First’s performance in the Committee and it was repeated in this Chamber this afternoon. They adopted a position that was more like that of  
Monty Python’s Flying Circus  
than a rational legislator’s debate. They support the bill but they are going to seek to delete the Treaty references in it after Mr Woolerton’s legislation comes back to the House after we have dealt with it in the Justice and Electoral Committee. 
The third major issue that really troubled me was questions about aspects of Part 2. In the Committee stage discussions on Part 2 National members very carefully went through certain clauses for example clause 24 about the rights and obligations of ownership and asked questions. Did we get any answers? Not one— 
Brian Connell 
: No. 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: No Mr Connell says— 
Hon Mark Burton 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I do not want to upset the flow of the member’s speech but he must not deviate from the truth and his words are simply not a correct reflection of what happened in this Chamber 2 days ago. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: It is a matter of debate and—[ 
Interruption 
] I was ruling on the point of order. There will be silence during points of order. Please continue Mr Finlayson. 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: Thank you; that was a rather poor attempt to interrupt the flow because it is a debating point and it was not properly addressed by the Minister. 
There were important questions about this bill—questions that really do address justice issues at the end of the day because if you do not dot the i’s and cross the t’s but just glide over those issues as if you are in some kind of comatose state— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: Do not bring me into the debate. 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
:—Madam Assistant Speaker of course I am not referring to you for whom I have enormous respect—these issues will come back to haunt us. But the attitude of the Crown negotiators to Te Arawa basically was to take it or leave it. Mr Flavell outlined those issues and I have to say that on the basis of what he said serious questions of duress arise. The attitude of Government to Parliament has basically been to take it or leave it because the Government thinks it can relax as there appears to be an all-encompassing jurisdictional bar—and I refer the House to clauses 15 and 16 of the bill. But as I have said in Committee and as I have seen many many times in my career as a barrister jurisdictional clauses can be avoided quite easily depending on the circumstances. At the end of the day it always depends on the facts and where there is a will there is a way to get around jurisdictional clauses. 
So there has been no real attempt to address the issues. The Government took the Office of Treaty Settlements template for settlement legislation and applied it to this settlement without giving any real thought to its appropriateness. My good friend Mr Henare with whom I hate disagreeing blames the Office of Treaty Settlements and not the Government but I blame the Government. This is a paint-by-numbers bill by a paint-by-numbers Minister and I compare that with the way in which Sir Douglas Graham approached Treaty settlements. He mastered the detail of the negotiation took part in the negotiation dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s and got the job done properly. We can see that for example with the Ngai Tahu Claims Settlement Act of 1998. 
So after all the negotiations this is the end result and I do consider it to be very disappointing. It is a poor piece of work. Time and time again the Minister has referred us to the preamble but when we look at the preamble we see that it makes pretty unfortunate reading. This is not the way a Treaty partner should negotiate. I particularly refer the House to clauses 13 to 18 of the preamble and to the stop-start negotiations because as has already been observed by Mr Henare this is a process that has the effect of grinding iwi under. I have seen it before—delay legal costs emotional costs and the passage of time with senior members of the iwi starting to get sick and tired of it. I have seen that sort of thing in negotiations and no wonder they say: “Well it’s the best we can achieve.” I certainly do not criticise Te Arawa for that. So many negotiations after such a long time producing such a poor piece of work! 
I end as I began by saying that this will not be the end of the matter. At some stage in the future the Crown will have to look at the matter once again. We say that if a bit of effort had been taken it need not have reached this end. National will be opposing the third reading of the bill.