Copeland Gordon: Ngati Mutunga Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
Copeland Gordon: Ngati Mutunga Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4510] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on behalf of United Future on the Ngati Mutunga Claims Settlement Bill. I must say that I regard it as a great honour and a privilege to do so. It is the first time I have had the privilege of speaking on a settlement bill in this Parliament and it is likely to be the last because it is not actually within my spokesmanship area. But as I say I am very honoured to do so. 
I am very honoured today to extend greetings on behalf of United Future to the Ngati Mutunga iwi—to the members who are here today and to those who might be listening from afar to the radio or otherwise—and to say that I rejoice greatly in this day. I rejoice in the day that begins the process of formalising a settlement that is already signed off with endorsement by Parliament and therefore by the people of New Zealand. 
As other members have said each of these settlement bills that we look into is the result of a process—a process that in this case has gone on for I think about 146 years from the date when the wrongs were originally perpetrated against the people of this iwi right through until today. The first thing we must do of course is to face up to the wrongs that were done: the waging of war; the use of a scorched earth policy involving the destruction of villages a culture and a civilisation; the loss of life including that of unarmed children; the imprisonment of members of the iwi following the passive resistance campaign at Parihaka; and the confiscation of the iwi’s land. 
 On any list of infamies those actions rate highly. We say they were perpetrated by the Crown but the point I would like to bring to the attention of Parliament today is that in truth it was not the monarch—who was far off 12000 miles away in England—who initiated and undertook those deeds but the people of this nation with the backing and authority of the New Zealand Parliament. Therefore as a Parliament we need to recognise that it is appropriate that today we are the ones who are settling this matter. I will come back to that point in a moment. 
It is a very very healthy wholesome step forward for a nation to face up to past wrongdoings and it is the first step in working towards settlement and restitution for those deeds. Today in this debate we are clearly saying that yes we are facing up to the past—a past that none of us was involved in personally but one that has had devastating consequences for the people of this iwi from that day to this. Therefore the process that we go through in a settlement claim and moving on to the question of restitution for those past wrongdoings is itself fraught with huge difficulty. 
Those who were killed are now in the hands of God. The land that was taken is for the most part now in the private ownership of others. So we are left with a limited range of ways in which we can make restitution and put the wrongdoing of the past right to the greatest possible extent. Today I do not want to get into quibbling about the amount of the settlement or the way it has been agreed or to look at it just from the point of view of arithmetic in terms of how many cents in the dollar it represents and issues of that sort. What we should agree on is that this is a tangible action taken by the people of New Zealand through their elected representatives to try at least to acknowledge the wrongs of the past and to make some measure of restitution. It can never be enough because one cannot measure the actions that I have mentioned from just an economic or financial point of view. It obviously goes way way beyond that. 
That is why the apology which is also tendered in this settlement deed is of such tremendous significance. It represents a plea I believe by the people of New Zealand and this Parliament for forgiveness. The members of the Ngati Mutunga iwi as others have mentioned have been immensely generous in this matter. We acknowledge that generosity. We also acknowledge the shortcomings in our ability to make restitution but nevertheless our apology and request for forgiveness I hope will be reciprocated in a similar way in the spirit of generosity and acceptance because that is the only way that I know of that may help us in the healing of this matter. How else do we heal the past? 
I have never ever agreed for instance with the examples we have seen in the United States of America when someone suffers an accident or a death and a court gives them millions of dollars by way of compensation. In some ways that is a futile and easy thing to do. It is more difficult to dig a little bit deeper into our hearts and souls and come to a situation where we are prepared to apologise and forgive and then work together for our joint future. 
Settlements from my point of view and from United Future’s point of view are if you like beacons on the roadway to a brighter future—for the iwi certainly but because the iwi are no more than part and parcel of our nation for our nation as a whole. All parts of our nation are strengthened when we come to a settlement of this sort. All parts of our nation were weakened when we failed for so many years to address the issue and when we tried to ignore it. Today as I have said we are at least facing up to the deep hurt and the harm that were caused. 
As I said a moment ago in addition to the Crown’s apology as a member of Parliament I would also like to express my apologies. As the Hon Nanaia Mahuta and the Hon Georgina te Heuheu know I believe that the New Zealand Parliament at some stage in our future perhaps when all the settlements have been completed also needs to apologise because it was the New Zealand Parliament that actually took these actions. 
The Crown is apologising because it is the other party to the Treaty. But as we all know under our form of constitutional democracy it is not in fact the Crown that governs; it is the people who govern through elections. So all of us to that extent have been involved in these wrongdoings and I hope we will see the day when in addition to the Crown apologising Parliament itself can also acknowledge its role in these matters. In the meantime I look forward to a bright future for the Ngati Mutunga iwi. I wish them well. I hope they will invest the money that is being settled through this bill shrewdly and wisely for the benefit of future generations. 
I would like to say one last thing which is that in some ways as the late Bishop Max Mariu pointed out on the occasion of the Tainui settlement this process needs to be accompanied by a great deal of aroha—of love. That is something we cannot legislate for but it is something that we can all attempt to express in our relationships and it is a powerful force on which we can build a nation.