Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tuia ki te rangi tuia ki te papa tuia te ira atua te ira tangata. Ka rongo te pō ka rongo te ao Paoa ki uta Paoa ki tai. Kia pono kia tika kia aroha kia tau iho mai ngā manaakitanga ki runga i a tātou. Haumi e hui e tāiki e. Tēnā koutou katoa. Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou ngā uri o Ngāti Paoa i te Whare te Whare o tātou. [Bind the heavens and the earth bind divinity and humanity. It is heard by night and by day Paoa on the land Paoa at sea. Be honest be fair be compassionate so that we are safe and protected. It coalesces it comes together it is done. Greetings to all of you. Warm regard to you the descendants of Ngāti Paoa in the House this House of ours.]It is my privilege to stand and to mihi to Ngāti Paoa who are in the gallery today as the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee. It is that committee that will begin this important process of examining this bill of hearing from submitters about their concerns around it and about the specific parts of it which give effect to the Ngāti Paoa settlement deed but most of all—and the privilege of being a member of that committee—hearing about the aspirations and the hopes of generations to come of Ngāti Paoa who will benefit from this settlement.I began with that takutaku which acknowledges first the canoe of Ngāti Paoa Te Kotūiti. It provides the conceptual framework for the deed of settlement which this legislation gives effect to and it's been a long time coming. These negotiations have been going on for many many years and before that they have a complex history which always should have been acknowledged. As an Aucklander may I say that I am glad that we have a piece of legislation here which acknowledges the complexity the overlapping interests and the depth of history in Tāmaki-makau-rau and those other regions that Ngāti Paoa has an interest in. I look forward to examining those interests in the committee as my colleague Joseph Mooney across the House has alluded to. But for today can we say that those interests that Ngāti Paoa has in Tāmaki-makau-rau needed always to be acknowledged by the Crown and in this piece of legislation they are given their mana and they are given acknowledgment and in the shared history that will become law may we acknowledge those associations that your tūpuna have had with our whenua.I want to acknowledge some of the people who have been involved in this. The Minister was right to first acknowledge Morehu Wilson the negotiator who very sadly we lost before the passing of this legislation. Can I also acknowledge others who have contributed much to this work including Hauaru Rawiri—thank you for your contribution. It is a contribution that will be felt by generations of not only your uri but those who live in Auckland in Tauranga and in the islands who will benefit from the contribution to public life that Ngāti Paoa has to give.Can I also acknowledge the newly elected trustees since September 2022 and I will name you: chair Herearoha Francis Skipper deputy chair Mihingarangi Forbes—kia ora kōrua—and councillors Kerrin Leone James Ratahi Tania Tarawa Tui Tawera and Mystique Townsend. What an all-star cast of governors who have been elected to the trust board and can I say that I look forward to watching Ngāti Paoa's developments that come from the ability with this settlement legislation to develop those regional relationships that you need to advance the interests of the iwi within the North Island. May I also offer congratulations for the developments and the new office in Panmure ō Mokoia where on that whenua in 1780 the chiefs Te Putu Ngaro ki te Uru Rongomaurikura and Nohowaka established themselves on the Tāmaki River. Those are important sites for all Aucklanders but it seems just and right to me that Ngāti Paoa should have a base there in which to conduct its operations in Auckland. All Aucklanders can be proud of that and proud of the achievements that are to come from the office. I wanted also to touch on for the House's interest the settlement negotiation history that it has taken to come to this point. My colleague Joseph Mooney began by talking about June 2009 when the Crown proposed a regional approach to Treaty settlements in Tāmaki-makau-rau but as you all know the work has gone on for much longer than that. When we look back on the recent history of Treaty settlement development and Treaty jurisprudence Ngāti Paoa has had a huge role in developing our law and the way that the Crown should progress Treaty settlements as a good and honest partner. In 2009 that agreement by the Crown to progress a collective settlement came out of many years of Marutūāhu of nga iwi o Hauraki and many others who have an interest in Tāmaki-makau-rau coming together and asking the Crown to consider how it dealt with whenua and not just commercial redress but cultural redress that goes along with it when many iwi have an interest. Tāmaki-makau-rau has always been the precious jewel in Aotearoa. As a proud South Aucklander I can say it is the best whenua. It is the whenua that our tūpuna wanted us to occupy and yours did around many different places around the rohe as did many other iwi and tūpuna who have been recognised there for many many years.It's important to acknowledge that when the Crown approached those settlements that it was considering in the early 2000s it had a very different approach to how it would do collective redress how it would do negotiations with smaller iwi and how it would get those voices of the people who would largely benefit from the settlements to the table. The Minister reflected upon this very recently in his Estimates hearings which my colleagues on the Māori Affairs Committee were privileged to be a part of. He said that he was the beneficiary of many years of jurisprudence that has led a different way of Crown engagement and that that Tāmaki collective redress process which at the time drove division within iwi has contributed to a different kind of approach from Te Arawhiti. The approach now that we see is a crossing of the bridge between the Crown and Māori. I am proud of the work that Te Arawhiti does today and much of that is informed by the way that in those years iwi like Ngāti Paoa came to the table and said that it's not good enough to advance only an outcome but we have to do the process right. So thank you for the contribution that Ngāti Paoa has made to that.I want to finish by saying there are many many parts of this settlement which are important to the House but I will pick just one. In the 1920s Awataha urupā was occupied by a small number of Ngāti Paoa members—that's on the North Shore of Auckland—and it was a place that the Crown saw as suitable for an arrangement with the Roman Catholic Church for education purposes. In 1924 a dispute arose over the land and in March 1925 seven members of the iwi were arrested and imprisoned in Mt Eden jail. Later the Crown decided to acquire a section of that land for an oil storage facility and the poet Hone Tuwhare—who was a good friend of my father—wrote this poem to acknowledge the disgust and the hurt that he felt in seeing the disinterment of that urupā and the removal of the bodies to make way for development by the Crown in his lifetime. He wroteIn a splendid sheath of polished wood and glass with shiny appurtenances lay he fitly blue-knuckled and serene: hurry rain and trail him to the bottom of the grave Flowers beyond budding will not soften the gravel's beat of solemn wordsand hard sod thudding: hurry rain and trail him to the bottom of the grave Through a broken window inanely looks he up; his face glass-gouged and bloodless his mouth engorging clay for all the world uncaring Cover him quickly earth! Let the inexorable seep of rain finger his greening bones deftly.Those moments in our history where we acknowledge that the Crown has done wrong are important in our history as New Zealanders as we understand the way that we can do better now. That was a poem from 1960. These things aren't ancient history for us and it's important for this House when we acknowledge the hara the mamae that people of Ngāti Paoa today still feel and the atonement that we can all make for those that they are real and present in people's minds just like that poem. Tēnā tatou.