Finlayson Christopher: Te Arawa Lakes Settlement Bill — In Committee 
Finlayson Christopher: Te Arawa Lakes Settlement Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:634;Page:5350] 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) 
: 
 I have taken the advice of the Minister the Hon Mark Burton well before this debate on the Te Arawa Lakes Settlement Bill and have read the preamble very carefully. The first point I want to make relates to clauses 13 to 19. It seems to me that this negotiation illustrates just how this Government has gone so slowly—not only on this particular negotiation but on other ones. As Mr Flavell said the preamble makes very bad reading. In 1989 when the Te Arawa Maori Trust Board entered into preliminary negotiations about direct negotiations with the Crown and then right throughout the late 1990s up until 2006 negotiations were conducted at a very dilatory pace. 
That was the first point I was going to make but my friend Mr Flavell who is one of the MPs in this place one should always listen to very closely because he is a very sensible member has raised another matter that gives me cause for great concern and that is the abuse of the process and the style of negotiations by the Government; it is essentially saying to Te Arawa: “Take it or leave it.” That seems to me to be nothing more than duress and I promise members that if that is in fact the style of negotiation that was employed by the Government and its lawyers in this case this will not be an end to discord between Te Arawa and the Crown. I have rich experience of negotiations between Maori and the Crown over the years and unless loose ends are tied up unless negotiations are honourable unless negotiators go the extra mile to ensure that there is a final settlement things will come undone. [ 
Interruption 
] 
I heard Mr Paraone of New Zealand First interjecting and I simply say to him that I cannot get over the fact that New Zealand First supports this bill—but the only thing that is consistent about New Zealand First is its inconsistency. That member is supporting the bill but his bench mate Mr Woolerton is in fact promoting the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill. The bloodcurdling explanation in the explanatory note of Mr Woolerton’s bill obviously has no impact on his bench mate because Mr Woolerton is seeking to have deleted from all settlement legislation of this kind the very clauses that that honourable member is seeking to have retained. That is utterly confusing and utterly inconsistent. 
In dealing with the preamble and looking at the negotiation the third point I want to make is on the question of mandate. Several members on the Opposition side of the House have raised mandate questions and in my opinion the report of the select committee is deficient. I acknowledge that when one is dealing with settlement legislation the scope for debate is very narrow and I refer members to the commencement of the select committee report—the English version commences at page 17. It states that we have very great constraints on us when we are looking at Treaty settlement legislation but nonetheless one of the issues we can look at is the issue of mandate and some very serious questions of mandate arise on this particular settlement. 
A number of submitters have questioned the mandate of the trust board and I hear what the Minister has said that there was at least one application to the Waitangi Tribunal which dismissed the urgent application. But I wonder whether the committee which has a very real responsibility to look at these issues has in fact analysed the evidence. Page 20 of the select committee report states: “The trust board does not believe that any changes to the settlement are warranted on the basis of the concerns of Ngati Whaoa.” The trust board says that it did not really think too much of Ngati Rangitihi’s point and that Ngati Rangitihi’s submissions were not really worth the paper they were written on. The Office of Treaty Settlements was satisfied that the trust board had made a commitment to involve all the iwi and hapu in negotiations and Te Puni Kokiri noted that the hui-a-iwi were well advertised. But nowhere in the report other than reciting the actual submissions on the part of various people can one show that the committee itself was truly satisfied that the mandate process was secure.