Franks Stephen: Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading 
Franks Stephen: Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:613;Page:10077] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 When this bill was introduced I spoke for the ACT party to welcome it and to acknowledge that foul deeds were done in the name of the Crown by the Governor in 1860 and in the years thereafter. What was done dishonoured the Crown and the energy and the demand for redress should be fully understood by every New Zealander who has a sense of fairness. I also said that ACT not being represented on the Maori Affairs Committee would be looking to the select committee to deal with a number of concerns we had about the bill in the form that it appeared. 
In particular we wanted the committee to reassure us that it did not take the self-denying restrictions that are commonly applied to a review of a treaty as excusing it from looking properly at the substance of this agreement and whether Parliament should approve the Crown entering into it. I am sorry to say that the select committee’s report repeats what has been a pattern for other bills. Indeed it states that the rules relating to legislation to confirm agreements “mean that we cannot substantively amend this bill in a manner that is not acceptable to the parties to the deed being implemented.” What the committee does not tell us and what the Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations has made no attempt to explain is whether the committee thought that things should have been changed whether it had considered that that was appropriate. Did the committee take account of the possibility that it could go back to the parties? I imagine that the Crown was represented before the select committee by the officials as it usually is. It perhaps was possible for Ngati Tama to be persuaded that some clarification might be desirable. 
 I mention that because when I was speaking in this House just before the Hon Dover Samuels who followed me representatives of Ngati Tama were in the gallery. I believe that I heard murmurs of agreement or approbation about some of the concerns I raised at the time the bill was referred to the select committee. I was concerned that the bill sets Ngati Tama Maori the Crown—in other words all of us as represented by the Crown—on a collision course yet again. It may not be in the near future. It may be that the value of the settlement and the internal strife that it appears likely to extend will more than distract the claimants for a generation or so. 
But what I am concerned about is what I raised in my first reading speech—that throughout this bill there are weasel words. There are words that appear to me to be deliberately intended to mean more to each party than they are intended to mean to the opposite side. There are acknowledgments recognitions references to principles and references to consideration or taking account by official bodies that appear intended to mean that Ngati Tama have a privileged status in relation to land that is not their own or that they have a privileged status in relation to the democratically appointed bodies that will exercise powers under the Resource Management Act and other local government powers but in fact the Crown has no intention of really delivering on them. The bill is full of the sorts of weasel words that have already got New Zealand into a great deal of trouble over the last two decades and have got this Government into more political trouble than it will be able to handle. 
For example in my opinion the bill quite gratuitously recites the words “the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi” in a whole range of places most of them completely unnecessarily. The bill has a sort of mantra phrase “the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi”. Everyone in this House including New Zealand First whose members have spoken in favour of and will vote for this bill has acknowledged that no one knows what those principles are. Why are they there? Why did the committee not decide to clarify or remove those words when they add nothing? The breaches that affected Ngati Tama were so egregious and so obvious the property rights that had been assured under article 2 of the treaty were so plainly ignored and overridden that there was no need to put in the words “the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi”—words the meaning of which no one knows. The committee sat on the bill and we found when it reported back that it had not addressed that issue or any of the other obscurities and uncertainties that we still find in the bill. 
For example are Ngati Tama supposed to feel that their preferential right in terms of coastal tendering means more than their having the first chance to tender? If it is a tendering process how do they match the price? If it is a tendering process and they cannot afford it what is their preference worth? Is it being held out to parties that fully understand it? 
I am also concerned that with this bill the Crown may well face a claim in 25 years’ time. When a new generation is looking at this issue the same sense of grievance may be felt as is felt by the people who look back on what the Sim Commission did. From the select committee report on the face of it it appears that 40 percent of the potential or intended beneficiaries of this settlement did not confirm the mandate. Worse it appears that that reflects a dynastic division or a family division within the entity that is to hold the rights and the assets. So what does this House do and what does the Crown do when a settlement is made that could mean that 40 percent of the intended beneficiaries representatives of a family that I assume is in the minority can come back in 20 or 30 years’ time or maybe in 5 years’ time and say to this House and to the Crown that when the resources were put into a box at Rugby League Park they did not agree no attention was paid to them and the Crown knew that no mechanism was in place to ensure that attention was paid to all the intended beneficiaries? 
Settlements should be negotiated. Settlements should be dealt with by this House as being the best that can be achieved by people dealing in good faith but I fear we are looking at a deal that is not being done in good faith on at least one side. I fear we are seeing a Crown that is desperate to put a nominal close to an issue and to look as if it is making progress. It should not say things to a temporarily befuddled generation that it knows the next generation will have to ask what those words could possibly have meant. What was intended by “consultation”? Obviously there is a likely mismatch of desires and even with the best goodwill and honesty in the world people who have competing desires soon generate the doctrine the words and the justification to make their desires a mismatch of expectation. 
It is nearly 3 years since the treaty agreement was first reached and a whole lot of things could have been settled and dealt with. For example the explanatory note of the bill as introduced stated that the Crown will “consult with the advisory committee concerning proposals for the commercial taking of [certain fish] species and that in considering any such proposals the Minister of Fisheries will ensure that the customary non-commercial interests of Ngati Tama are recognised and provided for:”. What has happened in the time since? Has any more light been cast on that? No. This Government has now put us deeper into confusion and far deeper into conflicting expectations irreconcilable conflicting expectations with many Maori people solemnly believing that they own the seabed the foreshore and all within it and that anything less than outright ownership is expropriation. Of course in that time this House could have said that it did not want to confirm future consultation that it wanted to know the effect of the law it was passing and that therefore it would wait until that consultation had occurred so that when a law was passed it would know that the settlement was permanent. 
The New Zealanders who have supported the treaty settlement process have been decent and well meaning. They have believed that it would actually settle treaty grievances. A bill like this does not settle anything and on the face of it shows that it expects uncertainty to continue.