Tirikatene Rino: Te Urewera-Tūhoe Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Te Urewera-Tūhoe Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 22 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14148. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Ā tihei wā mauri ora ki te whai ao ki te ao mārama. Ngāi Tūhoe tēnā koutou. Nau mai hara mai ki te Whare Pāremata ki Te Ana o ngā raiona e takatū nei. Nau mai piki mai i ngā wawata ki te whakatutuki i ngā wawata o rātou mā tēnā koutou. E aku rangatira huri noa i te Whare tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Behold the sneeze of life to the glimmer of dawn to the bright light of day. Greetings to you the people of Tūhoe. Welcome to Parliament House to the lions’ den standing here in readiness welcome. Welcome come aboard with aspirations of fulfilling the hopes of those no longer here well done. Acknowledgments to you my leading figures throughout the House salutations and greetings to us all.]I stand wholeheartedly in support of this bill the Te Urewera-Tūhoe Bill. I am honoured to be able to make a contribution in these debates. As the member for Te Tai Tonga Te Wai Pounamu I have not had the privilege yet of going into Tūhoe country but I am very much looking forward to that when I go travelling through with our Māori Affairs Committee.We have heard many contributions on this historic occasion. I would like to acknowledge my colleague my matua the Hon Shane Jones because he talked about the history of Tūhoe and it has been well documented by Pākehā and Māori over the past hundred years or so. But the Tūhoe struggle is still unknown to all New Zealanders. That is a sad occurrence and that is why it is really important that we can try to do our best to project and to inform all of Aotearoa New Zealand on the importance of the history of this people and the atrocities they have gone through.Just referring to my notes my colleagues from around the House have referred to the terrible scorched earth policies the raids and various other histories but I would like to take this opportunity in my contribution to talk about the history—one story of many hundreds of stories that make up the history of the Ngāi Tūhoe people. This story I think sums up for me a whole lot of the stories of Crown actions that we have heard. But this story concerns the dodgy land deals by Pākehā acting in their private capacity and of subsequent Governments that failed to take action to prevent Tūhoe from being alienated from their lands. I would like to acknowledge Dame Judith Binney EmeritusProfessor of History at Auckland University who is a close friend of the Tūhoe people and whose kōrero inStories without End I acknowledge today because this story has a bit of an association with Te Wai Pounamu and that is why it struck out to me.The actual central character of this story is one Hare Rauparaha Native Land Court interpreter who lived among the Arawa Tūhoe and Ngāti Awa peoples of the central North Island Bay of Plenty region at the time that Te Kooti was moved across the island. He was a mate of Te Kooti’s and son of the famous warrior Te Rauparaha of Ngati Toa Rangatira. He ingratiated himself among the whānau of Ngāti Haka Patuheuheu by marrying a daughter of the chief. Hare Rauparaha ultimately defrauded the community he lived in of 7000 acres of land by manipulation deceit and fraud.These traits are hardly becoming of the son of the great fighting chief Te Rauparaha composer of our national haka and they are not. They are the actions of a European male born to immigrant British parents in Nelson in 1842 by the name of Harry Roberts Burt. Harry Burt who would have grown up in the New Zealand Company settlement of Nelson would have been raised on the stories of Te Rauparaha the conquering of Ngāti Toa the allies of Ngāti Toa and my whanaunga at Ngāti Rārura Te Ātiawa who raided and conquered Te Tau Ihu in the 1820s. They had the mana in that area. Young Harry grew up with the pā kids and he became part of those lucky first-generation Pākehā kids who spoke Te Reo Māori. He understood Māori ways in a manner that his parents did not understand and armed with this knowledge Harry Burt became an obvious choice as a Native Land Court interpreter. He had a nice English wife and children but when he hit the road for mahi he turned into Hare Rauparaha Native Land Court interpreter and illegitimate son of Te Rauparaha—quite a transformation. He was not quite a superhero; he turned into a supervillain.The story of the loss of mana and land of Ngāti Haka Patuheuheu situated in the Rangitaiki River valley at Te Houhi is as complex as it is egregious. As complex as the story of Te Houhi is it is another example of the lengths that Europeans went to in order to accrue land illegally. I will try as best as I can to convey this to the House but the basic chronology of the loss of Te Houhi goes like this. Te Houhi sat within the land block known as Waiōhau and through deception and fraud Hare found a couple of blokes. There was a partition that came up and he managed to have the 14000-acre block partitioned into two equal potions. Waiōhau 1B was put into the name of these two blokes. As soon as they got the title they walked out of the court and the judge and Hare witnessed the sale of that 7000 acres to Hare’s wife. Every time I hear of these stories I am so shocked and almost disgusted at the fraud that went on.The land was placed into Burt’s wife’s name. There was an inquiry. The people rightly complained. They had the grievance investigated but due to the incompetence of that inquiry the title stayed in the name of Burt’s wife. A caveat was placed upon the land and the Crown knew that the people of Te Houhi had been swindled but the caveat was lifted and Burt’s wife became protected. She was guaranteed title because she had acquired clear title regardless of whether it had been obtained by fraud or not. The miseries of the people of Ngāti Haka Patuheuheu continued when they were not permitted to remove their meeting house as well as a native school that the people of their community had built on that land. The Government in its shame had to purchase the whare tupuna and the hapū had to break the house down in parts and with a horse and cart remove the whare and take it north to much poorer lands in the original Waiōhau block.The pain of that transaction started in 1878 and ended in 1906. For nearly 30 years Tūhoe and Ngāti Haka Patuheuheu tried to use the law to retain their lands but to no avail. The admittance of the Crown that Tūhoe had been part of a terrible fraud and deception was of little comfort to them. The lengths to which Harry Roberts Burt wentto defraud the families of Te Houhi will go down as one of the most reprehensible acts visited upon Tūhoe. There is much I have not shared with this House out of respect for Tūhoe and Dame Judith Binney. Suffice to say what I have shared will in some way help to explain why Tūhoe have had very little to do with successive Governments. If I could leave these words of the judge who presided over that case regarding Te Houhi he said: “I regret the hardship to the defendants. That they have suffered a grievous wrong is in my opinion plain. It is doubly hard that this wrong should have resulted from a miscarriage which certainly ought to have been avoided in the very court which was specially charged with the duty of protecting them in such matters. The plaintiff is of course blameless in the matter.”Once again this was just one story of these illustrious people of Tūhoe. I would like to acknowledge them once again—the hapū of Ngāti Haka Patuheuheu and their story of Te Houhi and their land at Waiōhau. Once again I acknowledge the work of Dame Judith Binney and her bookStories without End. There are stories without end but this is a new story. This is a new story for Ngāi Tūhoe and I am pleased to be here talking in support of this bill. I am looking forward to working with my colleagues on the select committee under our chair Tau Henare. We will speedily bring this bill through the House. I commend this bill. Tēnā koutou tēnā tatou katoa.