Franks Stephen: Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Franks Stephen: Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:623;Page:18836] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 Part 4 of the Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill is what one could colloquially call the guts of it. It is where all the various privileges and rights are set out that need law to give them effect. It is where we see cultural redress properties identified and either set aside or made subject to encumbrances. It is where the Crown undertakes to give statutory acknowledgments and where it undertakes to enter deeds of recognition. It is where the Crown gives first dibs or first rights to coastal sites. 
I am interested that no other member has spoken about this in this part of the debate. Coastal tendering on these sites will be for very valuable marine farming and Ngati Awa is given preferential rights to tender. At the same time we know that the Government gave 20 percent of these sites to Maori on a pan-Maori basis anyway. There is no explanation of why something that is apparently part of a general settlement of potential claims with Maori is also now supplemented by preferential bidding rights including automatic bidding rights at a deemed tender of $1 which must be accepted. 
I would really like the Minister to explain why it is that if something is advertised and the Minister gets inadequate offers the Minister is giving away the right to turn them all down as any sensible tendering regime does and instead is deemed to accept an automatic bid of $1. It could be a failure of advertising that leads to that situation. Has the Minister had legal advice on the sorts of slips between cup and lip that could result in automatic vesting of valuable rights for $1? 
I want to go back to another very interesting speech made by Dr Wayne Mapp from National who pointed to the entrenchment of weird religious concepts in this bill. These concepts have been in many bills and ACT has worried about it before. Many pages of the statutory acknowledgments cite things such as taniwha living in various places the traditions that are asserted and the places where the people of Ngati Awa reflect on the life of their ancestors sensing the ihi or power the wehi or fear and the mauri life force emanating from the land and the water. The bill states “All elements of the natural environment possess a life force” and “The mauri of the coastal area represents the essence that binds the physical and spiritual elements of all things together”. 
Then we look at what the purposes of these acknowledgments are. Why is the Crown getting Parliament to acknowledge these statements of spiritual mumbo-jumbo? It is to require the relevant consent authorities—the New Zealand Historic Places Trust or the Environment Court—to have regard to the statutory acknowledgment. What does that mean? Does it mean that taniwha will be holding up motorway bridges again? Does this deliberately write in requirements that the Environment Court must pay attention to this kind of spiritualist nonsense? 
This is a secular society. It is appropriate to respect people’s religions as long as they do not attempt to use the force of law to impose them. What we have in this bill is a recital of some religious beliefs that just mean people like me who do not want to be afflicted by them are forced to deride them. We are forced to deride them because we do not know what the Environment Court is supposed to do with all this stuff. The provision goes on to state that it does not affect and is not to be taken into account in the exercise of any power duty or function by any person. What then does the first part mean when it states that the court must have regard to it? Why are we still in 2005 writing law that does not mean what it states? 
I ask United Future members why they are supporting a bill that contains this kind of mumbo-jumbo. What does United Future think of the injunction “Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay” when its members vote for something that has yes and no on one page? This is not just legislative candyfloss or tissue. This actually obliges New Zealanders to attack each other. The Environment Court is told it must have regard so it puzzles over what regard it has to have. The Minister exercising a discretion is told that he has to have particular regard to something. I am not sure whether anyone has ever defined what different influence “particular regard” has from just “ordinary regard”—and these are words of statute. 
Our judges will have to decide exactly what that means. On one page they are told to have regard and on the next page the Government tries to have it the other way. If there is one thing we should have learnt out of the treaty grievance process it is how dangerous it is to have New Zealanders set at each other’s throats by giving legal force to documents with bitterly contended meanings. It would have been perfectly acceptable in my view to have recorded these as the legends myths or beliefs of Ngati Awa but also to have stated that the sole purpose was to invite New Zealanders to be courteous—to have the sort of respect that any people owe to another not to confront them needlessly. Instead one group of people is having theirs set out in statute. Then the Environment Court the local authority and the Historic Places Trust will all go through some kind of process where they will have to pretend to have regard to it without being given any guidance as to what that means other than being told it does not have the force of law. 
The bill also goes on to state that no person or entity in considering any matter or making any decision or recommendation under any statute regulation or bylaw may give any greater or lesser weight to Ngati Awa’s association with these areas than that person or entity would have given under the relevant statute if the acknowledgment had not been made. Is that stating that this is not worth the paper it is written on? Why has it been written? Are we really still giving Ngati Awa bangles beads and blankets? Who is this supposed to fool? We get a lot of talk about maturity as a country and respecting diversity but this is New Zealand’s Parliament telling itself that it can lie to itself because on one part of the page we state “must have regard” and in the next part we are stating that it does not mean a thing. 
So why did the bill not just state that this is to make a permanent record of the beliefs and the views that were once held? I doubt whether many Ngati Awa even believe this any longer but someone will make money out of asserting that they do. People will be encouraged to hold projects to ransom and to go along to object to people’s usage of land—probably public uses like landing ramps or mooring areas in water or on land things that appear on the skyline like windmills for wind power. Someone will be able to try to scrape a rent by resurrecting the so-called spiritual values that are reflected in this legislative nonsense. 
I am very interested that we have had the Maori members of New Zealand First and National’s Maori spokespeople here yet we have not heard a word in defence of any of this from anyone in the Labour Party. All those big brave bold people in the Labour Party’s Maori caucus have not joined in what is a genuine set of questions. For the first time we have had Dr Mapp raising a set of questions and I am absolutely delighted to hear the National Party raising those. I am delighted to see New Zealand First now putting its votes where its mouth has been for some time and voting against the meaningless word—or the sadly meaningful word—“principles”. But we have not heard a word of justification or explanation from any of the Maori members in the Labour Party. We have not heard anything from anyone in the “Christian party” explaining why those members are putting their votes behind this kind of animist animism. We have not heard anything about why United Future thinks that it is a good idea to support this.