Tirikatene Rino: Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9510. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koe e te Minita. Tēnā koutou e ngā mema o te Whare. Ki a koutou Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara nau mai haere mai ki te Whare Pāremata e takatū nei. Āpiti hōno tātai hōno rātou te hunga mate ki a rātou āpiti hōno tātai hōno tātou te hunga ora ki a tātou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[Salutations to you Mr Speaker Minister and members of the House. To you collectively of Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara welcome to Parliament House standing here in readiness—welcome. The lines are drawn so allow the dead to remain there amongst their own while we the living remain here among the living world. Greetings and salutations to you all.]I am pleased to rise and speak in support of the Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara Claims Settlement Bill at this second reading. I am really enjoying my time on the Māori Affairs Committee and it was unfortunate that I was not able to participate in the select committee when it travelled up to hear this bill at Kaipara. But I am very pleased to awhi this bill at this second reading stage.As always I like to take a bit of a different tack when I give my speeches on these Treaty bills. I would like to stand today and really acknowledge the great visionary chief Paora Tūhaere of Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara because he was really remarkable and as we go into these bills the wonderful history and the great works of these great chiefs come through. If we look at Paora Tūhaere it is surely one of the great enticements ever. He convinced the Queen’s representative to move the capital of the colony from the Bay of Islands to the upper Waitematā Harbour—what was to become Auckland City. Tūhaere was the chief of a Ngāti Whātua tribe of the southern Kaipara Harbourand their rohe extended down to Muriwai and across to Helensville and back up to the Kaipara.His invitation to Governor Hobson must surely have raised the ire of his more senior and famous uncles from Ngāpuhi but the gift of a couple of hundred thousand acres was obviously worth it in order to have the Pākehā settlers build a new city founded purely around commerce and the administration of the colony. The idea was simple: bring the Pākehā settlers to the Waitematā Harbour and benefit from the inevitable trade. Hongi Hika in the north and Te Rauparaha in the south had benefited from the Pākehā contact. So tribes who had contact with Pākehā always benefited from picking up new technologies and customs.Paora Tūhaere was a chief with foresight and for a couple of years Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara did benefit from being close to the Pākehā. This did not transpire for ever unfortunately but only for a while. What actually happened is one of the sadder stories in this current crop of settlement bills. As we have heard in previous speeches at the first reading and surely in what will come some terrible things happened to Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara. After the good times ended and the commerce of Auckland really started to take off as has been documented the five hapū of Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara and the amount of land that was stolen from them—it was significant.Personally this bill has thrown light as I have mentioned at the start on just what a true and loyal Māori and a true New Zealander Paora Tūhaere was. He seems to have been a person of real sound judgment and common sense. Pākehā coming from overseas—that was inevitable and as nephew to the paramount leader Apihai Te Kawau of Ōrākei Tūhaere and his people were in a good position to benefit. Paora was Christian and learnt to read and write well before Auckland was founded. He was a capable administrator. He held several municipal positions.In all huis and dealings with Pākehā in Auckland he believed the best way forward for everyone to benefit was by following the Treaty. He soon came to understand that if Māori were to have an equal say in their own land they should have political representation. Indeed he was really at the beginning of Māori political awareness and consciousness. So he is the man actually whom I think all of us Māori electorate MPs should give thanks for because it was through his efforts that there came the formation of the Māori electorates. So I give personal thanks for his efforts that I represent Te Tai Tonga today.Later on I can elaborate further on the early huis at Kohimaramara and the dealings with Governor Gore Browne and all of those early very significant hui but I might hold those over for the third reading. But I do want to acknowledge Tūhaere for that wonderful saying that if there are to be 50 Pākehā seats in terms of the House of Representatives let there be 50 Māori seats. So again I just acknowledge the tremendous foresight and contribution that that wonderful chief made to our constitution as a country. He knew the meaning of fair and equal and when he found out that some of his more notable Pākehā acquaintances would never give Māori equal representation he hosted his own Māori parliamentary movement at Ōrākei and later joined forces with the Kotahitanga movement of which he became a fervent supporter and follower.So as is documented in these bills you know Auckland really was based on a lot of thievery of land to establish it. Paora Tūhaere really was the genesis of the Māori seats that we have today and it is interesting that some 160-plus years later we are doing a Māori option now that might determine whether we go from seven seats to maybe an eighth seat which would be great. Yes sometimes we have moved a long way and at other times it has been quite slow but I think it is something for us to reflect on in terms of his contribution as the great chief of Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara. So I really just wanted to acknowledge his contribution and I know that a lot of his early efforts and all of thesubsequent work that has been conducted by Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara has led through to what we have here today at the second reading of this bill.We do support the bill. Obviously it does not compensate for all the real hurt and mamae and grievance and losses but it is an opportunity for Ngāti Whātua to recapitalise and reassert their tribal identity on their whenua and their connection and their permanence to Kaipara and also their rohe takiwā. So I support this bill and I look forward to the Committee stage and also to finally bringing it to a conclusion at the third reading. Kia ora tātou.