Henare Tau: Central North Island Forests Land Collective  Settlement Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Henare Tau: Central North Island Forests Land Collective  Settlement Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 23 September 2008. Volume:650;Page:18956. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 I want to make a brief comment on schedule 2 “Tikanga based resolution process for CNI forests land”. It will keep the lawyers at bay and I think that is a great thing. Over the years unfortunately the legal profession has made a hell of a lot of money off the backs of both the Crown and the iwi at the heart of Treaty settlements. I do not want to be too disparaging of the legal profession and of my colleagues in that respect but in the past they have played rather too large a part in the process. So the resolution process in the way it sets out what is to happen is a very good one. It is to be hoped that the allocation methods of settlements that follow can take a leaf out of this bill. 
I note that schedule 2 says nothing about the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Affiliate Te Arawa Iwi and Hapu Claims Settlement Bill which the House has just dealt with specifically mentioned the principles of the Treaty and I am staggered and gobsmacked that they are not mentioned in the bill that the Committee is debating now. I am waiting for the member from New Zealand First to stand up and say something about it. I think there should be a statement about the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. If it is good enough for Te Arawa then it should be good enough for everybody else for goodness’ sake! 
Pita Paraone 
: Similarly if it’s good enough for this collective it’s good enough for the rest of the country. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Well there you go! That is a good point. I had never thought of it that way but now that you bring it up! 
Colleagues on this side have commented about the tribunal and judicial review. There has to be some sort of mechanism whereby if something goes wrong right at the end if the parties have followed through the process but have hit a brick wall there is some sort of final adjudicator. [ 
Interruption 
] I heard you on the radio mate—Phil Heatley the new member for Whangarei. Whether it is the tribunal or the judicial review process there must be a process whereby somebody adjudicates legally. I think we can work on that. The Crown the Government and the collective have a responsibility to ensure that the process entered into is transparent. It does not matter what system one has or what resolution process one has; there will always be people who disagree so for them one has to have a transparent process. I am with my colleagues on that point. 
I will turn briefly to schedule 3 “Percentages for allocation of rental proceeds”. Ngai Tuhoe will have 27.2987 percent. That is down to the last piece of timber! I am not so interested in the amount of allocation to each tribal district—Ngati Manawa Ngati Tuwharetoa and so on and so forth—but I am interested in the way that the percentages were arrived at and maybe the Minister in the chair the Hon Mita Ririnui can shed some light on that aspect. It is interesting to note that if one were to read the percentages for the allocation of rental proceeds then one would think that they were right down to the last little growth on the tree or the last little piece of grass in Murupara. 
That is all. I think that all in all the process is a fantastic attempt at taking out the argy-bargy the legalese that we have seen before and I hope that the process grows into something that we may be able to use later on down the track.