Delahunty Catherine: Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill — In Committee00DBHOH_BILL12851.1Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill — In Committee00DBHOH_BILL12851.1[Sitting date: 21 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7419. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Chairman. My apologies to my colleague Nanaia Mahuta. Tēnā koutou e te Wharenui. As the previous speaker Peeni Henare said it is a good day for this kōrero especially as we woke up this morning to the debate over He Whakaputanga me Te Tiriti o Waitangi and where they should be and where they should sit and that is what this is about.This is about honouring and treasuring Waitangi as a sacred place not only for tangata whenua but for tangata Tiriti as well because for us of the Pākehā culture without Waitangi we are here with no honour—we are here with no actual foundation; we are here as colonisers and invaders rather than as partners in a relationship—so this site could not be more important to us. It is vital for us even though whakapapa obviously gives the people of the north—and I really want to acknowledge my colleagues here in the House from the north te Tai Tokerau not only for their commitment to the Waitangi National Trust but for their understanding of the complexities and history of looking after that place on behalf of the nation through their whakapapa. So it is great to have a chance to speak about this.I sat on the Māori Affairs Committee briefly on one of the days we were having a lively debate about representation and I was very privileged to hear that debate. I myself unlike Peeni Henare have been to Waitangi for only the last 15 years—every Waitangi Day—and so I am a new person but each time that I go I learn something powerful about what that space and place is in the history of this nation and it is a place of both challenge and of coming together and acknowledging one another. So legislation like this Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill is very important.In some ways I feel ill-equipped to talk about some of the detail of the length of time for which people should be able to be on the board let alone who should represent whom. But there are issues I am passionate about that we were debating at the select committee and that I would like to stand up for in a way that is possibly more superficial than you have heard. It was Arapeta Hamilton’s submission about fair representation. In many ways that discussion symbolised Te Tiriti itself because we had a situation where the Pākehā families all had a representative each but the mana whenua families did not. To me that was a little like the ongoing struggle we have under Te Tiriti to actually create a fair honest and just solution to our history and in order to do that we have to keep refining our ideas of what democracy and also rangatiratanga actually mean.Sometimes there is a tension between the two. I think it is really good to acknowledge that in the concept of a board or a concept of representation we do not always acknowledge that there are issues of mana and issues of whakapapa and tikanga that operate within their own context and they want to be strongly influencing the structure of the board as well as the traditional Pākehā mechanisms of who voted for whom and who represents whom. But I think that this bill came to a good place through the hard work of the select committee and people came to a good agreement around the submission of Arapeta Hamilton and around some of these other issues of representation. I am not sure myself whether the changes are lessening the mana and power of the Waitangi National Trust or not but what I am sure about is that we need the continued commitment to reviewing the issues associated with Waitangi itself so that we continue to improve and get right the nature of the relationship that we signed up to in 1840.So it was good to be at the select committee when the Minister came and spoke of her commitment to the review which is excellent because I am one of those people who believe that Te Tiriti never finishes. It is not a matter of full and final settlement. And just like Te Tiriti not finishing the improving and polishing and enhancing of a bill like this and the way in which the Waitangi National Trust this taonga is managed is an ongoing process. So this may not be the end but it is important to acknowledge both the mana of the history of the Waitangi National Trust and also what it will look like in the future.It was interesting to hear Rino Tirikatene talk about gender balance which is obviously one thing the Greens are quite interested in. But again that kōrero needs to come into a context and I am sure that the people of the north are the people who can lead on that context and on that issue as well. Certainly there are many people in the north who could. Thank you.