Davis Kelvin; Tisch LindsayKELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Te tuatahi māku he mihi kau ake ki ōku whanaunga e noho ana kei raro i te tuanui o tō tātou Whare: nau mai haere mai ki tēnei tō tātou Whare Te Whare o te motu. Aroha mai mō taku tōmuringa taenga mai i te mea he hui anō tāku i roto i te tāone i mua ake nei ēngari hari koa ana ahau ki te rongo i te mutunga o te kōrero a Peeni nānā i kī mai nā koutou i mau mai ngā kai moana kai roto i tōna tari nā reira tēnā rā koe mō tēnā koha ki a mātou. Kua rongo hoki ahau ko Peeni e hiahia ana ki te tākaro mō te Piri Morgan ā nā reira e tuku ana mātou Te Rōpū Reipa i a Peeni hei kai mō ngā toa o Whangaroa. Nā reira e ngā whanaunga tēnā koutou.[Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. The first thing for me is to acknowledge my relatives sitting under the roof of our House: welcome come hither to this House of ours the House of the nation. I apologise for my late arrival as I had another meeting in the city prior to this one but I am pleased indeed to have caught the end of Peeni's contribution. He was the one who told me that you brought seafood which is in his office so thank you very much for that gift to us. I heard that Peeni wants to play for the Piri Morgan so we of the Labour Party allow you Peeni to be fodder for the champions of Whangaroa. Therefore thank you to the relations.]I just first apologise for being late to the House because I did have a meeting in town but I did catch the end of Peeni's speech where he said that our relations from Whangaroa brought down the kai moana and it is in his office and we thank them for their koha. Also we are offering up Peeni as the sacrificial lamb for the annual Piri Morgan inter-marae rugby competition that is played in Whangaroa every Labour weekend. Despite his advancing years we are offering him. The people of Ngāti Kahu are my whanaunga. We are related through a number of ways but one of our whakapapa lines—one of the many lines—is through Pōhurihanga of Kurahaupō waka. Pōhurihanga had Muriwhenua—most of the Far North was named after Muriwhenua who had Tamatea a well-known explorer in his time not least of all because the longest Māori place name in New Zealand is a reference to him. He had Kahungunu and we spoke about Kahungunu in the House last night. I acknowledge my tuahine here Meka. Kahungunu had Kahukuranui who had Kahukuraariki. I am not descended as far as I am aware—unless my father has got some secrets that he has not let out—from Kahukuraariki but instead from the sibling of Kahukuraariki Rākaihikuroa. So that just goes to show the complexity of our whakapapa and how we are all related. Pōhurihanga of Kurahaupō though—and one of the reasons I brought this up is that we talk about these settlements being full and final and enduring. With the Kermadecs situation maybe that is on pause. Maybe that is on hold; we are not quite sure. We cannot really stand here with our hands on our hearts and say that these settlements are now full and final and enduring if the situation around the Kermadecs is to continue. The reason I am trying to link it in is that Pōhurihanga's name I believe was just Pō but when he came over on the Kurahaupō waka and it started to leak a bit he had to turn around and go back to the Kermadecs and turning around is like huri—Hurihanga. Pōhurihanga parked up the waka on the Kermadec Islands and fixed the waka up before he proceeded on again to New Zealand. I would say that probably happened a number of times with many waka but it is just an illustration of our links to Rangitahuahua the Kermadec Islands but also the significance now that the Kermadec Islands are playing in all our settlements. There are real concerns that what was a settlement that was made around the fisheries in 1992 is no longer that permanent enduring settlement. So we come to the Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa settlement. It will go through the House and all its stages and no doubt it will be passed. I hope that 25 years from now there is not another MP standing up and going: Oh sorry Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa the Government has changed its mind and the Act as it was passed in 2016 is going to be changed." I think it is a very important note to make that when we say that these bills are enduring and full and final that is exactly what they are. The bill itself relates to Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa's historical claims mainly to pre-Treaty land transactions and Crown purchasing. I spoke a bit about that last night about the Crown's devious ways of purchasing land—the surplus lands policy. I spoke last night about how James Busby managed to get his hands on a hundred thousand acres around Ruakākā which is not in Whangaroa. It was just an illustration of the way that land was taken off our people and they were left basically landless. The Crown failed to protect Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa reserves and took land under the Public Works Act. Again I acknowledge Catherine Delahunty for her bill which sadly did not pass last night.There are about 3000 people in the Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa tribe. I just want to talk about the ratification process the bill went through. There was concern about whether there was sufficient support. The level of the participation and the ratification was 30.9 percent of those who participated. The process lasted 7 weeks and of 2426 voting packs that went out to registered adult members 750 votes were received. There is concern that that is low but in the scheme of things when you look at all the different statistics around all of the settlements that have gone through the numbers and the percentages of people who voted and participated in the ratification process this is actually a mid-range level of participation. I guess it is incumbent on people that if they receive a voting pack for their iwi issues they actually need to engage in the process and it is really at that stage that people can express one way or the other. There is no point in having a democratic process and then saying that the process did not get the result they wanted if they never actually voted. We have heard about the disagreements around whether Mangawhero Marae and Ōtangaroa should be included in the settlement boundary. We considered it but did not consider that the boundary issue at Ōtangaroa was an obstacle to negotiations because the Crown recognises general areas of interest rather than a precise boundary during the settlement process. Just in the short space of time I have left—we have touched on the ownership of Stony Creek. I do have a concern that the quantum actually is all tied up in Stony Creek. I would have liked to think that the people of Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa not only get Stony Creek Station back but also got a dollop of pūtea to go with it. Several submitters argued that Stony Creek should belong to Ngāti Aukiwa as a distinct tribal entity from Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa. However Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa said that most hapū and marae have associations with Stony Creek Station as well as the Thomson and Clarke lots in Taemārō Marae. I remember basically this bill was my introduction to politics. There was a day in December of 2007; it was the day after the end of the school year. I had resigned as the principal of Kaitāia Intermediate School and Shane Jones said to me: "Hey you want to get into Parliament? Come out and meet your constituents." So I went out to Taemaro Bay—a beautiful spot as is the whole coastline around Whangaroa—and not knowing what I was walking into I should have known better than to wear jandals and a T-shirt; I should have worn my flak jacket. That was the day that Michael Cullen turned up in a helicopter and I found myself standing in between some angry Ngāti Kahu whanaunga and Michael Cullen. I was standing there linking arms with Shane Jones' son—thank goodness he was bigger than me because I would not have been much protection for him I have to admit. The interesting thing about it was that the guy who was right in my face there being probably the loudest is a guy whom I have subsequently worked with on other issues and find him quite a nice chap.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired."