Smith Murray: Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
Smith Murray: Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:608;Page:5651] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 I begin by acknowledging the representatives from Ngati Tama in the Chamber tonight. Kia ora tatou. United Future members and I welcome this bill which I note is the third bill of treaty settlements that we have had in this House in the past 12 months with the Ngati Ruanui Claims Settlement Bill going through all three stages and the Te Uri o Hau Claims Settlement Bill also going through three stages. That is very welcome to see. It is a credit to the Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations and in particular to the new procedures that have been implemented by the Government—especially the Gisborne claims inquiry process that has been experimented with—and the Office of Treaty Settlements claims development team. 
The Government I note indicated that it was optimistic about getting two bills per year through so I would like to think that the fact we are on our third bill already owes some credit to United Future’s endeavouring to try to speed up the process. We certainly have been pushing very hard to try to speed up the process and as this House knows it was through our party’s request that the second reading and Committee stage of Ngati Ruanui’s bill went through urgency so that we succeeded in getting that bill through quickly. 
The Waitangi Tribunal has indicated that it expects its members to finish their work subject to resources by 2011. It would be extremely pleasing to see that we could get all of the tribunal’s historical claims out of the way by then. I would like to try to encourage the Government to aim for a date of 2015 to have at least 90 percent of the settlements through bearing in mind that there may be 10 percent of claims that it cannot get through because of matters outside its own control. But more can be done by the Government and United Future continues to push for more to be done to speed up the process. 
In particular with the Office of Treaty Settlements I have been delighted to see the work of the claims development team and commend it on the assistance it has given in respect of this bill to get the bill to this stage. It concerns me that that team appears to be reactive rather than proactive and I believe that it—and claims development teams generally—could do a lot more to try to assist iwi to get to a point where their legislation can be brought into this House and passed. They should in my view be going out to all iwi to inform them fully of the situation to give them advice and assistance on a direct consultative individual basis and to follow them up on progress—not in a pushy way but by way of helpfulness including assisting iwi to meet mandating requirements. 
But in order for that to happen to all iwi more funding needs to be given to the Office of Treaty Settlements. United Future has been pushing this Government and will continue to push it to provide greater resources to the Office of Treaty Settlements to enable that to be expanded. We sincerely hope that as we look towards the Budget our pleas effectively will not have fallen on deaf ears. Based on the excellent relationship we have between United Future and the Labour Party then I would hope it has heard us. 
The Waitangi Tribunal too has played a major part in getting this bill resolved but again in assessing claims and in drawing conclusions on the evidence about the legitimacy of grievances and the extent of harm done the tribunal has been poorly resourced. The very limited funding provided to the tribunal for research that it can pass on to people means that it is now in a normal state of putting people off from applying for its funding. There is a shortage of report writers. The new approach inquiry process that has come out has indicated that more resourcing effectively is necessary and even for that pilot project to be in operation it required almost all of the research resources of the tribunal to be directed towards one series of claims: namely the Gisborne ones. However United Future continues to push and has been pushing the Government for greater resources to be made available for the Waitangi Tribunal to enable it to carry out more case management work to enable more research to be done and to obtain the extra staffing necessary to do that. Hopefully I would like to see more bills like this one coming before the House so that in the next year we are not talking about three bills but about five or six bills coming to pass through this House. 
In the Department of Courts assessment of the new-approach inquiry process of the Waitangi Tribunal report it talks about the dramatic time compression of the process that has been involved in cutting back the average inquiry time by something like 3 years or more through using the Gisborne pilot project process. The new approach with its planned further refinements and a greater level of Government resourcing for all Crown-sector agencies involved would allow that deadline the tribunal has set for itself of 2010 to 2011 for the completion of historical claims to be achievable. But it does take more resourcing. 
I note that the Department of Courts assessment of the new approach says in summary that the new approach provides a more efficient and effective inquiry forum for claimants compresses the inquiry time frames by up to 4 years and prepares a speedier passage for claimants to negotiate with the Crown. It states: “These nationally important benefits outweigh the challenge posed to the Government in meeting the higher financial and resourcing costs required to complete historical inquiries under the new approach. It should be a priority” it says “that the grievances of the past are addressed with integrity so that the nation can move on and both Treaty of Waitangi partners can be allowed to reach their full potential.” 
Except for the comment about partners which I think needs further refinement I totally agree with those comments. But the specific path of Ngati Tama’s claims unfortunately demonstrates the tardiness on the part of both National and Labour up to date in terms of this process. I note that the Waitangi Tribunal investigated 21 claims in Taranaki in the 5-year process of 1990 to 1995. They started 13 years ago. An interim report was produced in 1996. The Crown recognised the mandate of the Ngati Tama Iwi Development Trust in November 1996 and then came a process of 4½ years after that before we got to the point when there was a deed of settlement signed. Negotiations began in April 1997 a heads of agreement was reached in September 1999—that took 2½ years—and it was a further 2 years before the deed of settlement was signed. I can only think that if there had been claims development teams operating from the earlier part of those negotiations then we could have moved the settlement further forward at a lot greater pace. 
I note that the ratification of the agreement happened in December 2002 and the governance entity was established in January 2003—only a month later. The bill has been introduced in April and that 3-month time frame is commendable. It suggests perhaps that we are indeed at last moving a little bit faster between the time the deeds of settlement are signed and the time legislation comes to this House. 
I want to congratulate Ngati Tama and Greg White who led the Claim Progression Team in the achievement they have reached. United Future of course supports the passage of this bill. We are committed as we were with Ngati Ruanui to ensuring that this bill progresses speedily to its third reading and I look forward to further opportunities to talk on and debate that issue as the bill progresses.