Henare Tau: New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHenare Tau: New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13717. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TAU HENARE (National):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. My colleague Te Ururoa Flavell from the Māori Party sums up the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill in the nicest language possible. But to think that in the year 2013 we are in the House before you fixing up a rather messy and dirty episode—one small dirty episode—that happened in the Tauranga Moana area some 100 years ago. Two hundred years ago Samuel Marsden got on a boat and came out to New Zealand and that is where his deed—I was going to say “dirty deed” but it might not be correct of me because I suppose that in his day his adventure was to go to all corners ofthe earth and Anglicise everybody he saw whether it was right or wrong. That was his mahi; that was his job. I must say that when he first came here he had only a couple of supporters from the indigenous people. It took him a while to get them all signed up to this new and funny religion at that time Christianity. He did a good job because by the time he was sort of moving on in his life most ofMāoridom had signed up for Christianity.But as we have seen over our history especially members of this House in dealing with Treaty settlements on occasion—more than one occasion—there have been some suspicious deals done over landholdings and none more so than by the Church. It is pleasing to note that in this enlightened time the Church itself has realised that there were mistakes and bad deeds done in the name of the Lord and it is willing today to help fix those problems that caused so much damage. ToNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho I say well done. Well done for waiting for the return of land that is highly significant to you both. If I can be so bold as to say that bothhapū say it re-establishes their connection to the water of Tauranga Moana it provides an income to thehapū to finance other activities including allowinghapū to participate in the downtown economy of Tauranga and it comes just before the 150-year anniversary of GatePā which is next year. I am pretty sure that we will get the bill back into the House and done and dusted before that anniversary.TheŌtamataha Trust has been established by thehapū of like I saidNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho to own and manage land and other property just like any other normal person in this country. That is a great thing. The bill declares the new trustees to be a leasing authority for the purposes of the Public Bodies Leases Act 1969. The land being transferred will be subject to a lease granted under that Act. This enables the transfer to happen without affecting the lease and lessee’s rights. The Church Missionary Society the CMS was established in Tauranga in 1835 and in 1838 the society bought two blocks from tangata whenua on the site that is where the city of Tauranga is today. When I say “bought” I mean “bought” in inverted commas; bought in the language of the day. The transaction has never been accepted by tangata whenua as a sale of the land to the Church Missionary Society. In 1867 the Crown acquired by gift of the Church Missionary Society four-fifths of the land which had been vested in the Church Missionary Society by Crown grant in 1852 and military settlers were settled on it. This land was surrounded by confiscated Māori land that was also settled. In 1896 the remaining land includingŌtamataha was transferred from the Church Missionary Society to the New Zealand Mission Trust Board which held the assets of the board on trust for the spiritual benefit and spiritual instruction of Māori people in the North Island of New Zealand—and here is the bit that I really really like—or failing that the evangelisation of heathen races in any part of the world. So—Andrew Williams: There’s still hope for you Tau.Hon TAU HENARE: There is still hope for me. The interesting thing is that through the so-called purchase of this little block of land it was not only for the Anglicisation or the evangelisation of iwi Māori but for the rest of the world as well. So way back then we were having an effect on the world’s Christian population. Those people in the deepest darkest parts of Africa Australia America and England even should be thankful toNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho for their contribution to their evangelisation. In 1996 the New Zealand Mission Trust Board handed back control of the land to the new trustees appointed byNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho. This was done in recognition of the manner and process by which the land was originally acquired from tangata whenua.I want to mention the Treaty of Waitangi and what the Waitangi Tribunal said in itsTe Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: Report on the Tauranga Confiscation Claims in 2004and echo what my colleague Te Ururoa Flavell said “… after considering the manner in which a Crown grant for the land includingOtamataha was awarded to the Church Mission Society in 1852 [it] concluded … : ‘we find that Godfrey failed to ascertain and acknowledge the conditional nature of the transactions under Maori customary law and that he wrongly concluded that the CMS had fully and fairly purchased the whole of the area. The Crown in accepting Godfrey’s recommendation and finally awarding the CMS a Crown grant for the whole area was therefore in breach of the Treaty principle of active protection.’ ” The sad thing about that is that these people had to go to the tribunal only to find the tribunal rule in their favour but that it could not do anything about it because the land was not in Crown hands; it was in private ownership. And through the good deeds of various people from then on to this day—and I want to congratulate my colleague Te Ururoa Flavell on being the member who sees this bill through the House. Despite this conclusion section 6(4A)(a) of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 prevented the Waitangi Tribunal from making any recommendation affecting the future ownership ofŌtamataha because the land as I said was not owned or controlled by the Crown.It is a good day. I am pleased as the chairperson of the Māori Affairs Committee to have this before our committee and can guarantee that we will not only enjoy our work listening to submissions but make a bit of a pilgrimage to coin a phrase to the area to listen to those submitters and actually get a feel for what is being handed over. I also commend this bill to the House.