Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. I'm very pleased to take a call in support of the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Bill on behalf of the Green Party. Can I seek your indulgence Madam Speaker to acknowledge and congratulate Ngāi Tahu kaumātua Tā Tipene O'Regan for being appointed to the Order of New Zealand in last weekend's Queen's Birthday and jubilee honours. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Indeed you can.Hon EUGENIE SAGE: Thank you. As well as being a pivotal figure in Ngāi Tahu's settlement with the Crown and the Crown apology to Ngāi Tahu Tā Tipene has devoted his life to promoting a bicultural nation and this bill is part of a commitment to biculturalism. It is part of our commitment to implement Te Tiriti o Waitangi properly and it's part of the genesis of this bill.Some of the previous speakers have highlighted and asked why Environment Canterbury in putting this bill forward through its sponsor Rino Tirikatene did not undertake comprehensive consultation in the Waitaha Canterbury region. Well as Environment Canterbury made very clear in its submission this whole bill was consistent with a long line of previous council decisions. It wasn't novel for the region and as others have noted of course the two Tumu Taiao representatives who were operating when Environment Canterbury had appointed commissioners from 2010 to 2019 highlighted just how successful Ngāi Tahu representation on the regional council has been. And of course there has been an extensive public consultation process through the Māori Affairs Committee and some 1600 submissions to the select committee.I think this bill and the submissions that came in talked about the very practical benefit to Environment Canterbury from having mana whenua representation at the table. It is those mana whenua kaitiaki responsibilities for air for the whenua for soils for fresh water for the wai the awa for the coastal waters that really need to be at the table of the Canterbury Regional Council because it's got statutory responsibilities under the Resource Management Act for managing all those natural resources.As the Selwyn District Council highlighted one of a number of local councils that supported this bill when you have mana whenua at the table that means that they help own and create the key planning instruments like the district plan and so on in this case and that results in an increased partnership between local rūnanga and the council not only for the planning process but also for other projects and it meant that there were no appeals on a plan once it was notified. So it does through this sheer decision-making process lead to much stronger planning documents much stronger decisions by the council and a shorter more effective decision-making process.This bill is putting into law the practice that as Tāmati Coffey noted the former National Government had put in by providing for the appointment of Tumu Taio representatives alongside the other appointed commissioners when elected councillors were removed from Environment Canterbury in 2010. One of the major benefits of that whole commissioner process—everything else I object to—was the fact that the relationship with Ngāi Tahu did significantly improve. That's what I think this bill and just the practice of having a Tumu Taio around the table has shown over recent years. But the trouble with the current practice is that at the moment while the Ngāi Tahu representatives are there they do not have the same decision-making status as elected councillors and that's what this bill will do—put them on exactly the same basis as regional councillors. They would be appointed by Ngāi Tahu and Arena Williams has canvassed the select committee's careful consideration of the suggestion by some that there be an election within Ngāi Tahu or that there be Māori wards. Ngāi Tahu has a sophisticated process for ensuring that members appointed represent the papatipu rūnanga within the region and Ngāi Tahu will use its internal processes to decide who should be the two representatives appointed to Ngāi Tahu to represent mana whenua.There have been various comments about democracy being undermined and it's a very limited perspective around democracy. I'd like to refer to the comments of Dr Te Maire Tau in an article in The Spinoff in January. As he said and I quote What opponents really mean by the use of 'undemocratic' is a desire that the majority have for the right to impose their narrow world view on the minority (in this case Māori). This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what democracy means. Political democracy is not simply the right of a powerful majority to do whatever it wants regardless of the effect on anyone else." Democracy is about protecting the rights and interests of citizens and that is what this bill is about because it is ensuring that mana whenua have a strong voice at the council which is fundamentally concerned in our largest geographic region in Aotearoa our second most populated region with those natural resources. Mana whenua need to be at the table making those decisions otherwise we are not implementing Te Tiriti and otherwise we have the tyranny of the majority.So this is good bill. I congratulate the Māori Affairs Committee for all the mahi it has done. The changes it has made to the bill look extensive but they are about drafting it in a clearer way so that it's easier to read and I acknowledge the work of parliamentary counsel there and all the submissions that came in with people expressing their views. The work that has been done has shaped a better bill and it's one that the Green Party fully supports."