Tirikatene Rino: New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 28 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18416. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker.Tēnā koutou engā rangatira oNgāti Tapu meNgāitamarāwaho.Tēnā koutoungā rangatira o Tauranga Moananau maihara mai ki te WharePāremata etakatūnei. Herāwhakahirahira herāhariharikoa.Nō reirahurinoai te Wharetēnā koutoutēnā koutoutēnātātou katoa.[To the esteemed leaders ofNgāti Tapu andNgāitamarāwaho salutations to you collectively. Greetings to you collectively esteemed leaders of Tauranga welcome welcome to the House of Parliament standing here in readiness. This is a great day and a really joyful one. And so acknowledgments accolades and congratulations to you all throughout the House.]I am delighted to be speaking at the third reading of the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill. As I have mentioned in earlier contributions thisbill is a beautiful piece of reverse engineering—or reverse privatisation as I call it—whereby we are returning lands back to the tangata whenua back to the originalhapū. It is a historic day. I have to truncate my speech somewhat today but the sincerity is there. I would like to acknowledge our rangatira who have travelled all the way down who have been the stalwart trustees who have been involved in holding the fort for the New Zealand Mission Trust Board and who are soon to be vested in theŌtamataha Trust.There is a long history to this bill. It goes back about 176 years way back to when the land atŌtamataha the Te Papa peninsula was acquired—“acquired” I should say—by the Church Missionary Society and the Rev. Brown. I am sure that there were some genuine altruistic-type good-hearted purposes to the acquisition but the bottom line is that the land was taken. It was not the understanding of the tangata whenua that they had given up rights to their land and indeed the actions that followed were not so altruistic because we saw 80 percent of the land that was acquired was subsequently granted to the Crown and further parts of the land were also disposed of. So what we are dealing with today is just a small remnant—a very small remnant—of the original land blocks which is now prime real estate right in the heart of Tauranga. As I understand it as you drive around the waterfront by theSebel suites I think it is on that sort of drive. Anyway it is a beautiful piece of land and this is just a wonderful opportunity to speak on this bill in recognition that that land is returning back to the original owners.We heard as the Māori Affairs Committee submissions fromNgāiTūkairangi in terms of their inclusion in the bill. I am pleased that theŌtamataha Trust was able to amend the trust deed so that their ancestralhapū were also included and so that they could all link up to theŌtamataha Trust. By and large it was a very pleasant process whereby we travelled to Tauranga on a nice balmy late summer’s day to hear the submitters who were largely all in favour of this legislation.But I want to pick up on a point that our chair matua Tau Henare mentioned in saying that thesehapū are lucky. They are lucky because they are receiving back the lands that were taken from them but not everyhapū around the country has been so lucky. So there were many other Māori right around the motu who are very generous—very generous—to the Christian missionaries with their tribal estates. We are very familiar with the schools that have been set up around the country by the early missionaries such as Te Aute College and St Stephen’s School which is where ourkaitautoko—our sponsor—of this bill Te Ururoa is an old boy from. These schools were set up to be self-sufficient and hence there were large tracts of land given for these schools for pastoral agricultural and educational purposes.But other tribes have not been so lucky. I am thinking of a local instance here in the case ofWi Parata v The Bishop of Wellington where theNgāti Toa people had given up land and 500 acres of that land was set aside for the building of a school. None of that eventuated and it led to the low point—the absolute low point—of Treaty jurisprudence and judicial pronouncements in this country when Chief Justice Prendergast called the Treaty “a simple nullity”. Fortunately we have moved well on from those dark days but that is just an example that there is a long history. I would like to find out about other pieces of land that the Church Missionary Society may have in its possession and if it is willing to offer them back to otherhapū around the country then I would encourage it to do so. This is a great bill. I am very pleased to tautoko it and to acknowledge our rangatira here in the House today. I commend the bill to the House. Kia oratātou.