Mahuta Nanaia: Te Tau Ihu Claims Settlement Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMahuta Nanaia: Te Tau Ihu Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16145. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): It gives me great pleasure to be able to contribute to the second reading of the Te Tau Ihu Claims Settlement Bill. I recognise the huge amount of effort and commitment that has gone in to reaching this point by all those negotiators and advisers and acknowledge all those people who have participated throughout the whole process to ensure the result we have here today which is a cluster of settlements tasked with taking the people in Te Tau Ihu forward. I want to also make an acknowledgment of my friend and colleague Maryan Street who was at those same Waitangi Day celebrations at the marae that the Hon Nick Smith referred to. One of the things that she said to me in our conversation was that it was a brilliant day because everybody from the whole community came on to the marae and had a place where they all felt they belonged. Is that not a great testament to the progress that Treaty settlements can make for all New Zealanders in terms of shaping our national identity within communities throughout New Zealand? That is what Te Tau Ihu and the group of iwi in those claims groups are able to achieve.When we went down to Nelson to listen to the submissions we understood how acute some of the local issues are for those iwi. We understood that despite some of the tense points of negotiation and some of the internal factions that occurred it had taken place over a long period of time. So anyone listening to this debate today should have the confidence that this has not happened all of a sudden. It has happened because therehas been a lot of work and effort put in to reconciling issues within each respective iwi and trying to progress a settlement for the greater interests of those iwi members.One of the things that always vexed the Māori Affairs Committee is the issue of mandate so I thought it would be useful to actually go through the ratification of the deeds of settlement of each respective iwi involved in the Te Tau Ihu Claims Settlement Bill so that people can see that the rate of participation and the level of confirmation of the deeds of settlement were quite healthy. We should be encouraged by that. Ngāti Tama ki Te Tau Ihu had a 40 percent participation rate in the ratification of its deed of settlement and an approval rate of 100 percent. It had very few invalid votes. Ngāti Rārua had a 28 percent participation rate and a 99 percent approval rate. Ngāti Kōata had a 25 percent participation rate of its tribal members in ratifying its deed and a 98 percent approval rate. Te Ātiawa o Te Waka-a-Māui had a 28 percent participation rate and a 92 percent approval rate. Ngati Toa Rangatira had a 26.2 percent participation rate and a 98.7 percent approval rate. Rangitāne o Wairau had a 34 percent participation rate and a 98 percent approval rate. Ngāti Kuia had a 34 percent participation rate and a 99 percent approval rate. Ngāti Apa ki Te Rā Tō had a 32 percent participation rate and a 99 percent approval rate.I guess in percentage rates people might think 20 percent or 30 percent is not much but when you look at the scale of Treaty settlements across the board they range from something like 18 percent to around about 52 percent at the highest level from what I can observe. So we can see that the Te Tau Ihu Claims Settlement Bill is somewhere in the middle. We should have a level of confidence that a lot of work has gone in to ensuring that the broadest possible net of securing greater participation in the decision-making process has happened. Mandate is a key issue in the Treaty settlement discussion and it certainly became a point of criticism I guess for those people who did not support it.But we must in fairness go to some of the submissions that were put before the select committee. I want to ask the House to look at the key amendment that the select committee raised. That was in relation to the Puketāwai site. One of the things that tasked our minds around getting that particular amendment was actually agreeing with submitters that they should not be inheriting a liability. So we have amended the bill to insert new clause 277A to ensure that the liability on that landfill site does not transfer to the new owners. Why that is so important is because previously it was to my understanding in the hands of local government and it is not fully disclosed what level of contamination exists on that site. We sought advice from officials. The Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations certainly heard the plea of the select committee to reconsider this particular aspect and thankfully we were able to achieve an amendment to make it very clear that no liability was to transfer from this closed landfill site.I think that is a gain in terms of the value of the select committee and what it contributes to the process. It is also a gain because the iwi are much more confident in terms of taking back land where there may be an undisclosed liability that they will not have to pay for the cost of clean-up. In terms of the Woodbourne airbase we did as my colleague Rino Tirikatene has said get a fair amount of concern around the return of this land and it not going back to private landowners. However we recommended no change to the bill because it is an airbase site it is a defence site and it will continue to be that. There was no indication when the select committee pursued the interests of people who objected to the clause that the site would no longer be used for a defence site so we thought that actually the provision in the bill can stay the same.In terms of Wakatū this is another area where the Wakatū Incorporation put its interests before the select committee and said that some of the private shareholdinginterests underneath its purview would be significantly affected by terms in the bill. Our mind was tasked around two particular things—firstly the cluster of Te Tau Ihu claimants actually did originally include members who were advocating for Wakatū and some way through the process if I recollect the discussion those interests had fallen away from continuing with the negotiation. The second key point was that this is an iwi settlement; this is not a private shareholder settlement. The fundamental difference is that some of the shareholders of Wakatū are not members of the iwi who will benefit from the settlement. So we kind of teased that out and got ourselves sufficiently comfortable with the fact that the clause protecting or preserving the legal interests that currently exists in the bill covers off all the concerns that Wakatū were concerned about.But can I put on the record because we wanted to make absolutely sure that we sought advice from both the Office of Treaty Settlements and the Crown Law Office in terms of that significant submission. I will read the advice that we got back from the Crown Law Office for the benefit of those who are listening and are interested in the debate. It says: “The current orthodox position is that the Treaty of Waitangi does not give rise to directly enforceable legal obligations without specific statutory authority. In the Wakatū proceedings the claims are based around the same factual grievances that are the subject of the settlement but primarily raise private law claims based in trust and fiduciary duty not based on the Treaty breach. The ability to prosecute certain private law claims raised in Wakatū may be impacted by extinguishment provisions of the Tainui Taranaki Treaty settlements and their extinguishment clause unless expressly preserved. Crown Law advice was sought on this matter and ultimately it was considered … improper to obstruct the final determination in the appellate courts. Legislative drafting was developed to specifically apply a preservation clause only to the current litigation and specific parties to that litigation.”I have read that quote for the benefit of Tainui Taranaki so that they are clear in terms of the way in which the select committee approached this issue and reconfirmed that the bill should not be changed in this regard. This is the second reading. Hopefully in the third reading of the bill every member of the Māori Affairs Committee who I know would want to speak on this will be able to make a contribution and acknowledge the hard work and effort of all those negotiators of Te Tau Ihi who have brought this bill to the House to be considered. Kia ora.