Henare Tau: New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHenare Tau: New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 07 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17590. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TAU HENARE (National): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I just want to read first of all from the Waitangi Tribunal reportTe Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: Report on the Tauranga Confiscation Claims of 2004. After considering the manner in which a Crown grant for the land including Ōtamataha was awarded to the Church Missionary Society in 1852 it concluded at page 218: “we find that Godfrey failed to ascertain andacknowledge the conditional nature of the transactions under … customary law and that he wrongly concluded that the [Church Missionary Society] had fully and fairly purchased the whole of the area. The Crown in accepting Godfrey’s recommendation and finally awarding the [Church Missionary Society] a Crown grant for the whole area was therefore in breach of the Treaty principle of active protection.”You see I suppose a little-known fact is that the Treaty was there to protect and this did not do it. So what you see in the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill and what you see in a whole raft of Treaty settlement bills stems from the lack of protection that came out of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. I know that there will be people in our country who say: “Well you were conquered. You should just move on.” It is very difficult to use that principle when we are a law-abiding country and as we move together down the path of nationhood.The bill transfers land in Tauranga and other property from the New Zealand Mission Trust to the Ōtamataha Trust so that it can be used for the beneficiaries of the Ōtamataha Trust: thehapū of Ngāti TapuNgāiTamarāwaho andNgāiTūkairangi. The return of the land is highly significant to thehapū. It re-establishes their connection to the water. It provides income to thehapū to finance other activities including allowinghapū to participate in the downtown economy of Tauranga. It comes with the 150th anniversary of the Battle of GatePā which was only last week.The Ōtamataha Trust has been established by thehapū of the Ngāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho to own and manage land and other property acquired through the historical common interests of thosehapū in Tauranga. It is not a charitable trust. The Church Missionary Society was established in Tauranga in 1835. In 1838 the society bought two blocks from tangata whenua—and when I say “bought” I mean “brought”. In its view it purchased it on the site where the city of Tauranga is today. The transaction has never been accepted by tangata whenua as a sale of the land to the Church Missionary Society so you can now understand why since 1838 there has been an issue there has been some raruraru and there has been some significant hard feeling by the aforementioned iwi andhapū.In 1867 the Crown again “acquired” by the gift of the Church Missionary Society four-fifths of the land that had been vested in the society by Crown grant in 1852 and military settlers were settled on it. This land was surrounded by confiscated Māori land which was also settled.I want to just deviate for a minute and talk about back in the day when soldiers were asked to come from England Ireland New South Wales—from wherever. One of my ancestors on my full-bloodedPākehā side was a guy called Andrew McMahon. He came out and the price of his coming out—I would not call him a mercenary; I would say he was just looking for a job like most of us or some of us will be after 20 September. They called him afencible. He had a little plot. If anybody knows Onehunga just right where the Onehunga fire station is is where Andrew McMahon was given a piece of land to come and secure Auckland against those rebels from the other half of my ancestry. Basically that is what we are talking about here and what happened in Tauranga is similar to what happened to one of my ancestors.In 1896 the remaining land including Ōtamataha was transferred from the Church Missionary Society to the New Zealand Mission Trust Board which “held the assets of the Board on trusts for the spiritual benefit and spiritual instruction of Maori people in the North Island of New Zealand or failing that the evangelisation of the heathen races in any part of the world:”. Those are not my words; those are the words that were used back in the day and I do not think that local Māori needed any schooling in spiritual instruction or even in the evangelisation.Moving forward in 1996 New Zealand Mission Trust Board handed the control of the land back to the new trustees appointed by Ngāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho. This was done in recognition of the manner and process by which the land was originally acquired from tangata whenua. The land involved in this was the 7863 square metre waterfront site where the Trinity Wharf hotel now sits. The trust collects the ground rent from that hotel.Though the new trustees had control of the land they were still obliged to use the money in investments derived from the land “for the spiritual benefit and spiritual instruction of Maori people in the North Island of New Zealand or failing that the evangelisation of heathen races in any part of the world:”. Up until 1996 the money was used for the purpose of the spiritual instruction of Māori in the North Island and if that did not happen it was used to evangelise throughout the world. So it has some significance—albeit in terms of its financial commitment most probably very small—in the evangelisation of heathen races around the world. It has always been the intention of the two trusts that it be changed so that the twohapū could benefit from it. However the conditions cannot be changed in any way other than through new legislation—hence our speaking to this bill here today.A similar issue arose in 1986 with money and investments derived from land held by the New Zealand Mission Trust in Port Waikato that was to be transferred to NgātiKārewa and NgātiTāhinga. The result was the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Port Waikato Maraetai) Empowering Act 1986.The Māori Affairs Committee I think did a wonderful job in listening to the concerns of the folk from Tauranga and it is with great pleasure that we see another part of New Zealand’s unfortunate history. It is history and it did happen but we are seeing the righting of those wrongs. We are seeing the righting of those indiscretions for the rest of the nation and in particular for threehapū in the Tauranga region so that they can move forward and certainly not at the expense of those people who hold the lease who are the people running the hotel.Phil Twyford: Bring back Tau—much better than Alfred.Hon TAU HENARE: I do commend this bill to the House. You caught me on the hop there brother. I thought you were going to be nasty to me. But why should I think that? The Māori Affairs Committee has done a great job and I commend my colleague from Waiariki Te Ururoa Flavell.