O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am here obviously to take a call on the Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill. It will be no surprise to the House that I oppose this bill for a number of reasons that I am very happy to elucidate.First and foremost I acknowledge the words that my colleague Nuk Korako shared—I think with quite an eloquence there—in raising the arguments particularly around how this bill does the opposite of what it intends to do. It does not actually bring people together; it does not facilitate healing; it actually encourages a separatist mind-set which is somewhat paradoxical coming from the Green Party which talks about human rights and communitarian principles and so forth.I think my fundamental problem with this bill is that it is an attempt to fight injustices of the past by passing a bill that looks towards the future. I doubt that anyone in this House who looks back to how Māori land was acquired in the past would say that it was a good thing. People would acknowledge quite rightly as would I that the Public Works Act was used to facilitate that—that is the Public Works Act of the past. In many ways this bill is just trying to—I would argue—tokenistically fight the battles of the past in a way that is incredibly unhelpful. We have a process in place through the Treaty settlements to address a number of the elements that have been raised here today including from the previous speaker Kelvin Davis. So this bill I remind the member Catherine Delahunty who put the bill forward strikes me as rather tokenistic and as trying to fight the past and relitigate the past.We do not have this issue at the moment. We have a Public Works Act that applies to all land regardless of one's ethnicity. If in theory roads were being built and gerrymandered if you will to acquire only Māori land then maybe there would be some credence in this discussion but that is not the case. The Public Works Act in modern-day New Zealand is there for roads for schools. It is not done willy-nilly; it is done very cautiously. In fact I have got a situation in my own electorate at the moment where there is a suggestion that the Public Works Act may be used to acquire a small piece of land. In fact the Green Party might like it because it is for a cycleway but it is actually raising some controversy and there is a lot of discussion. Funnily enough the discussion does not need to be about who owns the land per se on the basis of ethnicity; it is about whether the land is needed for the good of the community. I have been struck that speakers particularly those in support so far have not mentioned the community. That is the point of the Public Works Act in modern New Zealand: to facilitate the needs of the community.Fundamentally too what has been missed out—probably conveniently—is that actually if the Public Works Act is invoked at the moment and it does touch on Māori land then an application needs to be made to the Māori Land Court. Others who will have a much deeper insight into the Act may be able to speak to that but there is already a process in play here and that in and of itself is relatively important. So I cannot support this bill in any shape or form. I do not think it has a place in modern-day New Zealand I do not think it has a place in mature discussions and particularly—I want to stress again—I do not think it has a place in a mature discussion that allows us to confront the past and the injustices of the past. This in a sense retrenches some of those mind-sets or behaviours and I do not personally believe that is the way forward.I want to reiterate that we have a mature process at the moment—in fact we were trying to do it dare I say it come this Friday—where through Treaty settlements through robust discussion and debate we do look back at the falsities done under the name of the Crown and we do look at the falsities done under the Public Works Act. This bill in and of itself does not address that. I personally see it as particularly harmful ultimately to that dynamic. I think it is really important too to understand what the Act in the past was used for—that being the Public Works Act—and what it is used for now.In fact the previous speaker Kelvin Davis noted schools. Yes he noted that once land is acquired it is not handed back to people by and large unless it is part of a Treaty settlement—in fact I am thinking of a piece of land in my own electorate in Glen Innes that I am pretty sure was acquired under the Public Works Act. It was a school but under the Treaty settlement I think one of those rights of first refusal has been put in operation. So again I do not think that this is a mature approach to the Public Works Act and I just reiterate that relitigating the past by trying to adopt a piece of legislation for the future is not a useful way forward for this country. Thank you very much.