Finlayson Christopher: Te Urewera-Tūhoe Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFinlayson Christopher: Te Urewera-Tūhoe Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18693. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations):I will say just a few things about the overall structure of the Te Urewera-Tūhoe Bill and then talk in particular about the longer Supplementary Order Paper because it raises a number of matters that the Māori Affairs Committee was concerned about. The first point is that this bill will divide into two bills: Parts 1 to 4 will be the settlement bill and Parts 5 to 7 will be the bill dealing with the governance and the status of Te Urewera. I will say something about Supplementary Order Paper 468 because that deals with two matters and the first matter needs to be brought to the attention of the Committee and then I want to say something about a recent High Court decision.The first is the issue of the central North Island forest cultural redress sites and two have been added to the list of those sites—Waitehouhī and Korokoro o Te Huatahi. Under the central North Island deed the Crown has the right to vest cultural redress sites in central North Island iwi and in this case Ngāi Tūhoe have followed the same process as Ngāti Manawa Ngāti Whare and Te Arawa in seeking central North Island cultural redress sites as part of their Treaty settlements. The sites that Tūhoe seeks are not in the same location as the sites in which Ngāti Manawa have interests and rentals from the sites—as I understand it—are going to be used by Ngāi Tūhoe to benefit Kaingaroa village communities. The vesting of the sites in Ngāi Tūhoe is obviously without prejudice to the central North Island mana whenua allocation work which is a work in progress as we speak.The second thing I want to say is just something very briefly about a recent decision of Justice Williams in the High Court and that concerned an application for a judicial review of a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal and it involved Ngāti Ruapani and Te Ūpokorehe. The area of interest described in the Ngāi Tūhoe deed of settlement does not represent an area of exclusive interest or tribal boundaries. The deed is very clear that other iwi and hapū may have interests in those areas. Ngāi Tūhoe has customary interests at Ōhiwa Harbour and because of this—quite a long time ago now—in terms of the Maori Fisheries Act 2004 they were allocated fishing quota under that legislation. The land to be transferred to the new Te Urewera identity is currently part of the Te Urewera National Park. It will be owned by Te Urewera and not Tūhoe. The tribunal declined the Te Ūpokorehe applications for an urgent hearing on the basis that they would not suffer prejudice from the Tūhoe settlement and the High Court—Justice Williams—recently found that although there was a technical jurisdictional error in the tribunal decision not to grant an urgent hearing of Ngāti Ruapani and the Te Ūpokorehe claims the tribunal was correct in finding there was no substantive prejudice caused by the Crown settlement with Ngāi Tūhoe.The point I want to emphasise is that there is nothing in this settlement that will prevent the Crown from engaging with Whakatōhea or its hapū or Ngāti Ruapani when they get a mandate and achieving a just and a durable settlement of their historic claims. To suggest otherwise is wrong. There are areas of interest and the Crown is able to achieve just and durable settlements in the circumstances that I have described. So they are the key points that I wanted to raise this morning—as I say firstly arising out of the Supplementary Order Paper and secondly because of the recent decision of the High Court I thought it appropriate to bring to the attention of the Committee the decision and its effect.