Mahuta NanaiaHon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): I just want to take a brief call on Part 1 of the Māori Purposes Bill and recognise that the Minister in introducing it was I guess trying to support the aspirations of the Wī Pere Trust to ensure that in moving from a trust to a board structure with body corporate status and limited liability it was actually taking away the accountability to the Minister and introducing more accountability to shareholders. So that is the first thing.Part 1 makes a provision to reduce the number of board members from seven to five. In the Māori Affairs Committee we discussed quite strongly these transitional aspects of confirming board members which we accepted. However when the bill was introduced it proposed that the quorum to consider matters needed to be only two members and we had a concern about that. We thought that the threshold of two was too low and that for the sake of assurance if we had the transition from seven to five board members to take the Wī Pere Trust through in this manner it would be better to lift the quorum to three instead of two. That was accepted across the select committee.We think it is an improvement. There was a high level of scepticism in any whānau trust or trust of that nature to leave such big decisions to a potential quorum of two people. In reality that may not have occurred but we needed to be sure within the context of the bill that we were addressing this issue in a way that listened to some of the concerns of those who presented at the select committee.I wanted to ask the Minister in terms of the matters that were raised by Meka Whaitiri and her proposed amendment to clause 9 in Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 205 should the next bill proceed to Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill whether the context of the SOP still remains valid. It is an important question to ask because when the Wī Pere bill was introduced at the select committee we were all of the understanding that it was preceding Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill and had some of the amendments that we might expect in Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill.In the event that issues of linear descent are considered—and again my colleague Meka Whaitiri has put the argument to the House that the best court with jurisdiction and knowledge and experience to consider those matters is the Māori Land Court—what happens if we accept that these types of issues can go to the High Court? The things that were I guess raised as a matter of course around taking issues to the High Court was cost in itself and the prohibitive nature of that. We believed that that court had limited knowledge and experience to consider these issues of whakapapa and the Māori Land Court was more qualified to do this and had the opportunity I think to show some understanding around these provisions within the broader context of linear whakapapa descent as it relates to Māori land interests.The only other thing that I would add at this stage is that the separation of corpus lands and other lands was a very important separation. During the submission process a lot of people who had connections to the Wī Pere Trust were concerned that there was a prospect that the trust might sell papakāinga land. Again it was not until we went through the select committee process when it was made very clear and provided for in the schedules that the corpus lands which are these lands that many shareholders had the most concern about were being separated out and could not be I guess impacted on in the same way as other lands that had been accumulated by the trust.With that understanding in mind I think it was helpful to go right through the select committee process to ensure that we were applying some rigour to the concerns of beneficiaries or descendants in this area and to give this process an assurance that we were trying to address the valid concerns that were raised.One other thing—and it would be helpful for the Minister if he could take a call—is to ask just what steps he went through to assure himself that the transitional tax provisions were robust enough to ensure that what was asked for by the Wī Pere Trust could be delivered on. I note that this is a whole new area and we received a bit of advice from officials but it would be good to get clarity from the Minister on that.