Delahunty Catherine: Ngāti Hauā Claims Settlement Bill Ngāti Koroki Kahukura Claims Settlement Bill — First ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Ngāti Hauā Claims Settlement Bill Ngāti Koroki Kahukura Claims Settlement Bill — First Readings[Sitting date: 22 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14160. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare.He mihi nui ki tetangata whenua o Waikato Ngāti Koroki Kahukura meNgāti Hauā. It is very humbling to speak here today. I am a neighbour from Hauraki. I want to acknowledge Ngāti Hauā in particular because I believe it is time for Pākehā to learn to be good neighbours and to acknowledge our neighbours in the truer sense throughTe Tiriti o Waitangi. So we are honoured to speak on this bill the Ngāti Hauā Claims Settlement Bill today. I would also like to acknowledge the Minister for Treatyof Waitangi Negotiations and the negotiators for what has obviously been a remarkable negotiation with great efficiency and that is something thatNgāti Hauā and the Government can be proud of.TheNgātiHauā settlement is an important issue for this Waikato iwi who experienced a massive raupatu. The proud descendents of Wīremu Tamihana Tarapīpipi and others have done their very best to gain a better future for their mokopuna. Again the settlement has some positive cultural and commercial elements but we have to stop and weep for what these people have lost since their tūpuna experienced the full weight of a colonial juggernaut that was intent on the fertile lands of their rohe and their maunga fromTe Aroha to Maungakawa.Te Aroha whereNgāti Hauā as well as Ngāti Rāhiri Tumutumu and Ngāti Hako have fought long and hard for the clean-up of a 20th century destruction by the Tūī Mine toxic site which has finally occurred—I am one of those working to see that this never happens again on that sacred mountain—through to the dairy lands and to the very interesting issues in the Ngāti Hauā Claims Settlement Bill such as the aerodrome issue which just shows the huge need for redress and the undeniable call for justice not just because of the 1860s but because of the 1950s and beyond.I would like to return to the long shadow of a particular incident—the burning of unarmed women and children atRangiaowhia. That caused angry anguish for so many includingWīremu Tamihana the Kīngitanga and his people who lost faith in the Crown and in the messages of the supposed Christians whose missionaries preached a wonderful message of peace but whose soldiers killed the innocent in a place of sanctuary. It does not get much worse than that.It is my belief that on the walls of this Chamber we recognise many wars but we will have finally matured as a nation when we recognise the wars that took place in our own country and the people who died on both sides of those conflicts with honour and respect—to our own history as well as our global responsibilities.If we look at the specific issues covered in the bill and the redress they are not related to the raupatu issues covered in the other Waikato settlement bills which include Ngāti Hauā and include where Ngāti Hauā’s loss has been acknowledged. They address non-raupatu claims and there are some very creative and good ideas in here. The cultural redress is covered by a cultural protocol that binds other legal instruments such as the Resource Management Act and the Historic Places Act and requires serious consideration of the Environment Court. I hope these things come to fruition.There are eight sites that are also being vested in various ways including a number of reserves notablyMaungakawa which is such an important maunga and also the Pukemako site A and Pukemako site B historic reserves which are revoked and vested in joint trustees. So you see the coming together of the communities to govern these three management plans.Obviously there are many significant issues including the issues around the Māori Parliament Te Kauhanganui and the recognition of the extraordinary tupunaWīremu Tamihana. But the story I want to focus on a little bit is theWaharoa aerodrome. This is a classic story of land taken for an aerodrome in the 1940s during the War and then the complete failure to return it after the War. Instead the Public Works Act was used again as a legal instrument of oppression to legitimise the confiscation. This land is now to be managed by a permanent committee of trustees with very specific powers and with limits on their powers. I hope that this committee will result in a genuine and lasting benefit to the hapū of Raungaiti Marae because I am very aware of the losses that continue to this day for those communities.Again I would say that the bill was negotiated very efficiently and I look forward to its future progress. The Crown has apologised for breaches of Treaty rights from the1860s and the 1950s and it has acknowledged the direct and the devious means employed to strip these hapū of their fertile lands sacred rivers and maunga. As we heard from our previous speaker thriving communities with a strong economic base were totally destroyed and have not recovered but the history and the reality of theirtūpuna the gift that has been given is still alive beneath the overlay of dairy farms.NgātiHauā have played an extraordinary role in the Kīngitanga through their tūpuna and themselves and they have negotiated positive redress. Much of this is still unfixable in the full settlement goal of the land itself—land that is in the private hands of people who honestly do not demonstrate ever in my experience the knowledge of its incredible sad transformation from Ngāti Hauā and their rangatiratanga via various means. It is now alienated beyond reach but we are proud to support this bill.