Flavell Te UruroaHon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Minister for Māori Development): Tēnā koe Mr Chair kia ora tātau katoa ā ka mihi rā mō ngā kōrero.[Thank you Mr Chair; greetings to us all. I do acknowledge the contributions indeed.]Can I just make a couple of opening points and then move towards addressing concerns raised by members. Firstly can I say that so many of the issues that have been raised have actually been addressed by way of the select committee report which was delivered to this House. In fact as the Minister responsible I have actually addressed pretty much most of those concerns because of the fact that I agreed with and took up all the amendments from the select committee. So that is the first point which addresses many of the concerns that members are raising.The second issue I raise is that much of this bill retains the general principles of the original legislation and therefore members are often going back and forward arguing about the original legislation etc. Actually the bill retains in some ways many of the principles that are set out in the former Act.The third point I would raise is this. There are a number of clauses and some of the ones that are mentioned this afternoon are actually set against current legislation—we are lining this legislation up with current legislation or adopting principles that are already currently in legislation anyway for equivalent actions in other parts of law. People need to know that.Fourthly it pretty much helps if members read the legislation because if I take the question about owner" and the issue raised by Kelvin Davis the issue of an owner is clearly defined in clause 7 of the bill. So rather than raise that actually have a look at the bill because it is pretty much there.If I can go to Meka Whaitiri's concerns around clause 206 of the legislation and just clarify for her that a governance body can have subsidiaries to hold investment land but not Māori freehold land. The examples of that are Mangatū and Whakatū which have been doing that sort of proposal for years.The member also talked about clause 207 and asked some questions about that particular piece of legislation. I can tell the member that this is carrying forward existing legislation in section 137 of the 1993 Act. It says that you can sell Māori land only if buying replacement land and it does not apply to investment land i.e. non-Māori land. So again that is in the current legislation. If I take and address the issues that Marama Davidson spoke to in particular around Meka Whaitiri's amendment I can say that talking about governance bodies and withholding requested information—I can tell the Committee that there is already a clear regime actually for this handling of information requests in the bill based on equivalent regimes for local authorities. Again there are equivalent regimes in other parts of law so there is no reason actually to support that legislation and for my part we will not be.Marama Davidson talked about clause 210 and in particular subclause 3(a). I can tell the member that in clause 210(3)(a) for purposes of clarity a land management plan needs owner agreement. The equivalent is in section 137 of the current Act. It does not require owner agreement. Governance bodies do not have to have a land management plan unless they intend to sell Māori land to buy other land or improve other land or partition or amalgamate Māori freehold land for purposes of clarity to the member. This is an existing regime again in the 1993 Act but has stricter requirements around it.So I hope that addresses some of the concerns raised by the member Marama Davidson. It certainly gives the position in respect of Meka Whaitiri's amendment and addresses some of the other concerns raised this evening."