Coffey TāmatiTĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to stand here as the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee to give the second reading of this the Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua Claims Settlement Bill. Just for context we in Te Arawa have a very close relationship to the people of Ngāti Kahungunu; it's a very close one. I'm a descendant of Tūhourangi and Tūhourangi had a relationship and children with Rongomaipapa. Rongomaipapa was the daughter of both Kahungunu and Rongomaiwahine. Our connection goes back a long way. I just wanted to point that out because it's really significant.The whole way through—that we were listening to submissions—we heard time and time again about the history of the people of Kahungunu specifically from that area. The thing is in that area there are no big walls you see. So there was a free flow of people of family of whakapapa between the area that is firmly on the eastern coast side and the area just over the hills. What we heard time and time again was that interaction that had gone on between both the people that lived in Tamaki nui-ā-Rua and the people that lived over on the Kahungunu side—there were a lot of people that came through and they talked about how they were both: you can be Rangitāne over on that side but you can also be Kahungunu on that side too. It just depends on which part of the whakapapa you want to pull that ancestry from. But we heard time after time in submissions that people were very concerned about this.I've got to be honest: a large part of the claims settlement bill is actually pretty non-controversial. There's a lot of it that all parties agreed to but there were a few contentious points and the previous speaker Joseph Mooney noted some of those. The Minister the Hon Andrew Little noted those as well. But it's very hard for us as a select committee to think that we are some kind of adjudication panel on what whakapapa looks like because we're not. And in the submissions hearings that came through time and time again where we had to say to whānau that were talking to us as though we were going to determine whose whakapapa was right and who was more senior and who wasn't—we had to reiterate time and time again that that's not our job and it should never be the job of this House to be able to decide what whakapapa it looks like. But we have to reach a resolution because we have to honour the good faith in which the people of in this case the Ngāti Kahungunu settlement trust entered into this and it's been going for a long time.So we had to go way back into the history to understand the history first and foremost. Then we had to understand the hearings process that they went through; the reports that were given as part of that; the Waitangi Tribunal decisions that were made as part of that; the Supreme Court litigation which overlays all of that. It makes it a really confusing story but we are charged with the job of moving this bill through the House to be able to give closure to some of the wrongs of the Crown from the past. And it's really important for everybody in this House to note that as we talk about this settlement—and we're coming up to the third reading—it was actually the actions of the Crown that left the people of Ngāti Kahungunu between a rock and a hard place. Essentially they were uprooted and told by the Crown they had to move: Sorry you fellas you have to move; all of you guys all over here you're all going to have to move. I'm going to have to send you 15000 kilometres up the road. We've got some land for you up there." And that's exactly what happened. So the people left their hau kāinga they left their whenua and they had to go all the way—well a part of the tribe were relocated re-dispatched into another tribal area Ngāti Raukawa. So you can imagine their reaction when Ngāti Raukawa said "Oh well what are you guys doing here?" And there's Ngāti Kahungunu saying "Oh well actually we got given land here by the Crown. We're here now." You can understand that all of this complexity came through in the submissions. All of the history that the Crown has bestowed on the people of Kahungunu came through in those submissions hearings. There was re-traumatisation in that there was pain there was heartache there was whānau fighting whānau through that process too. And unfortunately that's what the Treaty settlement process does. But we have to have good faith in this and I believe that what we've done as a Māori Affairs Committee is to the best of our ability.We took the opportunity to invite the Minister back into the committee so we could ask some questions ourselves. We made it a closed session so that there wasn't any politicking. There was no media involved. It was just an opportunity for us to sit there and ask questions of the Minister about this interesting position that we found ourselves in where essentially the parliamentary process has been enacted whilst there's still a Supreme Court decision waiting to happen. So we had to ask that question: why are we doing this? Why are we not waiting? And the Minister came and he fronted up and we all got a really good chance to be able to ask questions. The decision was that he said we have to push forward on this. There's a lot at stake. There's a lot of people that have put a lot of time into this. And of course we want to get it right but in his words—and I noted them down when he actually said them himself—he said "There are differing and irreconcilable positions that sometimes get made." And that's the position that we found ourselves in.I believe that we're doing the right thing here. I believe that there will still be parties that will be disaffected by this and they won't be happy with the decision to proceed past the second reading on this. There had been many submitters that day submitting on the fact that they wanted to see a couple of these big areas taken out of the settlement bill. We acknowledge them; we acknowledge all of the stories that came through. And they may still choose to take action off the back of this decision. But it's our job as select committee members to take a step back and actually to look at the whole picture and to try and—as the Minister said—balance it all up. What we know is that it was the Crown's wrong. When we come to the third reading and when we finally travel to Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua we'll be able to stand there and read the apology in front of their people to try and put to bed some of the hurt and pain that we heard through the various submissions. But that's the goal: that we can actually address the wrong—not forget it not forget it at all—and try and let Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua get on with their lives.There was one submitter who fronted up and he brought photos with him and it's very hard when you get the photos because the photos represent people that have passed on. That's exactly what the message was that he wanted to send to us. He said "This has been going on for far too long." He said "This is my family here. This is my parents. This is my sibling." He said "They all started this journey and they're all dead. And I'm here to tell you that this needs to move on because we can't wait any more. We can't wait any more. I don't want to be another photo on this table while we go through a court process and another parliamentary process to do that." He said "Get a move on. We're none of us getting any younger. We've got the heart to want to do the right thing by our people. Give us the faith to be able to do this and then let us make decisions on what it is that we see as being rongoā for the iwi after the travesties unfortunately of the Crown in days gone by."So the day that we had finished the select committee hearings I walked away and that was the one submission that stuck in my head—the fact that there were all of these kuia kaumātua uncles aunties that had all passed on. And I looked at that room and I thought if we take any more time who's next? Who's next for the table you know? And unfortunately it's taken too long already. So to that submitter I want to say that I heard and our committee—we've decided that it is the right thing to move forward on this and acknowledge that not everybody is going to be happy but it is the right thing to do. And I look forward to the third reading when we have our whānau from Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua here in the gallery. Third readings are always the end of this parliamentary process for us but for them it's the start of their journey. It's the start of their journey to be able to receive the cultural redress receive the financial redress start organising themselves start setting some goals into the future about what they want to do with that money start making some real hard decisions about what they consider to be the fix—the fix to the problem that the Crown started many many years ago. I look forward to that time in the third reading. For the second reading though I do commend this to the House. Kia ora."