Clendon David: Whanganui Iwi (Wanganui (Kaitoke) Prison and Northern Part of Wanganui Forest) On-account Settlement Bill — Second Reading 
Clendon David: Whanganui Iwi (Wanganui (Kaitoke) Prison and Northern Part of Wanganui Forest) On-account Settlement Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13740] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a short call on the Whanganui Iwi (Wanganui (Kaitoke) Prison and Northern Part of Wanganui Forest) On-account Settlement Bill. I will begin by acknowledging the Green Party’s respect for the work and the endurance of the hapu the whanau and the people of Whanganui who have brought this matter to this stage and who are bringing closer a time when they will have returned to them what is rightfully theirs. 
Clearly there is general satisfaction with the shape and form of this bill; the most that the Maori Affairs Committee could do was to insert the “h” into “Whanganui” which was a critical matter. It was an important matter and the previous speaker the Hon Parekura Horomia very eloquently traversed the significance of that “h”. I commend the continuing embedding of it into this legislation. 
The Greens have supported this bill along the way. We will continue to do that and are very pleased to continue to do that. We will support all settlement bills that seek to right a wrong to return mana and to acknowledge mana and to return property and resources to people who should have them. 
This is an interesting bill to the extent that it is on account and I reflect on the comments made by the co-leader of the Maori Party Tariana Turia in the first reading when she noted: “Addressing overlapping interests is one of the key challenges in Treaty settlements. It is a difficult and a complex area and there are no easy answers.” She went on to note: “The on-account settlement with Whanganui iwi demonstrates the challenge that the Crown confronts in trying to find flexible and creative solutions to these very difficult issues of overlapping interests.” This legislation is a good example of an approach that does not simply dictate that one interest will take precedence over another but seeks to accommodate and balance out those interests and to allow internal Maori debate to finesse some of the cruder shall I say disposition of resources that this bill entails. 
As I noted the symbolic acknowledgment of mana and kaitiakitanga is important but so too is the return of resources of material benefit. The return of land and resources provides the necessity and the basis for the re-establishment of an indigenous economy in a very new and different circumstance but Maori in Whanganui will demonstrate and prove as has happened elsewhere that Maori are capable of rising to the challenge of recreating a new economy by taking the best of the old ways and incorporating opportunities and models as a step towards regaining self-sufficiency which was taken away along with their land along with their livelihoods and along with lives lost in the confiscation of that land. 
We tend to think of the economy and economics in a much too narrow basis somehow imagining that they are modern inventions. But every people at every time have had an economy and the pre-contact Maori economy was clearly one that was land-based. It operated within a well-understood and managed set of principles including a rights-based approach. There was the notion of user rights rather than ownership which came in later as a Western model and a Western term. The pre-contact Maori economy was collectivist. It was based on mutual management and control rights and the occupation and use of land and other resources. It was also based on negotiated agreements between hapu and whanau that were worked out when it was deemed to provide mutual benefit to do so or when it fulfilled an obligation or a commitment between two groups of people. 
In the early period of colonisation Maori proved themselves to be very successful in adapting to the new realities of the cash-and-exchange economy imported from Europe. In fact the rapid emergence of Maori as successful producers and traders added to the pressure to alienate Maori from their lands as they successfully competed against Pakeha interests. Maori developed both a willingness and some flair for adapting and adopting Pakeha technologies expectations and needs and meeting those needs for themselves and for the new arrivals. 
Treaty settlements which are all too slowly rolling out are very much about economic opportunities but it is also worth reflecting for a moment on the broader notion of the Treaty relationship and how it is evolving in 21st century Aotearoa. I recall some years ago a Pakeha legal academic commenting with he acknowledged 20/20 hindsight that perhaps we jumped too quickly in the mid-1970s and 1980s into the settlement process before we had negotiated a national dialogue about the place the mana and the status of the Treaty. Perhaps we jumped a little too quickly into constructing mechanisms for settling claims on a case by case by case basis rather than establishing a national consensus about the rightness of the Treaty and the settlement process. It is simply now a matter for reflection and consideration but this evening in the dinner break the Greens discussed the way forward in establishing the Treaty and its role in modern New Zealand society. We clearly do not have the answers—we do not pretend to have the answers—but we have a commitment to doing what we can to see the potential of the Treaty relationship fulfilled developed and evolving over time to enhance and make possible a genuine release from the grievances of the past so that we can move on to a much more positive and productive future. Kia ora koutou.