Davis KelvinKELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): Rangitāne tēnā rā koutou. Tēnā rā koutou nau mai haere mai ki roto i tēnei Te Whare o Te Motu ā hari koa ana mātou ki te kite i a koutou kei raro i te tuanui nā reira nau mai haere mai whakatau mai.E Mānahi tēnei hau mihi atu ana ki a koe. Mahara ake ahau te tāima i kawe atu ahau i tōku kaihana a Nathan Davis ki waenganui i a koutou hei pirihimana mō te tāone o Dannevirke. Ā horekau i te mōhio mehemea he pirihimana pai koretake rānei mehemea kei te ora tonu kua kaingatia e koutou rānei ēngari kua pai taku taenga atu ki waenganui i a koutou nā reira tēnā rā koe e Mānahi.[Greetings to you Rangitāne. Acknowledgments to you collectively welcome come hither into this House of the nation; we are pleased to see you under the roof so welcome come hither pay homage.Mānahi this is a privilege for me to extend a welcome to you. I recall the time when I brought a cousin of mine Nathan Davis to be a policeman amongst you for the town of Dannevirke. I am unsure whether he was a good or useless one or whether he is still alive or you ate him but it was good to be among you therefore I acknowledge you Mānahi.]I would just like to acknowledge Rangitāne for being here today in the House of the people and I would just like to acknowledge Mānahi Paewai up there. When I got booted out of Parliament in 2011 and had a bit of spare time on my hands my cousin Nathan Davis was appointed the police sergeant I think in Dannevirke. So I with others of the whānau went down and had the pleasure of being hosted by Rangitāne in Dannevirke and as I said I would not know whether he was a good cop or a bad cop or whether he is still alive or whether they ate him! But so be it; he is your guys' problem now. I just want to go over a bit of the history of the claim. I see that in 2004 things really started around the Waitangi Tribunal. There was a series of meetings and a report was written. In March of 2004 this process kicked off and now we are in 2016. We have to acknowledge the length of time that it took to get to this stage now when Rangitāne are almost at the finishing line. I would just like you all to consider this—and I appreciate that this process has probably worn you out and there are people who have started the journey and are not here to finish the journey. But just in those evenings when you are exhausted and tired and thinking We're almost at the end of the process." just to lift your spirits all you need to say is "Thank God we're not Ngāpuhi." Our journey has been just as long and difficult and fraught—Grant Robertson: And you're not even at the start line.KELVIN DAVIS: And we are not even at the starting line. We are about 2 inches from the starting line. We have been running the race for 8 years and we are just 2 inches from the starting line but we could be putting the car into reverse and going backwards if things do not work out in the next 24 hours or so Minister Finlayson. What a different place New Zealand was in 2004. Helen Clark was the Prime Minister the English were the Rugby World Cup champions and I had dark hair.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): And you were skinny.KELVIN DAVIS: And I was skinny. Ha ha! I thought the Assistant Speaker was not allowed to be brought into the debate but he could not help himself there. Everyone has traversed—I will not say transgressed as Nathan Guy said yesterday—the issues around Rangitāne's settlement. Reading through the bill what strikes me again—and it strikes me in just about every bill—is the significant land loss that occurred. When I say "significant" it was the Mangatainoka Block in particular not because of the landmark there that I see when I drive past Mangatainoka but because at Mangatainoka there were significant land holdings—over 60000 acres. "[T]he Crown applied pressure to purchase this land even though recognised leaders of Rangitāne opposed sale. By 1890"—sorry between 1877 and 1890—"the Crown had acquired over 85 percent of the Mangatainoka Block. Today less than 1 percent of the original block remains in Māori land title." We should never ever underestimate the impact—the cultural impact the economic impact the impact in just about every facet of the people's lives—that landlessness has had on them. It has happened all around New Zealand. Again that is why these settlements are so significant and why they are so important. We need to start turning that around and reversing those impacts. Again any quantum is just going to be a fraction of what is owed. It is going to be only a fraction of what is lost and we need to keep that in the forefront of our minds because again there will be people out there in the country saying: "Oh look at what all these Māoris are getting. They've got their hands out and they're going to get all these millions of dollars and it's all a waste of money." We have got to stop focusing on what has been returned; we have got to look at how much was lost and keep that in perspective. It is so important. Rangitāne back in the day around the mid-1840s "enjoyed considerable benefits from the annual rents and trade with the new arrivals who leased large areas of land. The Crown applied pressure on Wairarapa Māori to end the leases and instead sell their land …". So here they were: they had leases they were leasing out the land they were basically being businessmen and entrepreneurs and doing what people do in a strong economy but through the pressure of the Crown that all went. Between 1853 and 1854 "the Crown acquired about 1.5 million acres of land". Earlier today I was talking about how much land Taranaki lost—1.2 million acres. I said in the earlier debate that in 1.2 million acres if we just divided that into quarter acre sections there would be enough quarter acre sections to have a house for every man woman and child in New Zealand. Yet Rangitāne lost more than Taranaki—1.5 million acres. So just today we have been talking about close to 3 million acres of Māori land that has been confiscated or removed from Māori possession. Imagine what Māori could be achieving if we had those 3 million acres now in our possession. That 1.5 million acres was 60 percent of all Rangitāne land. We need to let these figures sink in and just realise and appreciate the enormity of the loss for Rangitāne. I would again just like to acknowledge the people in the gallery and all the other tribes that have been here today. The hope is that all of these bills move through the House quickly so that the people can get on with actually creating the success that we should have had over the last 170-odd years. Might I say that I will get down on my hands and knees tonight and pray that my whanaunga up in Ngāpuhi do the right thing follow the lead that the tribes have given today and just get on with the process of settling their claims and being successful Māori taking care and taking charge of our own destinies. Nā reira tātou mā huri rauna i Te Whare tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[And so to all of us throughout the House accolades and congratulations to you collectively and to us all.]"