Korako Nuk: Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill — In Committee00DBHOH_BILL12851.1Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKorako Nuk: Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill — In Committee00DBHOH_BILL12851.1[Sitting date: 21 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7419. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]NUK KORAKO (National): Ā kia ora e te Heamana o te Whare e mihi atu ki a koe.[So thank you Mr Chair. I acknowledge you.]I would like to take a short call as the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee and also as someone who does acknowledge and recognise that Waitangi is the birthplace of our nation and that its heritage status absolutely needs to be acknowledged and sustained. I believe that when looking at this bill the Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill the interesting thing is that the principal Act is over 80 years old and so one of the important things here was that we really needed to bring it very much into the 21st century because it is not now entirely fit for purpose. That was one of the major roles of the Māori Affairs Committee.I want to acknowledge our Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage Minister Barry and particularly a lot of the input she and her officials had during the select committee process. I acknowledge the submitters as well. It was the submitters who brought a lot of the important changes that were necessary. But also our understanding is that on the Māori Affairs Committee there is always going to be a conflict of interest somewhere and it was good that our kaumātua Pita Paraone actually did—Pita Paraone: Kaumātua?NUK KORAKO: Well the esteemed or the—Pita Paraone: The member.NUK KORAKO: Just out of respect—just out of respect to the New Zealand First member on the Māori Affairs Committee. But this is really just to say that he declared his interest his perceived conflict in the fact that he is the current chair of the Waitangi National Trust Board. We were dealing with that and we were also dealing with—and this is the nature of Māori. It does not matter where you go there is always going to be one conflict of interest. But we also had a number of our members that came from there that whakapapa-ed into that whole area so it was an interesting discussion we had.But I truly believe in looking at the work that we have done and what we are here to represent that the fact is there are a number of changes that we have in the provisions that I think are really important. I think the idea though is that the trust itself—as we all possibly know here but it is a wider field out there—is self-funding so it maintains the Treaty grounds and all of that at no cost to the people of New Zealand. In saying that we are bringing it into the 21st century and particularly in looking at you know ways that it wants to and needs to—and that was one of the submissions—generate its own moneys its own commerce.It is interesting when we talk about the tenure of the members. The fact is that before this bill there was actually no statutory term limit for board members. That actually needed to be addressed because the fact is that—as has been highlighted by members from the other side of the Chamber members of the Māori Affairs Committee—there was a lot of talk about tenure and about the 9 years and whether that is enough. If we put these provisions in it would create a catalyst whereby succession needs to be thought about a long time before the term actually expires. In looking at this what we were doing here with the bill was—the governance structure definitely needed to be modernised and brought into a generation where it actually can develop and maintain its own income.The other one was that—it was definitely in the submissions—we needed to address the disproportionate membership. The way that we needed to do that was to look at the balance and to bring Māori whānau particularly into that trust board situation so that that balance had been addressed. I come from Te Wai Pounamu; our representative is non-Māori. There was a lot of discussion around that as well. When we look at the fact of the make-up of the board I believe that the provisions here have actually been addressed now even though we have made the board have more members on it—but at least we have addressed a major concern that the submitters submitted about.The other part was addressing the ex officio membership. We actually really did look at that because that was one of the bases of why a number of years ago this bill was first introduced into the House. The fact is that there were ex officio members and then also board trustee members. So we have done that and we still want to maintain a very positive working relationship.On that note I believe that what we have brought here after the select committee process has addressed all of the major issues and we believe and we really hope that this bill will be able to continue on its journey through the House. Kia ora.