Franks Stephen: Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:613;Page:10183] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
I had expected not to speak on Part 3. It was the machinery for settlement and as far as it went it appeared to be innocuous. But I am prompted to rise by the hostility of the Green Party to this clause and I am sure that the member who has just spoken Metiria Turei— 
Metiria Turei 
: I’m not surprised. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
—is not surprised as she tells me. The idea that clause 12—the clause that says that this settlement is final—should go should really be the confirmation of what we have feared about the whole process. If that provision were removed the rest of the bill would probably achieve the purpose of the Greens. That purpose is to have New Zealand defined in terms of ethnic inheritance and status groups—not of individuals all equal before a law that treated them alike but as members of little politicised groupings that do not owe their allegiances and loyalty to the country as a whole or to their fellow citizens without discrimination but instead have their primary identification by way of race or inheritance.  
That a party could seriously urge the omission of clause 12 the provision that purports to make these settlements final should not be allowed to pass in this debate. We have our doubts as to whether those settlements are final but at least clause 12 says they are and discharges the Crown entirely from future liability. The idea that that speech could be made and not be answered meant that we have to rise on this part and we do. That clause should be strengthened. Our concern is that although it states there is a final discharge the overall structure of these agreements leaves avenues open for people to come back later and say: “We was robbed.”  
The structure here purports to offer privileges—or does it? We cannot tell because the language is so vague in respect of shellfish fisheries paua fisheries and certain rights over cultural-redress land. Even the words should strike fear into the hearts of most New Zealanders. What is “cultural redress”? Is it something like “cultural safety”—that thing that has turned our nursing education into a joke because 20 percent of nurses’ time is spent worrying about how to approach people who really only want to be approached with kindness and courtesy? The Green Party seems to be endorsing a view that we should be in a state of perpetual cultural redress that finality is an illusion that should never appear in our legislation.  
Part 3 is the normal machinery—the mechanics part of the bill that says what the agreement is intended to do—at least on its face. Settlement is intended to be full and final—despite the defects in it which we think mean that it might not be. I did not fully understand—but I have to confess probably not because the member who just spoke was obscure but because I got distracted—why the Greens were opposed to clause 13 which ousts the jurisdiction of the Waitangi Tribunal. Sorry I do understand it! It is consistent with the Greens’ effort to see clause 12 removed that they also want to leave the Waitangi Tribunal able to come back and reopen claims on Ngati Tama. It is consistently weird to be able to say: “We have a settlement that hands over many millions of dollars worth of property and potential nuisance rights that could in future be converted to money if someone was so minded.” The Greens want to say as well that: “You’ve got all your options to go back and say that it was not enough and that you want more.” That might well happen but there is no point in changing this bill to encourage that. ACT will not vote against Part 3 as long as the approach urged by the Greens is not adopted.