Mahuta Nanaia: Maungaharuru-Tangitū Hapū Claims Settlement Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMahuta Nanaia: Maungaharuru-Tangitū Hapū Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 31 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:12218. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnei e tāpiri atu i āku mihi ki a koutou kua tae mai ki te whakarongo ki tēnei wāhanga o tā koutou pire mō te tutukitanga o ā koutou kerēme. Nō reira ki te rōpū kāhui o Maungaharuru-Tangitū nei te mihi maioha ki a koutou katoa.[Greetings to you Mr Assistant Speaker. I add my acknowledgments extended to you who have arrived here collectively to listen to this part of your bill about the settlement of your claims. To you therefore the collective of Maungaharuru-Tangitū subtribe an affectionate tribute to you all .]It is a great privilege to be able to join other speakers and acknowledge Meka Whaitiri the member for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti on this first reading of the Maungaharuru-Tangitū Hapū Claims Settlement Bill. I will be brief because we have two other readings to go. I am pleased that this bill will come to the Māori Affairs Committee that we will have a robust round of hearing the submissions and that we will give this bill the scrutiny that it deserves to ensure that the deed of settlement aligns with the legislation that has been prepared for you in order to give effect to the agreements that your negotiators have come up with. It is an important part of the process. Even though people see it as pro forma it is important for the select committee to scrutinise that what was intended in the deed of settlement is reflected adequately in the legislation. We asmembers of that select committee can ask the officials and those who have been involved what the specific elements in your bill have been to ensure that everything you intend to have happen can happen.The proof of the pudding as you know though is in the eating. So the hard work of getting to this point of reaching a settlement and your legislation seems so much more I guess of a step towards an even harder task of implementing and giving effect to every part of what you want to see happen in the future. So my humble comments here—although I have I guess no inherent knowledge of the rohe and the people I have some understanding of the dynamics of what is happening in the settlement space.As I understand it for Ngāti Kahungunu as a whole iwi it covers a big area so what they have managed to do I think is provide a bit of a model for other iwi to perhaps think about. It is always a very difficult space about how you manage the dynamics between your collective iwi interests and also your hapū interests. As I understand it having had a conversation on the campaign trail with Meka—and we were actually driving past Lake Tūtira when she was explaining this to me—she said: “You know Nanaia the way that Ngāti Kahungunu have approached it is that we have kept the fisheries settlement as a collective asset for the whole iwi.” So that is managed under the Ngāti Kahungunu iwi umbrella.However for hapū with the land claims they were able to ensure or keep the door open so that each hapū or cluster of hapū can negotiate their own outcomes. There is some wisdom in that. There are six large natural groupings throughout the district of Ngāti Kahungunu. We have already had as members will recall Ngāti Pahāuwera come here with their particular claims in their rohe. Now we have Maungaharuru and Tangitū hapū.The wisdom of it is to ensure that yes the rangatiratanga and the mana of hapū collectives are under a larger grouping but they can be maintained in a very practical way. So I was quite fascinated with this as Meka was explaining it to me on our drive from Hastings down to Wellington. I said to her: “Do you mean to say that it is OK for the iwi to allow this type of arrangement to happen?” and the response was simply: “Yes because the relationship is really important.” Although we recognise that at the iwi level some things can be done collectively it is more important that some things must be done at the hapū level.We have had lots of debates in this House about models of settlements where the tensions between the iwi aspiration and the hapū aspiration have not been well aligned and here now we have a model that is starting to set I guess the type of footprint or template—whatever you would like to call it—as a way of doing things. So I guess that in some respects people are going to say that something we have learnt by observing other settlements is what they do not want to do and how they want to do things better and we can only applaud that level of wisdom coming into the settlement space.There are many aspects of this settlement as I said previously that will deserve the good scrutiny of the Māori Affairs Committee. There are statutory acknowledgments which I think are significant. I think that the issues around the naming and rectifying the naming are going to be again another model that many settlements will follow to ensure that place names are adequately and correctly referenced and also there are issues around relationship agreements. Again it is in these types of agreements that the proof of the pudding will be in the implementation. Although iwi certainly maintain a level of consistency in leadership and institutional knowledge there is ongoing change within Government departments within ministries and with officials.Retaining the same level of institutional commitment to the implementation of settlements is a point that I raised yesterday in the House and it requires leadership. That will require leadership not just from the Government of the day but from the otherparties in the House that are committed to ensuring that the Treaty settlement process is an enduring one a lasting one and one that will achieve the highest aspirations of iwi within their rohe.Nō reira ki a koutou katoa mō tenēi wāhanga o te pire iti tēnei kōrero. Ko te tino hiahia ka whakahokia mai te pire ki mua i te aroaro o ngā kaitōrangapū ki te whakamārama nā te hōhonutanga o ā koutou tutukitanga i roto i te pire nei.[Therefore this address to you all is a brief one. My greatest wish is for the bill to come back before the politicians to explain the extent of what your settlements are in this bill .]So I just wanted to take that brief opportunity to add my support to this process for Maungaharuru-Tangitū in the first reading of their bill. When the bill comes back for its second reading I hope to ensure that we can have a great level of detail arising from the submissions and add to the rich kōrero around ways in which this settlement will help these people this hapū reach their opportunity to do things for themselves and forge a way forward in the future. Kia ora koutou katoa.