Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise with pleasure to speak in support of this bill which focuses on strengthening a tikanga Māori approach to dealing with Māori land. This is a welcome development and it should be a development that we see across all policy areas if we are to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a living constitutional document of our nation and I note that we do stand today—or sit—on land that was never ceded. So it is important to keep coming back to the issue of Māori land as having special cultural significance as being qualified as taonga. Māori land comprises some five percent of New Zealand's total land area. It's 1.4 million hectares. Although 5 percent is quite small 1.4 million hectares is representative of quite an enormous opportunity for Māori for iwi for hapū and for whānau to exercise their ongoing right to self-determination which we know is what our country must turn to and must begin to provide to Māori as the indigenous peoples of this land. So this bill seeks to make that easier to facilitate Māori to manage that land to use it whether it's for housing whether it's environmental protection whether it's developed in another way by decision-making processes that best reflect tikanga Māori and the will of whānau of hapū and of iwi—the way that it was always intended to be. The law as we've heard the existing law is now some 25 years old so the need for modernisation and update and reform was really there. So this is a welcome change. And as with all law—as with all good law—this bill signals modernisation by way of making the law much easier to access by those that it seeks to serve. So it is simplifying processes it's making processes clearer it's bringing them in line with other laws like the trust legislation. And importantly it's allowing people to access succession which has been a huge impediment procedurally to Māori from engaging with land that they would otherwise have a right in and in fact it's an obligation of Government to facilitate that right to access.It's simplifying that process by allowing succession to be carried out in a better way by the Māori Land Court in that applications for succession won't have to go to court to a live hearing of the court where whānau would have to actually travel to court to take time off work to pay for presentation and to be present even where there is no dispute being heard essentially and succession is being done by agreement. So in simplifying that process this bill will allow for registrars to administratively approve succession applications. We've been getting some 2241 on average applications per year over the last 10 years. And knowing how difficult applications are to make how difficult the court is to access for most ordinary people that number is likely to go up and it will be a vast number of people who will now be able to better engage with their right to have a say and to manage how Māori land—their land—is being used and that engagement will be so enriching for those communities. The bill also allows importantly a mediation process for dispute resolution. We know that where disputes are not forced into an adversarial framework the outcomes are always better; they're better in particular where ongoing relationships between people are at the centre of a dispute. That mediation will also be meaningful in retaining relationships within the community that need to continue to have access to and to cooperate together in managing land and leaving a legacy for descendants that will then succeed to that land.So all in all the bill simplifies the law simplifies access to Māori land makes dispute resolutions less adversarial and more than that ensures that everything is much more focused on tikanga Māori processes. So this is a welcome change in the law when it comes to Māori land but I do also want to recall that it's the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the work that we do need to do as a nation to ensure that land and other taonga are made available and that Māori rights are facilitated in an ongoing way. I do want to notice that that doesn't mean that we just settle everything away necessarily and sometimes it means looking back and righting wrongs as we know have to do when it comes to the sacred land at Ihumātao. So looking forward to doing that work in Government but I commend the bill to the House today.