Halbert ShananSHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you Mr Speaker. As you know I hail from the mighty Mōkai Pātea and across the beautiful hills and maunga as I look towards Aorangi I consider the amount of Māori land that still sits with us—a very small percentage of what my iwi originally had. But I look to it and I think how are we going to develop the many many acres that we currently do have? What I do agree on in a sense is the importance of how we unlock whenua Māori—yes how we use that as an economic base for our iwi and to establish our future.This bill seeks to repeal and replace the current law relating to Māori land to allow land owners and their whānau and hapū to improve the performance and productivity on their land. So it's quite an aspirational statement there which I tend to agree with to an extent. My friend Joseph Mooney who is on the Māori Affairs Committee with us is a good man and I said that before—he is a good man and he had considered this. I'm unsure however to the extent of how Mr Mooney has considered this particular bill. It has a chequered history and you know I'm encouraged that he's gone back so far to look into that chequered history. But something hasn't quite landed with him to realise that it was not a successful one at the time and it's certainly not a successful one now my friend. When we look into this we look back to the submissions and at this particular time we have the submission from Te Ropu Wahine Maori Toko i te Ora—the Maori Women's Welfare League. It says The Maori Women's Welfare League opposes Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill in its entirety." Chris Bishop: Oh yes. And who's the CE of that?SHANAN HALBERT: Maybe the noisy one across the room might want to do a speech on this at some point and respond to it. But I am encouraged by National's attempt to reach in to building better Māori policy because they do need to do something drastic in that area so good on you Mr Mooney. But back to the Maori Women's Welfare League—they opposed this bill. They said there's no rational basis for wholesale reform and repeal of Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993. They talked about Māori land being a taonga and we've heard tonight how sensitive the discussion on Māori and whenua Māori is. They go on to say in the submission "The process undertaken in respect of this bill falls well short of the most basic requirements of genuine consultation let alone the higher duty that exists under the Treaty of Waitangi where the subject matter is Māori land." Now that's one submission from one of the most influential Māori organisations in Aotearoa. They did not support this bill then and they certainly don't support this bill now.If we look to another submission the submission of the judges of the Māori Land Court to the ministerial advisory group at the time they called this a "high risk approach to law reform"—"high risk approach to law reform". And maybe that was about the speed—I think Mr Coffey earlier talked about "ramming it through the House"; and I'll remember that for future legislation that comes through here—but that the bill will completely rewrite and replace the existing legislation with two particular Acts. That Act at the time came about following lengthy discussions with iwi Māori—lengthy and meaningful discussions with iwi Māori.So I'm a bit confused Mr Mooney this evening—and you know "A" for effort my friend on putting a piece of Māori legislation through the National Party. Good on you and keep it up. Let's do more but let's ensure that we do the groundwork that we need to at the particular time where we have the support of Māori groups of iwi Māori and hāpu—that they support such legislation before we put it back into this House. In the research and the previous submissions you should have learnt from that time. I encourage you to put more forward and kia kaha—thank you for this but I do not commend this to the House."