Turei MetiriaMETIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I have submitted to the Clerk a nomination for the select committee for this bill and that nomination is that the bill goes to the Māori Affairs Committee not to the Local Government and Environment Committee. Before I go into the reasons why I just want to describe the process of what will happen with that nomination. I am urging members to vote—actually I am urging one of two things: either Jonathan Young may well want to change his motion and send the bill to the Māori Affairs Committee and it is in his power to do that or if he chooses not to I urge members to vote against the motion to send the bill to the Local Government and Environment Committee. If that motion fails and the No vote wins then my nomination to send it to the Māori Affairs Committee will come to the floor of the House and we can vote for it to go to the Māori Affairs Committee.This is not an attempt to hijack what the council is trying to do. It is enormously controversial what the council is doing with this land and although the parties in Waitara have been trying to work together to get it to this point we too have been in contact with Te Atiawa and we know that there are still very serious concerns. We know that there are concerns from others in the community who marched today and who are deeply fearful that this bill will be in effect another raupatu.So then the question is: which of the select committees in this Parliament has the expertise to deal with both the legal issues that arise out of a local bill and the Treaty issues the Māori issues that arise out of this bill? There is only one such committee that has the general legal expertise to deal with legislation and has the specific expertise to work on issues where there is a deep Māori complexity—Treaty complexity—to it. This bill has that complexity and this is why the Māori Affairs Committee members should be the ones who consider this bill. Only they have the breadth of experience across all those stakeholders that Te Ururoa Flavell talked about and others have talked about to make sure that all of those interests are as some have described balanced—I do not agree with that approach but that may be some way—but more importantly that all of those people who are involved with this legislation have a place to go where the members who sit on that committee understand the complexity of all of those issues.I do not think we should be sending this bill to the Local Government and Environment Committee because those members do not have the experience of dealing with complex Tiriti issues around land confiscations and raupatu. That select committee is not designed for that purpose. The Māori Affairs Committee and the members on that committee are themselves legislators. Those members know how to deal with general law and they are members of other select committees—as with Meka Whaitiri who is on the Local Government and Environment Committee—but they also have the particular expertise that will need to be applied to this bill if all of the stakeholders are to have some comfort that they will get a hearing where they are understood and where the issues that they bring will be understood by the members in their consideration.Because of the potential of this bill to be in another raupatu against iwi who have already suffered enormous harm—as we in this House know; we have dealt with this before—it is absolutely critical that that iwi has the opportunity to put its case to those who understand the complexity of it which is why we are putting forward this second nomination. I have enormous faith in the Māori Affairs Committee to be able to deal with the complexity of this bill. I believe that if this Parliament does agree—as we seem to have been—that there are serious Treaty issues here to deal with it is the right thing to do to send it to the committee that is best competent to deal with Māori issues and with the legal issues inherent in it.And I would hope actually that the council will agree. I hope that the council itself which has been moving on issues—and there has been a lot of controversy and discussion about Māori issues through this council—would agree that it is important for the Māori issues the Treaty issues to be dealt with fairly by those who have the most expertise. So it may well be that in just a few minutes' time we have an opportunity to do a good thing for the community and make sure that this bill has the proper hearing that it should have with the select committee that has the expertise to deal with it competently. Thank you very much.