Flavell Te Ururoa: Maori Purposes Bill — First Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Maori Purposes Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:3963] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker tena tatou katoa. In looking at the Maori Purposes Bill tonight I have reflected on the words of the late Martin Luther King who said: “All progress is precarious and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.” I reckon that gentleman knew what he was talking about. Parts of this omnibus Maori Purposes Bill are indeed about making progress. The Maori Party is very supportive of the positive changes made to the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act in increasing the number of Maori Land Court judges from eight to 14. It seems that the increased workload for the Maori Land Court has rapidly exceeded the capacity of the court’s judges. 
We are pleased that the statutory cap will be permanently lifted. But such progress has a precarious status. We question the restraints evident for judges working in the Maori Land Court who yet are not able to also work in the District Courts. We believe that appointment to the Maori Land Court should also mean the possibility of an appointment to the District Court. 
The peculiar nature of an omnibus bill is often characterised as being wash-up legislation bringing together loose ends into one big boil-up. The Maori Party remains cautious about this sort of tactic. Changes proposed to the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 are examples of why we are cautious. Maori Purposes Bills have often been used to sort out anomalies in the vexed area of Treaty settlements. In looking at this 2006 version I think it is always helpful to get a steer from our past. 
I was interested to find that over 50 years ago the Maori Purposes Act in 1954 legislation recorded the settlement of a longstanding claim against the Crown by the Ngati Whakaue tribal nation of Rotorua in connection with the Pukeroa-Oruawhata block upon which the town of Rotorua now stands. This was effected by the payment of compensation of £16500—the amount recommended by a royal commission in 1948. It is always interesting to look back in history and then to again think of the current legislation in front of the House. Right at this very moment members of the Pukeroa-Oruawhata Trust and Ngati Whaoa are working through the complex process required to achieve final resolution of their Treaty grievances. 
 The Pukeroa-Oruawhata Trust on behalf of Ngati Whakaue is seeking settlement of the gifted lands issue seeking meetings with the Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations and seeking priority to be assigned to resolution of their grievances. As part of the trust’s concerns it has asked how it can be acceptable that almost 13 years after its assigning of the deed of settlement resolution of whether the Rotorua golf course land is surplus is still outstanding. It makes one wonder how effective these retrospective wash-up Maori Purposes Bills can be if the 1954 Maori purposes legislation is still being revisited some 50 years later. 
The key political hot issue of specifying a closing date for submitting historical Treaty claims to the Waitangi Tribunal is a vitally important one within this bill. It is an issue on which the nation seeks finality the nation seeks progress. But a pre-set time frame for the Treaty settlement process also stands as a highly precarious issue for debate. Ever since the settlement process began claimants and lawyers have been expressing grave concerns about the process itself—the terms of settlement the amount set aside for settlement and the agency charged with managing settlements. 
Issues of timeliness of commitment to settlement resolution are absolutely central to this. The bill proposes that any claims lodged after 1 September 2008 cannot include any historical Treaty claim or be amended to include any historical Treaty claim. The critical issues we will be asking about this legislation include what the justification is for setting 21 September 1992 as the date to define historical Treaty claims and for setting 1 September 2008 as the final date to submit historical Treaty claims and how whanau hapu and iwi have been involved in advising on the suitability of this or any other date for a time frame. Those are the questions that are important as part of this debate. 
The issue of timing is the absolute crunch issue of the Treaty settlement process. The ongoing crisis of fatigue and overload that so many of our claimants experience in putting their stories before the tribunal must be acknowledged. As uri of Ngati Kahungunu Whanganui Ngapuhi and my own of Te Arawa we of the Maori Party know painfully acutely of too many of our loved elders who have carried the grief of these stories to their graves. We know also that there is tremendous richness available in the healing that can result through claimant groups being able to tell their own stories of those of their tupuna. The very telling of their truths—much like in the truth and reconciliation hearings of other lands—provides a vehicle by which suffering can be heard and healing can emerge. 
But this all takes time—time that cannot be sped up just by the arbitrary selection of a date from the calendar. The process can be effective only if all parties agree to a negotiation framework upfront. Treaty settlements are supposed to be about settling grievances that have arisen from Treaty breaches; yet at the moment the Office of Treaty Settlements controls the outcome and the process—on Crown terms. The real value of retrospective provisions being introduced in a Maori Purposes Bill should I would have thought have put resourcing into improving the settlement from a Maori perspective. The enhancements that could have been useful would have been ensuring that the process of dealing with Maori claimants was dealt with in a fair and transparent way. As part of this the Waitangi Tribunal must be resourced so that it can deal with claims more speedily. 
The tribunal hearings are often long and costly affairs. The current precarious policy position of Treaty settlements is that because of the lengthy nature of tribunal hearings and the fact that their rulings have no value claimant groups are being pressured into direct negotiations with the Crown. The conclusions of the chairperson of the Waitangi Tribunal Chief Judge Joe Williams in December last year regarding the settlement of Treaty claims provide a particularly useful context in which to view this Maori Purposes Bill. The statement advised that faster progress in achieving resolution of claims would depend on a much higher degree of Crown-claimant cooperation. 
Judge Williams said: “It would involve a willingness by the Crown to engage constructively in tribunal inquiries and even review its practice of contesting the claimants’ positions on every issue.” If the Maori Purposes Bill is really to make progress it must reflect far more opportunity for supporting claimant groups than it does at present. 
Finally I want just to refer to the amendments proposed for the Maori Fisheries Act 2004. The Maori Party has questions on the application to the quota share held by Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd. We wonder why the rights regime under section 28N is being proposed for inclusion in the Maori Fisheries Act 2004 some 2 years after its passage. The bill as it is currently drafted is thin on detail. It fails to describe the amount of quota shares that iwi quota owners have been unable to receive due to the current wording of the Maori Fisheries Act 2004 and what this translates to in dollar terms. We are also unable to gauge the projected loss if the Act remains unchanged. 
Yet another host of questions emerge when one looks at the Maori Commercial Aquaculture Claims Settlement Act 2004. For example we wonder what the anticipated risks are to iwi including development projects and inter-iwi relationships from the decrease anticipated in this Act. 
In closing I say that the Maori Party is left wondering why the Minister of Maori Affairs has been called on to host a wash-up bill to cram all of this legislation together outside his key portfolio rather than say the Minister of Justice and the Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations. We wonder whether it has anything to do with the fact that the only select committee where the Government has much-needed numbers is the Maori Affairs Committee. We will allow this bill to go through tonight to its first reading to allow hapu and iwi to have a say but we cannot help but think there is something not quite right here and we will be watching it at every turn as it progresses. Kia ora tatou.