Franks Stephen: Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
Franks Stephen: Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:623;Page:18397] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I wish to raise this matter before beginning because I am not sure whether it has been covered by anything that I have seen in terms of translation. We have in this bill two texts of acknowledgments. The text of acknowledgment in English in clause 8 states or appears to imply that it is a translation of the text in clause 7. I raise this to ask whether you could inquire into whether we are entitled to get a translation or to get some confirmation from the Crown that this is a translation because I cannot see in the Maori version some of the words that are in the English version. It does not need to be immediate and I am not trying to hold up the debate on this but I would like you to consider that when the House is considering a document that is in English and in Maori we should be able to ask for the same kind of assurance that we get when discussing that the translation is appropriate. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I thank the honourable member for raising that point with me. It is really a matter for the select committee to deal with and we now need to proceed. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: I am aware of that. But I am asking as a matter of principle that when we are debating written material with both languages what mechanism there may be for assurance as to the accuracy of the translation. That is something that is not holding up this debate but I raise it because the word “rangatiratanga” which is a word of considerable interest appears in the English version here. I do not see it in the purportedly corresponding Maori version and I ask what assurance the House has that materials placed before it for debate which purport to be representative of each other are representative. However I will proceed if you have delivered yourself on that but ask you to consider whether it is an issue that does need some sort of ruling. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I again thank the member. The issue really is one that needs to be dealt with by the select committee. There are many different pieces of legislation that have all sorts of interpretation and it is often for the select committee to work that out with the members present and I encourage the member to do that during the select committee process. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: I raised that point because I have been trying to see what kind of development there has been in this pattern of settlement document over the period I have been in Parliament. This has evolved to some extent. One point that was raised—and I was glad to see it raised by New Zealand First—was that we could now find in this document only a couple of references to the so-called principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. So the Government has obviously taken on board the weakness in its position and the weakness that there has been in the entire consideration of these matters when such contentious terms have been sprinkled throughout documents without any explanation. ACT has not been able to vote for settlement bills for quite some time because we have been asked to vote on the translation into statute of words that no one can give an authoritative definition or a provenance for. 
So I am pleased to see that that has been diminished. However I am sorry to warn New Zealand First that it still does appear. It still does appear in the actual text of the document in clause 8(5) in Part 1. There is a reference to “basic human rights” undefined and “a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles.” So there is still some work to be done in cleaning the stables of this pernicious term. 
I believe that in fact it would be in the interests of both the counter party with the Crown—the iwi concerned—and the Crown to make sure that we do not leave those sorts of terms there. These people deserve certainty after all these years. They do not deserve to have themselves or the next generation pointed yet again to another area for suspicions about each other. Why are weasel words being used instead of clear and straightforward words of intended agreement? 
I was also pleased to hear New Zealand First members say that they were looking forward to the select committee process of examining some of these provisions. Because in the past this process has been seen as a rubber stamp. In fact Parliament has been told that there is a very strong convention that these deals cannot be altered. It has made a mockery of the debating process and the vetting by Parliament of these deals that they come here and are then processed through as if it were a rubber stamp process because it should not be. 
In these bills we see a whole lot of issues postponed for the future. Future generations will look at these bills and be completely baffled as to what could have been meant. They will be looking at them assuming that we were more courageous and more deliberate in what we are doing than in fact this generation has actually been. For example there is a guardianship created for the bed of Lake Moumahaki. There is a vesting in the beds of rivers. There is a creation of ukaipo sites and topuni with definitions by the Crown which look as if they ought to be creating some kind of substantive right. Then in the same legislation statements that categorically say that they do not have a legally enforceable effect or if they do it can be avoided by the Minister changing a protocol or that any effect is simply one that an authority must take notice of but there is no indication of what that notice means. 
Now it may be very simple for people accustomed to being mealy-mouthed after 20 years of conspiracy between the two big parties to pretend that the treaty industry was a highly principled and necessary process. It may be very simple. It may be very easy for this generation to see those kinds of lip service statements and those kinds of spurious rights as just a process of face saving. The trouble is we will not know whose face is being saved. Future courts will say that surely the Crown must have meant more surely the Crown and the legislature cannot have been saying: “You people have a grievance you have legitimate grounds for complaint we will recognise and register solemn documents around particular areas of value to you but nothing in those documents means a thing in the law.” 
Surely we can do better than that. In matrimonial law many years ago it was decided that a clean break was a better arrangement than forcing the parties to continue in relationships that could provide grounds for misunderstanding. We are seeing this Government do it repeatedly—postponing a dispute to the next generation. The Foreshore and Seabed Bill did it and this bill does it. This bill gives some sort of preferential right to the new aquacultural areas. We do not know what the principle is that lies behind that. We do not know whether these aquacultural areas can be what used to be called the arse-end of allotments or whether they have to be primaries. We do not know because this is deliberately fudging. This bill is providing an opportunity for future generations to say quite rightly that the Crown must have known that it was in the wrong that the Crown said it was in the wrong and that the Crown purported to make compensation. We have been obliged to accept the compromise by being worn down and by fear of the industry coming to an end but all we got was shadow with no substance. 
 Worse it seems to point those people Nga Rauru Kitahi in the direction of being a constant pain in the neck to their neighbours the local authorities the people administering the Resource Management Act the Department of Conservation and all the other bodies that will have to consult them and appear to give weight to their concerns. The rights that they get are not the positive rights of real property ownership promised by article 2 of the treaty. They are not the rangatiratanga that was intended to describe the property owners’ right of exclusive use possession enjoyment and right to sell. The new rights have nothing in them other than an encouragement to always be negative to block to oppose to object and to hold out for ransom payments in settlement of purported grievances. 
Sure they are for relatively small areas. When we go through the schedule to the bill we see that quite meagre areas are being offered for that special status. We can understand that the original inhabitants desire to be recognised for the importance to them of those sites. But we should be deciding right now in this Parliament what that recognition means not postponing it to a Minister under a protocol for the future and not postponing it in the fond hope that the Environment Court will know what to do. We know what this does. It does the sort of thing that we have just seen in the Whanganui River where one of the State’s power companies has been told to throw away between $10 million and $20 million a year’s worth of electricity generation for 10 years in the hope that the parties can come to agree in an irreconcilable conflict. 
It is hopeless because in that case the iwi should be able to convert their concerns to some concrete rules to a monetary compensation or to a set of remedial actions that then result in clear legal rights being given to the other side. Instead the Environment Court faced with just that kind of fudge instruction has said that it cannot decide it will give them 10 years and to sort it out. That is not a responsible position for Parliament to be adopting. It is not a responsible position particularly now that the scales have fallen from the eyes of the New Zealand establishment and it realises that the treaty industry is in its dying days and that the treaty has lost its talisman status. The treaty is not a trump card any longer to block debate. The generation of politicians who refused to recognise the concern of ordinary New Zealanders about setting up one law for Pakeha and one law for the rest is going. Those statutory instructions to bodies to take note of that agreement without saying what it really means without creating concrete rights without creating a process for compensation of breach of them is simply ensuring that this will not be the final settlement. That is why ACT will vote against it.