Turei MetiriaMETIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker ki a koutou huri noa i Te Whare tēnā koutou katoa. Ko Tararua me Ruapehu ōku maunga ko Tākitimu me Aotea ōku waka nō Rangitāne Kahungunu-ki-Wairarapa me Ātihaunui-a-Paparangi au kia ora koutou katoa.[Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and acknowledgments to you all throughout the House. Tararua and Ruapehu are my mountains Tākitimu and Aotea are my canoes and I belong to Rangitāne Kahungunu at Wairarapa and Ātihaunui-ā-Pāpārangi so greetings to you all.]I am very pleased to stand on behalf of the Green Party and support the final reading of this legislation. I am actually a bit sad that we were not able to do it at the time when everybody had come down from Palmy for the second—and what was supposed to be the third—reading but we are here now and that is really good.The completion of this settlement is a real celebration for the iwi who have been working for decades to achieve this. I also would lend my support to those who have congratulated Danielle Harris in particular and the whole team that has been working on this settlement for many years and of course Danielle's mum Ruth Harris. It is always good to keep saying the names of those whom we have lost over the years and it is great that Ruth has been acknowledged so well in the debate on this bill.I am not going to delay the reading this morning but I do want to acknowledge the concessions that Rangitāne o Manawatu have made in the process of this settlement. As we have talked about often here the concessions that iwi make are absolutely enormous. There are two kinds of concessions: the first is in the relationships with other iwi and hapū whom they have to negotiate with over the boundaries of the settlement and the second is the concessions that are forced on them by the Crown.Although we often in this House apologise for the fact that the reparations that are made are so minor I do not think that that is enough anymore and we really need to be looking at how to transform the settlement process to make sure that it is actually fairer. It is not enough just to say Thanks for giving up what you lost. Thanks for your contribution and concession to the New Zealand public as a whole." because we actually owe them a great deal more.First to the concessions with other claimants: Rangitāne o Manawatu have had to give up a number of interests that they held for a very long time over many many years in order to manage their relationships with other iwi who had other claims in the similar area. That means that it is only a very tiny fraction of what was lost that has been returned. So there was about half a million acres that was lost and just a tiny fraction of that land let alone the value of that land has been returned to them. Some of that is because they have as other iwi have also made concessions to make sure that there are adequate settlement packages for the other iwi around them. So their generosity goes beyond just the general generosity to the Crown as a whole and to the New Zealand public as a whole for not demanding full reparation of what was lost. But their generosity also extends to those iwi who are also often smaller and do not have much in the way of resources and power but who also need to have some kind of economic base on which they can continue to build a future for their whānau. Every iwi who makes a settlement is being enormously generous to those around them as well and I think we need to recognise that.This brings me directly to the concessions that Rangitāne o Manawatu and all iwi have to make in relation to the Crown because it is a feature of the Treaty settlements that creates this conflict between iwi and iwi and iwi. It is the very nature of the settlement itself that does that. We have to remember it was the Crown that committed the crimes. It was the Crown that committed the initial crimes. It has also been the Crown that has decided the process by which it will make reparation for those crimes committed. There is not a similar process I do not think anywhere in the justice system or in the legal system where the perpetrator decides both the process and in effect the quantum of the reparation made for the crimes that they have committed. That is what the settlement process is.It has been like that from the start. Iwi Māori have had very little to do with the creation of that process. Yes there have been some changes over time to make it slightly more effective for those who are negotiating—for iwi who are negotiating—but the fundamentals are still there. It is still the Crown that decides the rules. It is the Crown that decides whom it negotiates with. It is the Crown that decides the quantum of the reparation and anybody who has dealt with settlements in detail as a number of us in this House have knows that it is very rare for the Crown to shift the value of that quantum in the process of a settlement. So really it is not really that much of a negotiation on the fundamentals. It is a negotiation around the edges. So the concessions that iwi make in the Treaty settlement process are actually about those fundamentals because they have no choice but to agree to the Crown's construction of how the settlement should go. That is absolutely an enormous concession by a victim of a crime. Let us not forget that that is fundamental and it can change. It does not have to be like that for ever. This is one of the reasons that the Green Party does not accept settlements as full and final. We support them because we support the work that iwi and hapū do to get to this point. It can take decades and decades and no way are we going to undermine their work and effort over that time and the loss that they incur over those many years in the negotiations process. But it also means that we are honour-bound not to accept these as full and final. They are a deal; they are a negotiation about an economic resource. There is a requirement from the Crown to apologise and to accept the crimes that the Crown committed in the past—that is good. We think that is the right thing to do. The reparation that is made is a tiny fraction of what was lost and we accept that that is the way the process is now. But these settlements are about providing an economic base and the return of some land in order to enable iwi to develop some economic independence. We accept that too but that is not Treaty justice. That is not the same thing as justice.What it is then is that settlements are a step on the journey towards Treaty justice because Treaty justice is rangatiratanga. Treaty justice is genuine partnership and the settlement process is not that. It enables iwi to be able to develop some resources to grow in economic power and resources and to help build their whānau so that their whānau are doing more and better in terms of being stronger and more resourced with more agency and more independence over some of the decisions that they are making about themselves but that is not full and final settlement of the colonisation process that did so much damage after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed and in contravention of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.We are really pleased to be able to support this legislation. We are really pleased that Rangitāne o Manawatu are going to get some of their economic resource back and control over their whenua taonga tuku iho. Of course they should have that. It is unspeakable to think that they should not. But neither do we accept that this is the end of the process for Treaty justice for them or for us as members of the House of Representatives; nor is it for any Government now or in the future the end of the process. There will come a time when the next stages of rangatiratanga need to be part of this process. We are up for it in the Green Party. We are up for this conversation about what this looks like. We want to see Treaty justice in this country and we are committed to working alongside iwi to achieve that. In the meantime until we get to that point we welcome the settlement and we welcome the reparation that is being made for their settlement. We look forward to Rangitāne o Manawatu being able to celebrate at the conclusion of this bill. Thank you."