Flavell Te UruroaHon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Minister for Māori Development): Tēnā koe Mr Chair tēnā tātau i tēnei pō i a tātau e whaiwhai haere nei i ngā kōrero. Ka ngana nei au ki te whakautu i ngā kōrero kua puta i tēnei pō inapō anō hoki nō reira tēnā tātau.[Thank you Mr Chair and salutations to us this evening as we follow the contributions. I will attempt to respond to the accounts that have emerged this evening and last night as well so acknowledgements to us collectively.]I will try to cover some of the issues raised by members this evening as well as go back over some of the issues raised last night. I will do the best I can to reference them for members.In terms of the member Meka Whaitiri—she made reference to clause 103(5). Just by way of explanation to the member this arrives from section 137 of the current Te Ture Whenua Maori Act which enables the Māori Land Court to authorise a governance body to rationalise or improve landholdings if it is impossible to achieve a threshold for sale. They must have a land management plan approved by the owners to do this. So that is in respect of clause 103(5).The issues about the mortgage have been raised by a number of members and I will try to pick those up in particular the ones raised by the member Mr Pita Paraone as well as by Rino Tirikatene last night. All mortgages have a power of sale. That is the point of a mortgage. It is simply commercially naive for anyone to think that a lender would accept a mortgage security that could not be enforced to recover a debt if there is a default. The wording of the bill simply reflects the fact that a power of sale is implied in every mortgage of land. This is in effect part of another piece of legislation called the Property Law Act.Lenders cannot somehow hide this from borrowers because as everyone knows there are strict disclosure obligations placed on lenders by the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act. But the real question that has been raised and it is a fair concern raised by a number of members is about the security of the land. What is available to people to raise development finance for Māori land where the land itself does not have to be put up for security? The member Pita Paraone sort of raised that in some ways.There is something in Part 4 of the bill that deals in ways that you will not find in the current Act. I hope they will be advantageous. For example the bill not only provides that buildings fixtures and crops can be mortgaged separately away from the land itself as mentioned by the member. It also authorises those things to be transferred separately under a power of sale keeping the land absolutely safe.Another way the bill makes it easier to avoid putting Māori land at risk under a mortgage is the provision in clause 128 for governance bodies to create and mortgage leases instead of putting the freehold at risk. If Māori land is mortgaged the bill makes it easier for mortgagees to partition out enough to cover the debt without having to sell all the land when there is a default.Added to this under clause 152 it will be the Māori Land Court rather than the High Court that will have a supervisory role over a mortgagee's actions under a mortgage over Māori land. I would suggest that these are all positive measures that add to the bill's focus on the protection of Māori land. Further owners can put it in governance agreements that Māori land cannot be mortgaged but it is their choice. It is not prohibited in the bill. So I hope that allays members' fears in respect of putting up Māori land for sale.The other parts that other members raised—this one comes up repeatedly and I really want to put it to rest once and for all and that is the whole question about the loss of Māori land. We talked last night and actually throughout this whole debate about the fact that at the moment the law does not allow Māori land to be sold unless owners holding at least 75 percent of the shares agree. That has been discussed quite a lot. This bill not only keeps this high threshold but strengthens it by making it possible for owners to increase those thresholds to up to 100 percent. By doing so as I said last night it pretty much makes it impossible to sell that land. So let us put that to rest.But last night Peeni Henare claimed that clause 13 of schedule 4 makes it possible to sell land with only a 50 percent majority. That was his point last night. Well I can assure the member that that is not the case. The threshold he was looking at is the threshold for exchanges not sales. That was the difference. He was talking about thresholds for exchanges not sales.Under this bill the owners of the Māori freehold land will not be able to sell it unless they can meet the strict and high thresholds that I have talked about. So let us be clear. There are a number of them. One no one will be able to sell Māori customary land period even if it is converted to Māori freehold land. Two no one will be able to sell Māori freehold land reserved as whenua tāpui. Three no one will be able to sell Māori freehold land held in collective ownership. Four no one will be able to sell Māori freehold land solely owned by a whānau trust. These are absolutely strong protections that uphold that principle that I talked about last night about taonga tuku iho. The issue about representative entity which the member Meka Whaitiri talked about was also raised. A representative entity is one of the entities referred to in clause 96(2) as a preferred entity. Preferred entities will have a right of second refusal in the event of a sale of Māori freehold land and will be able to receive a gift of Māori freehold land. If a hapū or iwi associated with a particular block of Māori freehold land has a trust or governance entity and the owners of that land recognise the authority of that trust or entity to represent their hapū or iwi then it will qualify as a representative entity for the land. It could be a rūnanga a trust board for example. It might be a post-governance settlement entity. The definition of representative entity is set out in clause 158(3). So for completeness I note that if the land in question is managed by one of the new governance bodies called rangatōpū or by a Māori incorporation or an ahu whenua or a whenua tōpū trust then that entity will also qualify as a preferred entity for that piece of land.I note also that last night the member Peeni Henare referred to issues around the kaiwhakahaere. Those are better dealt with in Part 5 so I will hold on to comments in respect of Part 5. I understand that he has a Supplementary Order Paper and we can discuss it at that point. So I hope that those comments have been helpful to members.