Barry Maggie: Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Barry Maggie: Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 17 October 2012. Volume:684;Page:5919. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I rise with pleasure to speak to the second reading of the Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill having heard Te Ururoa Flavell the sponsor of this bill speak earlier about the history of it and the clear need for redress and the need to put things right that were wrong. This bill is an effort to rectify a situation and it does seem that the repeal of this Act is long overdue. 
As has been referred to by many other speakers in this debate so far there was only one submission on this bill and for the benefit of the list MP for Gisborne who was clearly not paying much attention—this is the person who formerly held the seat and now it is with the Hon Anne Tolley—I would like to go over a little bit of the background of it. When Colin Reeder the chairperson on behalf of Nga Potiki-a-Tamapahore Trust and Christine Jones who was the acting chief executive on behalf of the Tauranga City Council came before our Local Government and Environment Committee she spelt out some of that history and it really is worth recapping. I think this is not an untypical situation. It is one where the expediency of the local council took over from common sense for a little while. That is how I see it. 
Looking back to 1972 the Mount Maunganui Borough Council proposed a waste-water scheme that required a substantial reclamation within that area of water. That was then done but the trouble was with the construction of the oxidation ponds from which that effluent would be temporarily discharged into Te Tahuna o Rangataua. That discharge would occur only until an ocean outfall was constructed at Papamoa so it was always going to be a temporary measure but for Nga Potiki and indeed for all of Tauranga Maori the discharge of human waste into those pristine waters which had served as a very important food resource for them was an utterly repugnant measure. The proposal was particularly abhorrent for Nga Potiki as the submitters said to us—and for those on the select committee on the day who were paying close attention to what they were saying because we care about legislation and we do assume that the select committee process is taken seriously by even the most languid and lacklustre members of the Opposition who sit on the committee. But this proposal was spelt out to us in heartfelt terms. 
Andrew Williams 
: How dare you! What a rude woman you are. 
MAGGIE BARRY 
: We had a situation where the tangata whenua were particularly vociferous in their opposition to the Mount Maunganui Borough Council’s proposal because what we had was a flourishing ecosystem. It was absolutely flourishing but the tidal flats would be lost to reclamation and it claimed that the ongoing effects of the oxidation ponds would be minor. It would appear as if people on the other side of the House have actually woken up. “How dare they!” said Mr Williams. Well he knows all about faux outrage. He is a specialist on it as I know only too well on behalf of the lemon trees and pohutukawas on the North Shore but that is another story. 
Let us get back to the 1974 environmental impact report that stated that the ecosystem and the tidal flats would actually be lost through reclamation but in fact that has not proven to be the case. We are very relieved to know that in 1989 the Mount Maunganui Borough Council and the Tauranga District Council—and the Tauranga City Council presented the submission I thought with eloquence and a heartfelt passion—decided that those waste-water systems would then become jointly managed. So after about 10 years they embarked on that consultative process. Yes these things do take time but for Nga Potiki that reclamation of the foreshore and the seabed the construction and the presence of the oxidation ponds remained a difficult thing. The effluent represented as they saw it the failure of the Crown to protect Nga Potiki. 
So this is an essential piece of legislation because once the job has been done—and it has and everyone agrees that it has—we now look at the repeal of this Act. I think that with that repeal there is a certain amount of closure. The people who stood before us at the select committee talked about the vindication that they felt on behalf of their late ancestors the Nga Potiki kaumatua who had worked tirelessly on this measure in the 1970s and 1980s. They were people—men and women in their senior years—who as a group over more than 25 years had protested against what they viewed as a shocking invasion of their ancestral landscape and their cultural values. The relationship between Nga Potiki and the Tauranga City Council had been a good one. It had always been based on mutual respect. This had caused a great strain on that relationship. As they said as they detailed the history of it this was something that needed to be put right and they needed to work collaboratively and constructively. 
As my colleague the honourable Nikki Kaye mentioned earlier it is a very important thing that collaboration and cooperative ventures were agreed upon in a way that was really very heartening indeed. I think that the submission really summed it up for me. Although there was only one of them it was a very important one and it put into context the importance of this bill. So Nga Potiki-a-Tamapahore Trust and the Tauranga City Council both supported this Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill in its current form because there is no intention for a further reclamation. That has been pointed out by previous speakers. The repeal of the Act will provide as I have indicated earlier some vindication to those Nga Potiki kaumatua and to other members of the community who protested against the original Act because they were not alone in that. The repeal of the Act will help to heal the past conflicts and strengthen the relationship now between the iwi and the Tauranga City Council that was put under enormous strain. 
So it has been I think a long time coming and it is long overdue. I look forward to the third reading of this bill and I think that it is long overdue for the Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill to be passed. Thank you.