Coffey Tāmati; Salesa JennyTĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Whakataka te hau ki te uru whakataka te hau ki te tonga. Kia mākinakina ki uta kia mātaratara ki tai. E h ī ake ana te atakura. He tio he huka he hauhū. Tihei Mauri Ora!E ngā whanaunga o te Arawa waka anei tētahi o ngā uri o te waka e mihi atu nei ki a koutou kotou ngā kaitiaki o tō tātou nei tūpuna a Tamatekapua i roto i te maunga Moehau. Waiaua ki te Rāwhiti e mihi atu nei ki a koutou.[Cease oh winds of the west and of the south. Let the bracing breezes flow over the land and the sea. Let the red-tipped dawn come with a sharpened edge a touch of frost a promise of a glorious day!Our kin from the Arawa canoe here is a descendant of the canoe acknowledging you all you all the guardians of our ancestor Tamatekapua at the sacred Moehau mountain. Waiaua to the east greetings to you all.]This is a big day as we've heard from previous speakers. A big day for Ngāti Hei who started this journey quite some time ago. This is their time to shine and I want to if anything just relay the sentiment that it has been a long journey. To Ngāti Hei that are in the room to Ngāti Hei that are listening from afar we acknowledge you and we acknowledge the journey that it's taken to get you here. For me as a geek of New Zealand history—a self-professed geek as well—I want to take this opportunity to be able to tell the historical story of Ngāti Hei. This is something that sits within their deed but it's actually something that takes a lot of detail—to be able to get your historians into the same room your kuia your kaumātua to be able to get those stories down on paper is a really big thing. So I want to take an opportunity to read some of that historical account so that people out there that are listening trying to sympathise with the plight of Ngāti Hei to actually truly understand the hard journey that it's taken to even still be alive today. To be able to sit here in this House and talk about their Treaty settlement is a feat of nature unto itself. At the last census they identified that only 650 identified as Ngāti Hei. That means that the actions of the Crown which have sought to marginalise Ngāti Hei and wipe them off the face of this planet nearly happened—it actually nearly happened. So I want to start in the historical account and I want the House to know that as this goes through the House I hope that we continue to tell their story their account their acknowledgments and eventually that sweetness of being able to hear the Crown apology back home back on their whenua. In 1836 and 1837 a timber trader made agreements with Ngāti Hei rangatira over lands on either side of the Ounuora River. In 1839 another trader negotiated a land transaction for an area around Tairua. Both claims were investigated by the Land Claims Commission. There were anomalies in the evidence presented to the commissions. The boundaries of the transactions and the goods given in payment to Māori were sometimes unclear. After accepting the commissioners' recommendations the Crown awarded almost 7000 acres of land in which Ngāti Hei had interests to European claimants. As a result Ngāti Hei lost much of their coastal whenua. Between 1858 and 1865 the Crown purchased Ahuahu otherwise known as Great Mercury Island from other Hauraki iwi. That's right not Ngāti Hei—other Hauraki iwi. There is no evidence that Ngāti Hei were consulted about this purchase or that they received payment for their customary interests in this land. Between 1859 and 1865 the Crown bought over 20000 acres of land in the Ngāti Hei rohe. The Crown did not provide reserves for Ngāti Hei nor did it require any assessment as to whether Ngāti Hei retained adequate land for their needs. Between 1870 and 1890 15 large blocks with 1000 acres or more totalling over 93000 acres were permanently alienated from Ngāti Hei. The Crown purchased 12 of those blocks which amounted to over 81000 acres in total. In 1885 the Ngāti Hei owners of Kūaotunu 3 entered into a lease arrangement with a timber felling company. The owners considered that the lease gave the company only the right to harvest timber. The owners claimed that the company had deliberately misled them over the contents of this lease which included rights to land. The timber company took its case to the Validation Court in 1895. Ngāti Hei incurred considerable costs attending the court hearing in Auckland. The court rejected the timber company's case. At the same time the Crown was in the process of purchasing interests in Kūaotunu 3. The Crown refused to give Ngāti Hei a reserve at Te Whauwhau partly on the basis that there had been no reserve granted in the lease despite the lease having no legal standing. There has been a history of extractive industry in the Ngāti Hei rohe including kauri logging kauri gum digging flax milling gold mining and fishing. Ngāti Hei have derived little long-term benefit from these industries and the damage done to the environment in their rohe is a source of grievance for them. In 1923 Ngawhira Tanui of Ngāti Hei wrote to the Crown to ask for a survey of Ohinau Island for the purpose of taking her claims for ownership to the Native Land Court. The Crown reacted by delaying the Native Land Court hearings while it surveyed the island and then took it under the Public Works Act of 1908. Although the Crown needed only a small part of that land for a lighthouse it acquired the whole 72-acre island. By the end of the 20th century Ngāti Hei were virtually landless. The resulting marginalisation of Ngāti Hei including loss of te reo Māori educational underachievement sickness and socio-economic deprivation caused the iwi much suffering. The Crown's discouragement of te reo Māori along with the fragmentation of Ngāti Hei tribal structures and the migration from ancestral lands severely impacted Ngāti Hei's ability to pass mātauranga Māori on to their mokopuna.That there is the summary of the historical account. I hope that people here in this House fellow colleagues parliamentarians but also those people that are listening to this and will continue to listen to this into the future I hope they understand the depth of this historical account. I hope that they understand that when you alienate a people from their land as the Crown has done over a very long time now it serves to displace the people that originally inhabited those lands. I look forward to progressing this through to the Māori Affairs Committee in what little time we've got left of this Parliament. I look forward to Ngāti Hei being able to tell their story in their own authentic way. I look forward to hearing from other iwi who believe that they may be impacted by this settlement. I look forward to that whole process. This is the moment where we pull the bandage off and we have a look at the hakihaki underneath and we try and chart a pathway forward. It's going to be maybe a bit triggering for some of the remaining members of Ngāti Hei to be able to hear these stories but it needs to be done for them to be able to get to the point where they hear a Government apology out of the mouth of our Minister Andrew Little the current Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations—I acknowledge him for bringing this to the House—but also for them to be able to move forward and seize the future opportunities. And while it might sound good to those people that look at what the redress looks like we in this House know that it will never ever account for the injustice that happened through structures that this Parliament this Crown put in place to absolutely marginalise and wipe out these people. It will never ever compensate for that. But I acknowledge again Ngāti Hei for their perseverance in going through this process that the Crown marginalised them out of in the first place and that the Crown's trying to do and trying to fix it up so that we can move forward together with opportunities. And can I say that there are some opportunities in there co-governance opportunities as well for the iwi to have to work with local councils back home in the Coromandel and that may be very triggering and very scary for some members of the community out there. But I'm a firm believer that when you have historical grievance like this the only way forward is together and I acknowledge Ngāti Hei for even wanting to continue to go on this journey with the Crown who were the ones that actually perpetrated the injustice in the first place. I acknowledge you. I wish you well on your journey going forward. I wish you well on conversations around what co-governance looks like. You are truly heroes in this equation in this kaupapa. And I acknowledge all of those that have passed on in recent years because they haven't been able to be here today to be part of this journey. Nō reira huri huri noa i tēnei Whare tēnā koutou tēnā koutou. Mauri ora ki a tātou katoa.[And so to all four corners of this House thank you ones thank you twice. And may the force be with us all.]ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Kia ora. Our next call is a split call. I call on Sam Uffindell for five minutes.