SpeechHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): My apologies for being slightly premature. E mihi ana ki a Ranginui rāua ko Papatūānuku tēnā kōrua. Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koutou ngā mema o te Whare Pāremata. Tēnā koutou Ngāti Rangitihi tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa.[I acknowledge and greet the Sky Father and the Earth Mother. Greetings Madam Speaker greetings to the members of this House of Parliament. Greetings to Ngāti Rangitihi greetings greetings greetings one and all.]I'm really pleased to take a short call on the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill and can I particularly acknowledge the Te Mana o Ngāti Rangitihi Trust who negotiated with the Crown and particularly people like Leith Comer Catherine Moana Dewes Tia Warbrick Merepeka Raukawa-Tait and Donna Semmens. The bill as others have said was referred to the Māori Affairs Committee under the capable chairing of Tāmati Coffey last June. It received some 20 submissions and there have been some small technical changes to it but nothing substantive.I feel very humbled to speak on this bill because of my role last term as the Minister of Conservation and the role that Te Papa Atawhai had particularly in some of the cultural redress in the bill. It's always instructive just to get a small insight into the horrors of colonisation the loss of mauri the loss of mana the loss of whenua to look at the history that is encapsulated in all of the Treaty settlement bills. In this bill clause 8 describes some of the history and some of the impacts of colonisation on Ngāti Rangitihi. They had very little contact with Pākehā before the 1820s. They didn't sign the Treaty and they didn't accept the Crown's authority. In 1866 of course there were large confiscations of land in the Bay of Plenty including land to which Ngāti Rangitihi had a strong connection. Those confiscation claims were never properly investigated despite the protests of rangatira. Of course in our land law back in the 1860s the Crown went about converting collectively held land land that was held by Māori in tribal ownership into individual tenure. This was devastating. Then in the 1870s through to 1890s there were proceedings in the Native Land Court but this succeeded in burdening Ngāti Rangitihi with considerable survey costs and didn't really resolve any of the claims. Then you had the Crown refusing to pay rent on land where the tenure was yet to be determined.Then of course there was the Tarawera eruption the largest the deadliest eruption in Aotearoa in the last 500 years. More than 110 people perished and around half of those were Ngāti Rangitihi. We've seen the devastation that the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption has caused—people losing their homes crops being destroyed livelihoods being destroyed. That big plume of ash from the Tarawera eruption the flattening of forest the destruction of villages the destruction of crops caused enormous harm and damage to Ngāti Rangitihi. What did the Crown do? Did it provide the sort of humanitarian assistance that we've seen the community and the Government extend to Tonga? No. The bill records in clause 8(4) that instead of extending support and help to Ngāti Rangitihi—and I quote—The Crown generally acted as a monopoly purchaser and aggressively purchased Ngāti Rangitihi lands." Those were lands that if they hadn't been damaged if Ngāti Rangitihi hadn't lost so many of its own and been dispersed and displaced Ngāti Rangitihi would have been very unlikely to have sold.So you have considerable poverty huge displacement the loss of a basis for economic wellbeing the loss of mauri the loss of the connection with the whenua and then of course the Crown action in draining areas like the Rangitikei wetlands—an enormously significant mahanga kai drained and converted to pasture.All of this history and the destruction of the connection with the land meant the loss of the traditional tribal ownership structures. The bill recognises acknowledges and apologises for that history of Crown action.The Crown in the bill also recognises its failure to protect the Tarawera River. The Tarawera awa is of enormous spiritual and cultural importance to Ngāti Rangitihi. Like others in this House I have walked beside that river. It flows out of Lake Tarawera. It's in almost pristine condition. The waters are crystal clear at Te Tapa Horo which is the campsite beside the river which is being vested in Ngāti Rangitihi. It disappears underground and then some distance downstream it shoots out of the rock in a 65-metre cascade down a rocky cliff face. It is spectacular one of our natural wonders.In contrast to the river flowing out of the lake in crystal clear condition downstream because of the pulp and paper mill in Kawerau it becomes the black drain. In 2010 when the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment reported on some of New Zealand's filthiest rivers the Tarawera was the second filthiest. So this black drain has had thousands of tonnes of pulp and paper discharged into it over decades and it was because of the legislation the Crown passed in 1954 the Tasman Pulp and Paper Company Enabling Act which had minimal concern for the environmental impacts of those discharges the impacts on the mauri of the river and Ngāti Rangitihi. I acknowledge the work of Catherine Delahunty former Green MP working alongside Ngāti Rangitihi to try and get the loophole in the Resource Management Act closed and to clean up the river and stop those discharges.This settlement is really important because it provides for Tarawera awa restoration strategy group an eight-member joint committee of the Bay of Plenty Regional Council with four members from iwi Ngāti Rangitihi alongside Ngāti Awa Ngāti Mangakino and Ngāti Tūwharetoa and for local councils. Their mahi will be to restore the mauri and the wellbeing of the Tarawera River and redress the harm that has been done by the pollution and those thousands of tonnes of pulp and paper effluent.Certainly the bill provides for financial and commercial redress but we'd just like to talk again about some of the cultural redress because it is the cultural redress the return of 80 hectares of really significant conservation land at Waimangu to Ngāti Rangitihi in a way which has been negotiated with Tūhourangi which will allow the joint ownership and management of that land. It was in 2017 that Ngāti Rangitihi and Tūhourangi purchased the concession which enables the public to visit the spectacular geothermal wonders of Waimangu and operate that jointly and now we see this land which has got the most significant geothermal vegetation in Aotearoa on it going back to Ngāti Rangitihi. Like others I really commend the generosity and the negotiations which have happened with Tūhourangi which allows land to be returned to Tūhourangi particularly the Ōtūkapuarangi area on the shores of Lake Rotomahana in a separate side agreement with Tūhourangi.The cultural redress also includes the recognition agreements over about 1800 hectares of the Tarawera scenic and historic reserves around the lake to ensure that Ngāti Rangitihi's values and the significance of those areas to Ngāti Rangitihi are properly recognised through the statutory written acknowledgment in resource management proceedings and in any proceedings about the management of that land.The bill as others have said is never enough but it is a step in terms of recognising the harm that has been done in the past and setting Ngāti Rangitihi on a new direction where it is getting the basis of its connection with the whenua actually restored. The Green Party is very pleased to support the bill."