Burns Brendon: Resource Management (Enhancement of Iwi Management Plans) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Burns Brendon: Resource Management (Enhancement of Iwi Management Plans) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 July 2010. Volume:665;Page:12601. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 Kia ora tatou. I am very pleased to support this bill in the name of my colleague Nanaia Mahuta and commend her for it. This is a bill about creating the potential for front-end consultation with iwi without the need first for Treaty settlements such as happened in the Waikato. It will take some effort from councils to implement this bill if passed but the benefits of it are I think very very clear. We do not need to look very far into our history to see a graphic example of where a bill like this might have prevented a major issue that we are still as a Parliament and as a nation dealing with today. 
I think back to Marlborough 10 years ago when iwi in the Marlborough Sounds felt that they were being excluded from the growing race for water space in the Marlborough Sounds. They believed whether right or not that a councillor or councillors were precluding them from gaining any water space. What did that lead to? It led to the foreshore and seabed issue that this Parliament and indeed this Government are still trying to resolve today. Yet this Government is saying that it will oppose this very sensible bill. 
I also note that Nick Smith who has been in the House tonight has today announced a moratorium on the Hurunui River and further extraction of water in that catchment. That decision was recommended to him by the Environment Canterbury commissioners he installed by parliamentary majority just a few months ago. Included amongst the seven commissioners is one appointed iwi representative. Yet Dr Smith and this National Government say that they do not support this bill which facilitates iwi input into decision making and allows for some recognition of iwi management plans—some taking proper account of iwi management plans when councils are forming their own plans. It is very very much a bill that will allow Maori to be truly taken account of in their contributions to the future of a regional plan and of a region. 
I also note that the ACT leader Rodney Hide in talking about what I suppose in a sense is a precursor to this bill—the co-governance arrangements on the Waikato River which gave Tainui a right for some input into the decision making on the river they regard as so sacred and important—commented that it was an inappropriate decision because it was not democratic. He said that it was not giving the community the right to sack people—that people coming from iwi into those co-governance arrangements were only being appointed. Yet Rodney Hide along with Dr Smith was very pleased to be able to sack the Environment Canterbury councillors just a few months earlier and that supposedly did not contravene any democratic principle at that time. 
This is a bill that makes sense. It acknowledges that Maori through iwi management plans should be allowed to have some input into council plans. It acknowledges that they have in the past—and it was extraordinarily variable—not been able to have their views heard around council tables when important decisions are being made. The goal of the bill is to ensure that more weight is given to iwi concerns in planning and consenting processes and that there be a greater level of engagement between councils and iwi. That is a commendable principle. It should not have to require Treaty settlements and it should be something that this Parliament recognises and reflects in the adoption of this bill in the name of my colleague Nanaia Mahuta. The Opposition Labour Party supports this bill along with the Maori Party and the Green Party. We believe that the bill deserves to have a run and I think the Government should reconsider its position in respect of it. 
Debate interrupted.