Paraone Pita: Māori Purposes Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParaone Pita: Māori Purposes Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6628. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PITA PARAONE (NZ First): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker ā tēnā hoki tātou e noho nei i roto i te Whare i te wā nei. He tū wāhi poto tēnei ki te mihi atu ki a koutou o te hau kāinga e mātakitaki mai e ‘hakarongo hoki mai ana ki ēnei kōrero i puta atu nei i te Whare i te ahiahi nei. Tua atu i tēnā hiahia ana au kia mihi atu ki tetahi o waku whaea a Phoebe Matiu mōhio ana au ki tana kaha ki te mātakitaki i ngā mahi o te Whare nei nā reira ka nui taku mihi ki a ia mō tērā.[Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and greetings to us seated here in the House at this time. This is a short call to accord a tribute to those of you back home watching and listening as well to these contributions emerging from within the House this afternoon. Further to that I want to shout out to one of my aunties Phoebe Matiu. I know how staunch she is at watching the proceedings of this House and so I really appreciate her greatly for that.]I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to say that although we support much of the intention of this bill we do have some concerns and some of those concerns have already been articulated by members who have spoken before me.I want to just touch on a bit of history. Although I acknowledge the standing and the mana of Wīremu Pere himself a former member of this House I think that we would be remiss in not articulating the original reason for the trust. Due to his benevolence he found himself in some financial difficulty so that gave rise to the establishment of the trust because some money was owed to the Bank of New Zealand. It was the bank at the time that determined who should be the trustee and what its requirements were in accepting the trust so I just wanted to have that included in the discussion this afternoon.We have heard how in 2003 this trust had assets totalling $36 million and there has been the suggestion that it now has assets around $60 million. I ask the question: why are we changing the legislation for an entity that quite clearly is very successful?Meka Whaitiri: What’s broken?PITA PARAONE: That is the question: what is broken? I have some thoughts but I will keep those for the select committee process because we will certainly be supporting this legislation to the select committee. The Minister of Justice Minister Finlayson made reference to adoption—Hon Ruth Dyson: Attorney-General.PITA PARAONE: Oh the Attorney-General. He made reference to adoption and the intent of this legislation to recognise as beneficiaries only those who whakapapa to their tupuna. I want to ask a question. In terms of the Māori view—whāngai is very much of the Māori world view. My question is: what of those particular whāngai who have since passed on who at the time became beneficiaries? Their issue would be entitled and I would suggest that for some of those whāngai who fall into that category—who have since passed on—their issue will now be beneficiaries of the trust. In terms of the intent of the bill and the intent of the trust itself I am asking: what of those beneficiaries? Perhaps we will get some clarification during the select committee process.The notion of replacing the trustees with an incorporated trust board quite clearly is an indication that the trust wants to adopt a more corporate approach to its dealings and in spite of its concern about the overview that the Minister and the Māori Land Court have over their land assets it has still managed to do very well. I want to ask the question during the select committee process whether the Minister has ever been asked to intervene in the running of this trust.The other issue for me is grants. The previous speaker articulated the many grants that the trust presently makes available. I have some concerns as to whether or not those grants and the level of those grants will continue because when you move into the corporate world you need financial resources and one of the major sources is to just turn off the grants tap and make that available to whatever corporate decision you want to make. So I will certainly be asking that question in the select committee process.One concern that I have iswho then takes responsibility if things should go belly up as a consequence of this bill being passed? I suppose we have to go to the High Court. Talking about the court and in particular the Māori Land Court part of the intent of the bill is to allow the trust to administer its own beneficiary registration. At the moment that work is done by the Māori Land Court. I would suggest that the trust would probably not know the whereabouts of a number of its beneficiaries or its beneficiaries have not been succeeded to because people have not made the succession whereas with the Māori Land Court there is a drive to encourage beneficiaries to make succession and therefore keep the ownership list up to date.We heard about the current trustees consulting with the beneficiaries in 2009 and having a subsequent meeting in 2013 where a draft constitution and an overview of proposed amendments to the Maori Purposes Act were circulated. In November 2013 143 beneficiaries took part in making the decision as to whether or not this proposal should be adopted and although we talk about 91 percent of those 143 giving approval if we look at it in the context of having around 460 beneficiaries in total then the overall approval rate is not that high. However this seems to be the process that this Government is adopting particularly around Treaty settlements and so we should not be surprised that that return has been accepted and therefore forms the basis of this bill.Overall the bill is well intended but I fear for the beneficiaries—in particular the question of who might be appointed as trustees—because all you need is one or two rogue trustees and the whole asset base of the trust could be lost. Having said that I on behalf of New Zealand First will certainly be supporting the bill going to the Māori Affairs Committee. Kia ora.