Franks Stephen: Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Ngati Tama Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:613;Page:10175] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
The ACT party has signalled that it feels obliged to vote against this bill not because it has any particular opposition to the way in which the claim has been negotiated or any particular concern that Ngati Tama’s claim is in any way less meritorious than any other or that Ngati Tama did not suffer grievous injustice in the last century. But we believe that this House should not be a rubber stamp that there is no point in going through this legislative process if we do not address ourselves to what the Crown has done. The Parliament is not the Crown. Parliament is supposed to look after the interests—if we go right back into the mists of time Parliament was the assembly of taxpayers looking to make sure that when the Crown spent their money it did so in accordance with sound law and sound objectives.  
The title of this bill says that it is a settlement but when we look at this bill which is in a form that the Government has brought to the House before and undoubtedly expects to bring to the House again there are elements that do not settle the claims. There are elements of these bills that deliberately leave open scope for future grievance. There are statements in them that we believe it is wrong for the Crown to be making.  
For example there is a long recital in the preamble to the record that is part of the deed of settlement. If the House does not take the opportunity when it is discussing the detail as we are now to say: “Please don’t bring back future deeds of settlement in that form to us because we’re very uncomfortable about them.” then it never will. I believe that the ACT party as so often is actually raising concerns that all or many New Zealanders feel about the treaty claim process but most parties have been too politically correct to touch. Indeed I think that until the last 18 months this House has not been performing its duty. It has treated most of these issues as if they were beyond debate. There has been a tacit consensus between—it may even have been explicit for all I know—the two dominant parties National and Labour that these matters would go through as if they were not contentious; they were to go through in a hush without anyone questioning them.  
We believe that New Zealand First and the other parties that have found their tongue recently should be very concerned about a bill whose preamble recites I think seven times the so-called principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The right honourable leader of New Zealand First has made a great play in the House of the non-answers he has had from the Minister—the Hon Margaret Wilson—and from the Prime Minister and from all other Ministers when he has asked what the principles are. I have asked what those principles are. I have asked the Parliamentary Library what those principles are and have been given 13 different versions of documents produced at various times and for various purposes. They are largely consistent but they are largely also statements of pious aspiration. They are not suitable for putting in as legal obligations. 
This Committee should not be recording a deed of settlement without reflecting when it becomes legislation that pious aspiration can be very dangerous. Because this bill which claims to be a settlement bill may well in future be the evidence that the next generation uses to enable it to come along and say as this generation is saying “The last crowd didn’t do it right.”  
The Sim Commission went through these processes. Peter Fraser supported that 60 years ago to try to do justice for Maori in what everyone has acknowledged was grave injustice. But that settlement turned out to be not as worthwhile as everyone thought. Properties went up and money value went down. The wrong beneficiaries were found. These are all elements we can see in this current settlement.  
New Zealanders believe that these settlements are intended to be permanent. Indeed we were told this morning in an open session in the Maori Affairs Committee that the Office of Treaty Settlements does intend to sign up to only durable settlements. Unfortunately the Ngati Tama claim settlement as with others of this pattern is highly unlikely to be durable when it has elements in it that we cannot understand and neither side knows what the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi are.