Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tū ake tū ake Te Whakatōhea. [Stand up stand up Te Whakatōhea.]It's an honour and a privilege today to stand in the second reading of this bill the Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Bill and mihi to ngā hapū o Te Whakatōhea Ngāti Rua Ngāi Tamahaua Ngāti Patumoana Ngāti Ngahere Ngāti Ira and Te Ūpokorehe. May I also acknowledge the members of Te Whakatōhea who are in the House tonight as well as the negotiators who have participated in the negotiation of these settlement claims and to the Māori Affairs Committee who were lucky to recently join Te Whakatōhea in the rohe to experience the development that is going on around not only the settlement trust but in the organisations that have existed for many many years to represent the economic development interests of Te Whakatōhea and the town of Ōpōtiki that they are the kaitiaki over.This is the opportunity for the House to consider this bill that's returned from the select committee and I'm happy to see that it has returned with no changes. Members around the House tonight have spoken about the many concerns that were raised by submitters and submitters have been carefully listened to by the Māori Affairs Committee here have been no changes made to this legislation because ultimately it has been the view of everyone who's participated in those hearings and in Te Whakatōhea's rohe in Ōpōtiki this bill must continue and its settlement of these claims is extremely important.I want to talk a little bit about—I was lucky to join the Māori Affairs Committee I'm not usually a member of that committee but I got to go along to the hearings in Ōpōtiki and to meet with those people who wanted to raise issues about the settlement. And my own personal reflection on that because I am uri o Te Whakatōhea through my father's connection there; he was raised on the shores of the Ōhiwa Harbour. He was born in the year 1934 and a year into his life he was taken to his grandmother there Wairemana Patutoro and he was raised by Rimaha who was a minister of the Hāhi Ringatū in that area and his grandmother. And so his connection there is like many of the people of that era who were brought up in Te Whakatōhe's rohe his whakapapa was a mottled mix of those people from Tūhoe from the wider East Coast and from Te Whakatōhe's rohe. Because the period between 1860 and 1890—which is covered so well in the Crown apology in this bill—was a period of upheaval and of persecution of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Tūruki and from the area those people who identified with Te Whakatōhea Tūhoe and the many iwi around that rohe and it led to a clearance of Ōpōtiki onto native land reservations and other people from the area having interests in lands. And so my father is a product of what is essentially a period in our colonial history which was deeply disruptive of not only Te Whakatōhea but of all of the iwi who called Ōpōtiki home.I say it's a period of colonisation because this is the direct impact of the economic interests of settlers in the area and of those things which are directly referenced in this settlement bill like the killing of Mokomoko which can be seen now as tools of the colonial Government of the day to move people away from what was essentially highly profitable farmland and a highly profitable area where there was a port. And so you can see the development of this area as a sort of microcosm of the way that the colonial Government of the time treated Māori people and individual hapū and iwi and from that we can learn a lesson of how these Treaty settlements bills should restore that kind of economic prosperity to the regions.So that was what I saw. While I was there I thought about my dad growing up with his grandmother and how they lived basically a subsistence existence. He grew up down by the Roimata that is out at Kutarere and between the Kutarere wharf and as you go around to a place called Hiwarau. Dad grew up in a raupō whare. It had a dirt floor and every year they would have to replace the roof. his subsistence existence was the norm for my dad because that had always been his grandparents' lifestyle and it had always been their way to look after this place which was important to the life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Tūruki. It was somewhere where he was injured before he died just around the corner and it's somewhere which is sacred to the Hāhi Ringatū. I tell you this story because there are not many people alive today who grew up in that setting. He only learnt English when he was nine years old because that was the age that he was able to walk to the school at Kutarere himself because it was about a 40-minute walk across the mudflats and he had to do that in the wintertime. And I thought when I was sitting there—in this incredible tour that Te Whakatōhea was able to give us around the mussel farms the factories the economic development opportunities as well as their involvement with the local schools and the local housing projects—of how much of an impact something like that would have had on the life of a child like my dad who grew up in the area. You know he grew up in a rural area that had none of those services. Peter Fraser's Government was the first Government that put buses on the roads so that he could get to school and that was initially what took him to high school in Ōpōtiki and then later on to teachers college. But the kind of economic interventions that an iwi can lead where they know the needs of the people where they can connect with the local communities and where they can deliver services that are fit for children like my dad living in those areas is phenomenal. The economic development role of iwi playing in these regions cannot be understated and it is so important that settlements like these proceed.That is why we look to the issues which were raised with the committee in submissions and those were seriously felt hara that the hapū are raising here with the Crown's process and settlement. I acknowledge those; those are hurtful. Those are hurtful now to the people who feel deeply about these issues. Things like the 33 sites of cultural redress which are being transferred by this bill to Te Whakatōheathat hapū feel a greater interest is owed to them and not to the wider collective. Things like the joint management board arrangements between the Ōpōtiki District Council and the iwi that do not properly recognise the supremacy of those hapū in their individual areas and which they feel overcuts the arrangements which they already have in place for resource management by the hapū. Those are those are very real concerns.I also personally do not agree with the renaming of the Waioeka Scenic Reserve and I spoke about this in the first reading speech. Waioeka is the name of my daughter and the diphthong in aioe" is an important part of te reo Māori. It is an important part of the way we understand our language that these diphthongs exist. And so to put the "w" in "Waioweka" I think is incorrect and it's certainly not what I understand the position of the other iwi who whakapapa to the river Waioeka to be. And that was not what was captured in the history of the story of the Waioeka River when it was put together by my uncle Charlie Pera and Rutene Irwin who has now sadly passed away. I still disagree with those things but I'm standing here in heartfelt commendation of this bill. This is such an important bill because of the impact that it can have on the lives of those kids like my dad who grew up in the arms of Te Ūpokorehe at the Ōhiwa Harbour. To be able to grow up in a town where your iwi has launched an absolute world first of a healthcare centre te kōpū ārau [a recovery centre] for people with alcohol and drug addictions. That is a world first and it is something that this settlement will be able not only to continue and to grow but to let this iwi model that for the other iwi it is working with and for everywhere around the country. I hope we can have more of these facilities which these kinds of settlements can empower. The kind of impact that they can have on housing—Te Whakatōhea is a leader in the country in the way that it has not only built its own homes for its own people but has resourced that with a pipeline of building work and construction jobs in the town unlike any other. This is a model that we should be replicating around the country in regional development projects.I'm so proud to be an uri of Te Whakatōhea when this is what they can achieve with the settlement. That is why—it may not be perfect but Te Whakatōhea are going places with it. And I commend this bill to the House."