Davis KelvinKELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare ā e Ngāti Tamaoho tēnei ahau e tū ake hei mihi ki a koutou kua tae mai tō koutou pire ki mua i te aroaro o Te Whare nei. Kua rongo ai mātou mai i Te Minita kua whā tau kua pāhore mai i te hainatanga o te agreement in principle" ā kua roa koutou e tatari ana kia tae mai ki tēnei rangi. Nā reira e mihi kau ana ki a koutou Ngāti Tamaoho. Kei te huri ngā whakaaro hoki ki tērā o ngā kahurangi a Nāneko Minhinnick kua pahore atu ki tua o te ārai. Ko ia nei tētahi o ngā kaihāpai o tēnei kaupapa nā reira e Te Whaea e moe e moe e moe. Nā ko rātou ki a rātou te hunga wairua ka hoki mai ki a tātou ngā kanohi ora tēnā rā tātou. [Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. And so to you Ngāti Tamaoho I rise to acknowledge you. Your bill has arrived before this House. We have heard from the Minister that 4 years have passed since the signing of "the agreement in principle" and you have waited a long time for this day to arrive. Therefore I acknowledge you profusely Ngāti Tamaoho. Thoughts are turning as well to that one of the highly ranked persons Nāneko Minhinnick who has passed beyond the veil. She was indeed one of the supporters of this proposal and so to you esteemed mother figure sleep rest slumber. Now then they the spiritual ones to themselves; I come back to us the living. Salutations to us.]If one is to drive along the Southern Motorway heading from Auckland through to the Waikato you will pass through areas such as Karaka where the horses are raised and that is pretty fine fertile land. You get to the Bombay Hills and the site where St Stephen's School used to be. It is situated on a very fine piece of property—an ideal place actually for a school. It is a pity that the buildings at St Stephen's are in the state they are in now. But then if you go over the brow of the hill you get to where the market gardens are and those market gardens are quite substantial blocks of land that create much employment for New Zealanders. They produce vegetables. Peeni Henare: Food basket. KELVIN DAVIS: It is a food basket. It generates a lot of money and business but sadly the area that I have tried to describe was part of Ngāti Tamaoho's landholdings in years gone by. I can almost guarantee that next to none of that land will be in Ngāti Tamaoho's possession these days and that is a direct result of the actions of the Crown. We have heard how Ngāti Tamaoho was treated by the Crown all those years ago and it is set out in the acknowledgments in this bill. In the mid-1850s Ngāti Tamaoho were in fact very friendly to the Crown. They tried to work cooperatively with the Crown. They tried to establish economic opportunities. They participated in land transactions that actually contributed to much of the site of where Auckland City is now. The Crown was pretty hopeless—I guess that is the easy way of saying it—in terms of making sure that the interests of Ngāti Tamaoho and the land of that area were looked after. Settlers came in and basically plonked themselves there and nothing was done about it. Ngāti Tamaoho sort of woke up one day and said "My gosh! What are these people doing settling here? We didn't agree to them settling on this land." but nothing was done. Certainly their customary interests in the land were not looked after. The streams were degraded the land was cleared surplus land that was taken from Ngāti Tamaoho in pre-Treaty purchases was not returned to Ngāti Tamaoho and basically—as our colleague Pita Paraone from New Zealand First said—by 1900 Ngāti Tamaoho were left landless. As Peeni Henare said earlier in the day it is not just about the loss of land; it is about the loss of mana and it is about the loss of wairua. For many people it may be hard to understand the connection that land has to Māori and to Māoridom and how the loss of land leads to a loss of all those other aspects of what it means to be Māori and this has been a direct result of the actions or lack of actions of the Crown. The Crown failed to set aside a tenth of the land for Ngāti Tamaoho. Ngāti Tamaoho expected to benefit from land sales they expected to have schools developed and they expected to have medical care and none of this happened. In fact Ngāti Tamaoho were expected to swear allegiance to the Crown. They were not given any opportunity to actually discuss what the oath of allegiance would mean for them and when they did not actually swear that oath of allegiance in a timely manner they were considered to be rebels. They had their kāinga—their homes—destroyed. Maybe that is the start of the homelessness situation and the lack of housing we have in New Zealand because the Crown actually just came in and wiped out people's living places. If we can equate that to a modern context maybe it is sort of like David Seymour asking the people of the Epsom electorate to swear allegiance to him and when they do not he goes in and burns downs Parnell. If that happened these days there would be one heck of an uproar. There would be lawsuits everywhere. But of course back in those days Ngāti Tamaoho did not have the benefit of fancy lawyers to make a stand for them. They were expected to swear allegiance to an entity they did not quite understand probably in a language that was their second language and basically it left them in the situation they are in now where we have had to come to the House to settle it. As we keep saying in these settlement bills the compensation that is coming to Ngāti Tamaoho will be just a fraction—probably less than 1 percent—Louisa Wall: Way less. KELVIN DAVIS: —less than probably a tenth of 1 percent—of the value of everything that they have lost. So it is important that we stand in the House—and it is great to see all the parties standing up to speak to this bill—because we do value it highly. It is sad to see though that the Māori Party has decided not to take the opportunity to take a call on this bill. We figured that the Māori Party would be the one party—oh sorry no. It would be one of the parties that you would expect to stand every time to speak on every Treaty settlement bill like the Labour Party certainly does. To know that members of the Māori Party have chosen not to take up this opportunity while they are on the precinct—that they have got more important work for themselves to do—is really bitterly disappointing. As we say in Māori it is whakaiti—it is belittling this bill it is belittling Ngāti Tamaoho and it is a very sad state of affairs from the Māori Party. So I will leave things there. I look forward to following the progress of the Ngāti Tamaoho Claims Settlement Bill through the Māori Affairs Committee. It is important that we do get to the end of these Treaty settlements for the benefit not just of Māoridom but of all New Zealand. Tēnā koutou. Bill read a first time. Bill referred to the Māori Affairs Committee.The House adjourned at 12.45 p.m. (Thursday)"