Henare Tau: Māori Trustee Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHenare Tau: Māori Trustee Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 05 May 2009. Volume:654;Page:2866. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TAU HENARE (National):Finally! I congratulate the Minister Pita Sharples again on his understanding of clause 28 and with the help of his officials of course on giving us that definition. That puts my mind at ease: no worker from the Māori Trust Office will go away without any redundancy compensation if he or she is out of a job. So I am happy.The previous Labour speaker—Hon Member: Who was that?Hon TAU HENARE: Mr Kelvin Davis from Kāretu—Hon Mita Ririnui: Great speaker.Hon TAU HENARE: He is a great speaker although he traversed one of the issues I brought up before which was the finding of beneficiaries—the hunting of beneficiaries. I make no bones about the fact that if it is easy for agencies like the Bay Collection Agency and the Inland Revenue Department to find all these fellas quick-smart then somebody is doing the job properly.But I want to take this a bit further. Currently the Māori Trustee produces a book full of names. It is a list of names and next to the names are the amounts owed by the Māori Trustee to the individuals. It is no good just putting that book in the library or the rūnanga office and expecting a Mr Harry Walker to jump out of the ether and say “Wow! I am owed $500; I think I will go down to the rūnanga or the Māori Trustee’s office and get my money.” A concerted effort has to be made by the office of the Māori Trustee to find these people. Maybe our Government and our Minister of Māori Affairs should be looking to the future and saying “OK. Maybe we bring in a time period whereby we really go and look for these people who have gone and left no address. And if we can’t find them after a period of time then the money can be used for another purpose in terms of Māori development.”We have to protect the initial property right. We cannot just flick it off because we have bleeding hearts or believe we have a good idea. We cannot do it and this is where I think the biggest issue will take us in the next couple of years—the issue of the property right that belongs to the beneficiary that belongs to the shareholder. What if we make all the attempts to find these people and they still fail? Do we have the right then to be able to use that money for another purpose? That is a discussion no doubt that we will have in the future.Other than that I want to say again that it was a sterling effort by our Minister of Māori Affairs on the explanation of clause 28. It was very succinct. I do not think there is too much else wrong with Part 2—in fact there is nothing wrong with this part. As I said it is very procedural and very straightforward.Chris Hipkins: Is the Government filibustering this bill?Hon TAU HENARE: Oh well “Opie” asks the question—Hon Member: It’s “Richie Cunningham”.Hon TAU HENARE: It’s “Richie Cunningham”—I am sorry.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Can I just say before the member speaks that we are moving in some parts away from relevancy. We want to bring this back to be relevant to Part 2 of the debate.