Mapp Wayne: Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Mapp Wayne: Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:623;Page:18838] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 Those remarks by the Minister in the chair the Hon Mark Burton cannot go unchallenged. Going by what he is saying today it is almost as if he simply does not understand what this legislation is about. He is saying that we should set out in legislation the idea that a particular group’s spiritual values should have legislative protection. That is what the bill states I say to the Minister and that is the reality of it. We do not do that for any other group. We do not do that for the Catholics the Anglicans or the Muslims. 
Quite clearly we have a history of respect in this nation. 
Hon Mita Ririnui 
: Tainui settlement fisheries settlement— 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: That is actually incorrect but I will come back to that. Prior to the dinner break the Minister drew out the point that the Ngai Tahu legislation and indeed the Tainui legislation had references to nohoanga particular properties and so forth. That is not what we are discussing here. 
National will be voting for this bill. We will be doing so because we support the idea of settlements. We do understand that Ngati Awa have long and historic associations with particular places that should be noted in the legislation but in essence those are property rights. Ngati Awa will of course add their own cultural dimension to those property rights. That dimension does not require statutory protection. 
The Government’s approach illustrates the fundamental contrast between our approach in National when we were doing settlements in the 1990s and the error of the current Government. We recognised the connection in the Ngai Tahu legislation. Labour takes it further because its legislation will entrench a belief system into legislation and that is quite different. It is fundamentally different to entrench into legislation a belief system. 
In a modern democracy there is simply no role or place for putting specific statutory recognition of a particular group’s beliefs into our legislation. 
It is simply inappropriate. The reason why it is inappropriate is that one starts from the foundation that every person is created equal and has equal rights before the law. People have a right to their beliefs and that is protected under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That right is protected in the Treaty of Waitangi itself where it refers to the rights of British subjects. One of the inalienable rights of British subjects in 1840 was that their beliefs were to be respected. There was no necessity to entrench them into legislation. 
I believe that the current approach of the Government to dress up—because ultimately that is what it is—the protection of particular property rights with the statutory recognitions of spiritual beliefs and headings in the bill such as “cultural redress” will do harm. For the sake of apparently being inclusive as Mr Mita Ririnui would have us believe it actually ends up dividing people. It is one of the tragedies of this Government that it is simply unable to recognise that. 
Has the Government not understood the tremendous reaction to Dr Brash’s speech at Orewa last year? That reaction was real and the Government knows it. Members opposite may scoff but they know that that speech spontaneously struck a chord with the public. It was about the fundamental structure and values of our society in terms of equality of the law. The Government did try to respond. It created a Coordinating Minister Race Relations. But when it comes to putting legislation in place the Government still continues its old pattern and that is most unfortunate. Because this bill is not the way to build unity in the country. I say by all means make settlements by all means recognise the historic and traditional associations of indigenous people but do not divide our society by elevating the spiritual beliefs of one particular group.