Mahuta Nanaia: Raukawa Claims Settlement Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMahuta Nanaia: Raukawa Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16154. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. E koa ana tēnei ki te tuku i ēnei whakaaro hei whakarāpopoto i ngā whakaaro kei waenganui i a mātou te komiti whakahaere mō ngā āhuatanga e pā ana ki tēnei whakatutukitanga o Raukawa. Nō reira Ngāti Raukawa tēnā koutou.[Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to express these views that will sum up the thoughts amongst us the committee responsible for addressing thecircumstances that relate to this settlement of Raukawa. So acknowledgements to you collectively the tribe of Raukawa.]It gives me great pleasure to be able to offer a contribution in this second reading of the Raukawa Claims Settlement Bill. I will reserve the substance of my comments around this bill for the third reading and want to limit this contribution really to the considerations that the Māori Affairs Committee made in hearing the submissions in Tokoroa regarding each component of the Raukawa Claims Settlement Bill. Can I say this: I want to commend the chair of the Raukawa Trust Board Vanessa Eparaima and your team for presenting the Raukawa Claims Settlement Bill in a way that gave a quiet assurance to members that a lot of work had gone in to building and networking the relationships that impacted on some components of your settlement. I say that with some caution because in a sense this settlement can be considered within the context of the Waikato River settlement within the context of the Ngāti Korokī Kahukura settlement which is currently being considered by our select committee and also—hopefully Minister—the Maniapoto settlement which with fingers crossed might just get to us before election time.What we have is a matrix of very interwoven interests and whakapapa connections that contribute to a profile I guess of why settlements such as this will continue to require a lot of work. Vanessa herself when she came to the select committee made a very strong point about how much work had gone in to the issue of overlapping claims because of where Raukawa is situated with interests around Te Arawa whānau interests with their cousins in Pōhara and Ngāti Korokī Kahukura and interests with their whanaunga in Maniapoto. This is how their conversation occurred before the select committee.Firstly in relation to Waikeria obviously both Raukawa and Maniapoto have interests in Waikeria. One of the issues that came to the committee’s attention was how both parties signalled that they were wanting to take up or purchase the Waikeria property. We heard views from both Raukawa and Waikeria. We understand that with agreement of each party whether it is by first right of refusal or otherwise each party will have cognisance of one another’s interests to either purchase or exercise the first right of refusal interest in Waikeria. The select committee stripping away all the narrative around this considered that the provisions in the bill are fine and that this will be a healthy way to deal with this particular property.The issue of Ngāti Korokī Kahukura is a sensitive issue because the original Raukawa claim was lodged by Wally Papa who is Ngāti Korokī Kahukura and now has since passed. His family continue to carry the interests of their hapū which is straddled by Waikato and Raukawa in a very—let us say—independent way. What the committee had decided in this instance is that although certain mana whenua and Ahi Kā interests exist for Ngāti Korokī Kahukura the overall benefit of the Raukawa settlement cannot get away from whakapapa links that are intrinsically tied to Ngāti Korokī Kahukura people and marae and the fact that there is an amount of interest that must be expressed in relation to Maungatautari and to areas of overlapping interests.I think it would be wrong for us to try to sift through some of the internal relationship whakapapa and geographical interests in a legislative way. My great hope actually is that through good relationships and ongoing communication these types of issues will be sorted. I will probably come back to this issue when the Ngāti Korokī Kahukura Claims Settlement Bill comes to the House to try to clarify how we can do that. But Ngāti Korokī Kahukura on the substance of this bill wanted the Māori Affairs Committee to make it absolutely clear that they had specific rights and interests from Arapuni back to Maungatautari and that that should not be impinged upon by the Raukawa settlement. I think the solution here is not a legislative one; it is a relationshipone. I stand to be corrected on that but if I back my gut instinct on it then the bill should enable those relationships to be strengthened in time. Whew—that felt like a hard thing to say.The next concern was the interests around Te Arawa. We had a very healthy conversation about whether Raukawa’s map of association should be included or not. The nature of the conversation was that Raukawa had expressed a geographical interest in an area or an association with an area but the question was whether that association necessarily Minister Finlayson leads to an interest. The conversation we had was that if there is an expressed interest with exclusive rights then we must be very clear about it. If it is an association then that relationship to a geographical area should not be leveraged over and above those Ahi Kā who live in a particular area.I specifically refer to the submission of Eru George who came to the select committee and some of the concerns that he had on—I think if I was correct—the west side of Mangakino. The committee was very clear in its mind that having understood what Raukawa was trying to affirm it was a whakapapa relationship and therefore a geographical connection to certain places within its settlement. We accepted that but we did not accept that it should be anything more than that if there are hapū mana whenua or ahi kā roa in areas who have a direct and relevant interest in an area. I need that to be very clearly understood in this second reading debate because in the third reading debate it is certainly my view and it will have to be absolutely assured that when people read the final Act and they read the debate in the House in reference to what was intended the expression of interests should not be over and above those interests of mana whenua and ahi kā roa in a particular area.We were very impressed with the way in which Raukawa had gone about seeking participation and affirmation of their mandate and also their governance entity. There was no doubt about the fact that they had really thought about the future and how they could better prepare Raukawa going forward and that they had looked at this from an intergenerational perspective from a good governance perspective and from a representative perspective. We could not fault the way in which they had approached that. Therefore any criticism in that component of that debate was not really received by the select committee.Those were in essence what I had identified as the key issues in this second reading that should be referred to. One last point: we did make an amendment to make it clear that should the Ngāti Maniapoto Māori Trust Board change and become some other entity the reference in the bill needed to be clarified to ensure that any transfer of asset could go to the successor of the trust board. I wanted to make this point: given that the board is in its current process of claims hearings and it wants to be proactive in speeding up its negotiations it may well be that any transfer of Waikeria in the future may go to another entity not the Ngāti Maniapoto Māori Trust Board and that is as it should be.I enjoyed listening to the history the passion the expertise and the wisdom of the people of Raukawa when they presented to the select committee. They have done a fine job. I trust that my comments relating to Ngāti Korokī Kahukura will be taken on board by all listening and I trust that this bill will provide a way for better relationships to continue. Kia ora.