Hereora Dave: Te Roroa Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading 
Hereora Dave: Te Roroa Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:640;Page:10078] 
DAVE HEREORA (Labour) 
: 
 I take this opportunity for a call in support of the Te Roroa Claims Settlement Bill. To start off with I thought I would raise a bit of the background to the deed of settlement. Te Roroa has sought redress on a range of issues since 1861. The Waitangi Tribunal heard the claims of Te Roroa from June 1989 to May 1991. The Te Roroa report was published in 1992 and in 1993 Te Roroa and the Crown signed a framework agreement to begin negotiations. In 1996 the Crown formally recognised the mandate of the Te Roroa negotiators and signed comprehensive terms of negotiation specifying the objectives and general procedure for negotiating. 
 Negotiations intensified in 2003 with substantial progress being made during 2004. In December 2004 Te Roroa and the Crown signed a non-binding agreement in principle which recorded that in principle Te Roroa was willing to settle its historical claims on the basis of the Crown’s settlement proposal as set out in the agreement. In June 2005 the Government approved the proposed settlement package for Te Roroa and invited the Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations to initial the deed of settlement on behalf of the Crown. A deed of settlement for presentation to the Te Roroa claimant community was confirmed by an exchange of letters of 10 September 2005 and following ratification by the Te Roroa claimant community the deed of settlement was signed on 17 December 2005. 
I thought it was important just to place on the record the background to the process that led to the signing of the deed at which I was present late last year. I recall the discussions held at that signing and particularly the issues raised by Judge Joe Williams who spoke of his early involvement in the process as a young graduate lawyer at the time. He felt he had been shunted into what was then considered to be a controversial grievance settlement process but it was certainly according to him a steep learning curve for a young graduate. More important he acknowledged a lot of the Te Roroa settlement group and the kaumatua and kuia who had spearheaded and platformed the claim some 10 years previously. Having raised that point he said that because a lot of them had not survived the process they were unable to witness the final stages of this bill. He spoke emotionally about his association with the claimant group obviously having been a young graduate lawyer at the time. He spoke about the trust and the willingness of the group to try to strive towards a settlement which to it represented a positive change in direction. 
I do think it is important when we hear from the Opposition that this settlement is not durable to place on record that the deed of agreement and indeed the bill now before us are signs of an agreement between Te Roroa and the Crown and that they have not been influenced by an outside group. If that is the case then surely we must accept on the basis of trust and goodwill that this bill strikes a position of acceptance for us to be able to move on in the passage of this legislation. 
The other matter that I want to raise relates to the issues that the Maori Affairs Committee handled. We heard from the Minister about the area of deferred selection. Although committee members raised concern about what the committee could and could not achieve in this particular case we have managed to have some substantial movement by extending the deferred selection time frame by a further 6 months. Although that does not have an effect on any changes or alterations to this bill we have learnt from the Minister that there has indeed been some agreement on and acceptance of it from Te Roroa as well. 
All in all having heard a cross-section of concerns from submitters when the committee travelled to Dargaville at the end of this process and following the report back of the bill to the House as chair of the committee I want to take this opportunity to extend thanks to committee members for the work they have conducted throughout this process and also to acknowledge the Office of Treaty Settlements. Mr Finlayson raised the issue of the change in the number of negotiators who have come through that office. I understand he mentioned about five or six teams within that office over that period of time and given that there had been some changes he raised that as a question of durability. 
I do think though it is important to look at the other side and to acknowledge the claimant group’s team—the Te Roroa negotiating team—and the vast changes that it must have experienced in just trying to keep up with the process. But again I want to reiterate that Judge Joe Williams in his address on the day that the deed of settlement was signed was very careful to say he wanted to acknowledge all those negotiators from Te Roroa who had not survived the process. It would have indeed been an opportunity for them had they survived it to be here to participate in this final stage. 
Finally I want to say that because Treaty claims settlements are agreements between claimant groups and the Crown we are keen to know that they have both accepted them. On that basis we know that this settlement will be durable that it does represent a positive change in direction for this claimant group and that Te Roroa is getting on with the business. Kia ora.