Finlayson ChristopherHon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National): Madam Deputy Speaker as I'm out of here in the next couple of weeks I'd very much like to give a general statement about Treaty settlements and Taranaki without being reprimanded by you for not strictly complying with the Standing Orders on third readings.I remember very well going to Māui Pōmare Day at Owae Marae in 2009 as a rookie Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations and saying to the representatives there how great it would be if we dealt with the remaining Treaty settlements and I don't think I was too popular at the Office of Treaty Settlements on the Monday after Māui Pōmare Day but we got started. On 17 March 2010 the then Prime Minister John Key and I signed the terms of negotiation with Te Atiawa in New Plymouth and I went around the coast to sign the terms of negotiation with Taranaki and then we also signed with Ngāruahine. They were great settlements and great negotiations even if Mahara Okeroa whom I welcome to the House today and Jamie Tuuta who's in the gallery drove me to distraction at the eleventh hour when they said to me just when I was ready to initial the deed in relation to Taranaki What about Parihaka?" I was angry then I have to say to him—through you Madam Deputy Speaker—but I understand now why it was so important to deal with the issue of Parihaka. Mr Little and I and the Chief Justice and others went to Parihaka in June 2017 to acknowledge what had happened there and to apologise for it.The other delight for me as a Minister—this time as the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage—was to work with others in Taranaki to ensure that those beautiful Motunui panels could come back from Geneva and now to Puke Ariki where they hold pride of place there thanks to the work of Kelvin Day.There were two remaining issues on the Treaty front that needed to be addressed—first of all the issue of Mount Taranaki and the issue of legal personality building on the excellent work done in the 1970s by the Hon Venn Young Jonathan Young's father who was then Minister of Lands in the Muldoon administration. I never got to that stage and it's going to be a task that will be carried out I am sure by Mr Little. The final issue in Treaty settlement terms was a settlement with Ngāti Maru and that is progressing under the leadership of Mr Little.But there was one issue after all that enjoyable and wonderful work that worried me intensely and that was the issue of Waitara. That is why I am so very pleased that today we reach what I believe is a very satisfactory conclusion to that issue. No one as the Minister so insightfully said is fully satisfied. What happened in Taranaki—and for me it's been the education of a public man—was very very serious a blot on our nation's history an affront to the rule of law cruelty of a degree and of a magnitude that I think is without parallel in the history of our country. I can understand the depth of feeling and the fact that there probably as someone said to me not so long ago won't be true forgiveness in the Taranaki region for a couple more generations. But the good peoples in the gallery today need to understand that local and regional government have worked very hard with central government to at least try and create the conditions where ultimately there can be reconciliation. That is why this bill is so very important because it was in Waitara where the Land Wars started where there were such dreadful abuses and the lands the Pekapeka lands were and are lands that mean so much to the hapū of Waitara.But the threefold aims of this bill I believe go a long way to create a more just situation. Land is to be returned to the hapū of Waitara. There'll be an opportunity to purchase further land. Leaseholders receive a right to freehold; they are victims of those dreadful Glasgow leases—I almost was tempted to move a Supplementary Order Paper to include a right to achieve justice for Te Aute in the Hawke's Bay because they're victims of Glasgow leases as well—and then a fund to be used for the benefit of the Waitara community and as the Minister said the Waitara River. They're very important components of this bill and I believe the fund is going to be used for the benefit of the people of Waitara for years to come. Through this fund we will be also able to address environmental quality issues in the Waitara River.So I can't say it's with great pleasure that I stand here and speak because I know too much. I know the suffering that there has been in the Taranaki over the years and that is why I was so lucky as a Minister to be involved in dealing with these issues. But I really do want to commend my very dear friend and colleague Jonathan Young for his tireless work on this issue the sensitivity with which he has approached it. He hasn't tried to rush the issue; he's tried to deal with it very carefully and methodically working in more recent times with the Hon Nanaia Mahuta seeking the counsel of Andrew Little of course who grew up in the New Plymouth area and knows so many of these issues instinctively. It's been a tremendous effort by parliamentarians across the Chamber and I acknowledge that and thank them very much.Jonathan Young was very generous in his comments about Nashwa Boys and I too want to say how much I have appreciated her contribution. I first got to know her when she was an official in the Office of Treaty Settlements. Since then she's been an independent contractor but she's really thrown herself at this task and has done a wonderful job and I want to acknowledge her. I want to acknowledge Briar Gordon from the Parliamentary Counsel Office for her wonderful contribution building on the excellent drafting of the bill by David Cochrane who is a consultant in Simpson Grierson. One of the real pleasures of knowing that this bill has passed will be that David Cochrane with whom I play golf on a regular occasion will not start talking about the bill when I'm about to tee off. So that if anything is a positive that will come out of this legislative mechanism.It has been a long and difficult struggle. There will be people who will question the justice of this but I truly do believe that very good efforts have been made by the district council and the regional council and central government to deal with these issues justly. I believe that in years to come we'll all look back and say this was a very good piece of legislation which tried to do the very best it could to play its part in addressing the shocking inequities of the past. So I do commend the bill to the House."