Mahuta Nanaia: Maori Trustee Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Mahuta Nanaia: Maori Trustee Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato) 
: 
 Mr Deputy Speaker tenei au e tu ana ki te tapiri atu aku nei whakaaro ki era kua mihia ki to tatou nei rangatira wahine ki a Helen me te turanga i whiwhi i a ia. He honore tenei mo tatou katoa. No reira ka nui te mihi atu ki a ia. 
[ 
Mr Deputy Speaker I rise to add my thoughts to those expressed to this great stateswoman of ours Helen and the role she has gained. This indeed is an honour for all of us so I acknowledge her greatly 
.] 
I will add to the many remarks made by colleagues in this House to acknowledge the role that has been gained by the Rt Hon Helen Clark. She will do a fine job for New Zealanders and we should be proud of her. I certainly endorse the many comments made in this House. 
I rise to speak to the second reading of the Maori Trustee Amendment Bill and I support the intent with which it was introduced by the previous Minister of Maori Affairs the Hon Parekura Horomia. Although statements have been made in regard to the full intent of the bill I will come back to that point later because there are some salient aspects of the intent with which he wanted to ensure that the Maori Trustee existing as a stand-alone entity could also contribute to opportunities in Maori economic development. 
I have spent some time listening carefully to the debate in the House and I have to say that the comments made by a former Minister of Maori Affairs the Hon Tau Henare who got one shot at it— 
Hon Shane Jones 
: Who? 
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA 
: The Hon Tau Henare who in his time as Minister did not attempt to do anything in this space. So I found it a little rich to hear his iterations in the House that really for a whole 5 minutes had nothing to do with the bill and everything to do with anything else except the bill. But therein probably lies his future. He will only ever get one shot at being the Minister of Maori Affairs and he will always only ever be a backbencher in his own Government. 
The point Tau Henare raised was essentially that we should not be spending the money of unidentified beneficiaries—in fact he says we should do nothing at all. I find it incredible to believe that he as a former Minister would promote a tread-water type of scenario. But when we look at his term in office we should be under no illusion: a do-nothing approach from that member is what one could expect. 
More important Tau Henare talked about all these unidentified beneficiaries. Members in Maori electorates will know that when they get the book of unclaimed moneys from the Maori Trust Office every year it is a very difficult task to go through it and identify in their rohe who might be eligible to receive something. I have done this many times and it is actually a very hard task. If it is hard for a member in a Maori electorate to find those people then it damn sure is hard for the Maori Trustee. 
Even though we know that is the case no members of the current Government have asked what more they could do or said how they would help the Maori Trustee to improve this demand that we must try to find those unidentified beneficiaries. No one in the House actually offered a solution and as members of the Government they have the capacity to try to strengthen any opportunity the Maori Trustee has to identify those beneficial owners for all the moneys those members claim can never be used—money that just sits and waits in abeyance as part of a do-nothing approach. 
I have to go back to the earlier comments of the Hon Parekura Horomia. I believe that yes his intent was honourable. Every day in our tribal authorities we allow our organisations to exercise responsibility for those tribal members whether or not they are identified to make collective investments for our beneficial interest and opportunity going forward. Yet we deny that opportunity to the Maori Trustee and all he was asking is why have funds sitting there doing nothing when they could contribute to the collective economic development of Maori as a whole—not any one particular group of Maori but Maori as a whole. What we know when we talk about economic development when we walk down that path is that if we are making a good strong contribution in that area then what is good for Maori is good for everybody. That is all it was. There was nothing sinister about it. 
I need to acknowledge the contribution of former members of the Maori Affairs Committee to the debate. It was vociferous. We received a lot of feedback. 
When one goes back to a community and asks the people whether they would rather that somebody’s unclaimed $5.24 sits in a fund and does nothing or that we try to do something to build the opportunity for all of us the answer is easy. People will put that $5.24 into a bigger putea to try to do something good for all of us. It is a no-brainer. 
Tribal organisations face that question every day when they look at how to better utilise their Treaty settlements. They could ask every tribal member whether they could aggregate the amount of the settlement to every tribal member. We did that back in 1995 in Waikato-Tainui when we got our settlement and tribal members were to get about $9.56 each. We tried to convince them that rather than take out their $9.56 each we should put it into the collective pool and do something for all of us. 
It is the same question that the Maori Trust Office should face and must answer. That really is the challenge because when we look at a lot of the issues around the way in which the Maori Trust Office operates and at how it invests this funding we can only hope and expect that it will be accountable for the investments it makes that it will make a valuable contribution to Maori economic development and that it will be accountable to obviously those whom it can identify as beneficial owners but more important that we free up some of the constraints around its role to be able to accelerate and support Maori economic development. 
The difficulty with multiple-owned Maori land—and I am not saying anything new to those Maori members in the House who know the constraints—is that it is often very difficult to identify every owner who has a stake in a bit of land to try to get hold of them and to then agree to a decision on what is happening on that bit of land. That is why so many parcels of land around the country cannot have anything done on them because it is such a hard task to try to get everyone to agree to make something happen. Every Maori member in this House knows that this is the reality. It is the same reality that the office of the Maori Trustee faces when it tries to do things so let us not bring to this House a high moral principled approach that because we cannot do this we should not do anything. Let us free up the underutilised capacity of a whole lot of pockets of Maori land that could better contribute to economic development in this country. 
I am pleased that Pita Sharples as the Minister of Maori Affairs has taken up the task of continuing the work started by our Government in terms of the rating and valuation of Maori land. That is a valuable piece of work that the National-led Government should look to when it continues to arrest the failure of the underutilisation of Maori land in our country. I hope the Government will support that work to free up the opportunities on unutilised Maori land so that it can better contribute to the economic opportunities in our communities and regions. 
This is a second reading of the bill. Many of the changes have been referred to. Once again I commend the previous Minister of Maori Affairs the Hon Parekura Horomia and the current Minister of Maori Affairs for seeing fit to introduce the bill and then bring it forward for its second reading. I hope that in the third reading debate there may be some opportunity for the Government and the Maori Party to demonstrate what their contribution will be to accelerate Maori development. Members on this side of the House know that the previous Labour Government had solutions. We are just waiting to hear solutions from them. Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker.