Smith Murray: Maori Purposes Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Smith Murray: Maori Purposes Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:607;Page:4806] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 United Future supports this bill in its entirety. Perhaps in beginning I can comment on United Future’s involvement in getting legislation through with urgency. I want to commend first of all the Labour Government for working with United Future on this urgency week and addressing with us the legislation that should or should not be contained in the urgency motion. I am delighted to see the progress that the Government has been able to make under urgency. It was somewhat of a surprise when I realised last night that I might be speaking on this bill if not last night at least this morning and that effectively we are up to No. 14 on the Order Paper. It is pleasing to see the legislation being passed so quickly given the backlog of about 90 bills at the time that United Future first arrived here in the House. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Because of the Greens. 
MURRAY SMITH 
: The backlog as I understand it was because of a lack of cooperation by the Green Party. United Future is pleased to have a good relationship with Labour that allows our involvement at that level and that has enabled us for example to promote the Ngati Ruanui Claims Settlement Bill but also to exclude legislation that we felt was too contentious to be dealt with this week. 
I am concerned though about the Government’s delays in progressing Treaty of Waitangi grievance settlements. I alluded to that matter during the reading of the Ngati Ruanui legislation and do so again with the Maori Purposes Bill. I believe that the delays in getting this much-needed legislation through the House are reprehensible. I note that the Waitangi Tribunal claim was filed in 1987; the hearings took place between 1991 and 1999; and the decision was issued as I understand it in late 2002 although I note that in April 2002 the 
 Evening Post 
 suggested that the Government was unduly delaying the progress of the bill and questioned the reasons for that. So it has taken some 15 years for this claim to be resolved. 
Given the continuing comments made by the Government and in particular the Attorney-General about the progressing of claims in a timely fashion it seems astonishing to me that the issue raised in the first part of this Maori Purposes Bill—namely the inadequacy of the legislation that allowed changes in the make-up of the tribunal—was not dealt with years ago during the course of the hearings. I know for example that my colleague the Hon Georgina te Heuheu as she has stated was on the tribunal in 1994 and clearly had to leave the tribunal upon becoming a member of Parliament. So it is clear that the issues that are giving rise to this bill in terms of there being sufficient authority for the tribunal actually to issue a decision despite changes in its membership are things that the Government has been aware of for many years. It is a concern that it did not address those issues in order to have them dealt with until after the decision had been made. 
One can understand that the Government might delay dealing with the issue until it became a matter of significance but surely this legislation should have gone through before the decision on the Wellington Tenths Trust claim in particular was completed and was ready to be issued instead of our having this ridiculous situation where the tribunal has made its decision but cannot release it until this bill is passed. We have had to wait for months and months to have this legislation passed so that a decision that has already been made can be released. I know that already details of some of the effect of the decision have been released although they should not have been. I myself have heard of some of the impact of the decision that is going to be released and comments have been made in terms of the findings. 
That is the danger we get into: because the decision has been reached but the court has not released it and has held up actually making it public all of a sudden rumour and speculation and even informal advice in terms of what the decision will contain get out into the public sphere. That undermines the whole judicial process. It undermines the whole treaty settlement process. It is not conducive to our resolving treaty grievances either in a way that is sustainable or in a timely fashion. There are those who having heard rumours of what might be in the decision are worried about the impact of it—about how much Wellington land will be going to the Wellington Tenths Trust and things of that nature. This delay serves only to fuel those concerns and make things difficult in terms of the resolution of grievances and reconciliation between Maori and the Crown. 
So I am astonished that that delay has occurred but at least we have finally got the bill back in the House. I notice that it was introduced in March 2002; that its first reading began in May 2002 but was interrupted by the election and was completed in September 2002; and that it was referred to the Maori Affairs Committee. The committee spent approximately only 3½ hours on hearing submissions and considering the bill. It seems to me that that could have happened fairly quickly the bill could have come back to the House and we could have been dealing with this matter a lot sooner instead of waiting until April 2003. So I am concerned about the Government’s lack of commitment to speedy or timely resolution of grievances. 
There are other examples of that such as the delays in the release of the report on the Gisborne casebook inquiry which we were promised in September—6 months ago—was being finalised. I understand that it was completed in December but is yet to be launched publicly. I am concerned about the reason for the delays before that report is released because they will impact on the budgetary process and on the ability to extend the casebook process beyond simply the Gisborne case. I would like to see it addressed in the Budget with funding being provided to use that process for the resolution of all treaty claims as far as it is appropriate. 
The Ngati Ruanui bill again had to come through under urgency and has taken far longer than it should. I can only hope that the other stages of the bill—the Committee stage and the third reading—happen very promptly so that we can get that one signed off and out of the way and can allow Ngati Ruanui to get on and organise their affairs with the settlement proceeds. 
The first part of this bill deals with the primary conflict between natural justice issues and the need for the tribunal to resolve issues and bring claims to a conclusion. That is a balance that has been discussed within the select committee and it is fair enough to have that debate. On the one hand there is the natural justice issue of a tribunal that starts hearing a claim being the one that finishes hearing the claim. Litigants can be justifiably aggrieved in situations where they give evidence to one tribunal then suddenly find at the time the decision is being made the tribunal making the decision is not the one that heard what the litigants said but is a substantially changed panel. 
Nevertheless I do not agree with the Greens. I do not support their claim that natural justice overrides the situation. I think there is an urgent need to resolve these issues and bring claims to a conclusion; it is a matter of urgency. This has taken 15 years. The hearings by the Waitangi Tribunal took 8 years and to say at the end of 8 years that the tribunal has to go back and start all over again because of the changes in the tribunal’s make-up is frankly ridiculous. It does nothing to help resolve the grievances we all want to see resolved. To have to rehear everything and relitigate everything after 8 years of hearings is simply a waste of time. Although there is a natural justice claim the need to resolve issues and bring claims to a conclusion is in everybody’s interests and is in the interests of both sides of the issue—namely the Crown and the Maori organisations and iwi that are involved. 
There is a parallel of course with the select committees. I could not help seeing the parallel with some of us who came into the House and were faced with select committee situations where the submissions had been heard and the committee that was making the decision was substantially different from the one that had held the hearings. That was the case with the Justice and Electoral Committee and the Retirement Villages Bill where five of the seven members now on the select committee did not hear the bulk of the submissions. The Greens did not seem to object at that point. But we were able to cope with that because we were able to read the written submissions and we were able to rely on the officials’ reports. Although that is not the most desirable course of action and is unfortunate it is nevertheless unavoidable. We managed to cope in the same way that the tribunal is also able to cope in its hearings. 
I support Part 1 and we commend the bill to the House.