Jackson WillieHon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour): Kia ora tātou. He hōnore nui ki te tautoko tēnei pire. He kaupapa tino whakahirahira ki a tātou te iwi Māori. Nō reira tika me mihi ki a Ngāti Hei i tēnei wā.[Greetings all. It is an honour to speak to this bill. It is a very prestigious matter to all the Māori people. And so it is important to acknowledge Ngāti Hei at this time.]I just wanted also to respond to some of the kōrero that's gone down tonight with regards to the justice element. I certainly felt encouraged when I listened to the speaker over there Mr Dan Bidois over there who gives full tautoko for this sort of kaupapa. So it does give us heart on this side of the House when we see that type of unity in the House.I was listening to Mr Abel earlier and to young Hana over there and I remember I was invited to be a guest speaker at an annual general Māori Party meeting in 2006 I think when the Māori Party first started.Shanan Halbert: Oh that's ages ago.Hon WILLIE JACKSON: It's a long while ago. I think you were about four or something at the time eh Hana? At the time Te Ururoa Flavell was running the line that the Māori Party should be opposing all these settlements in the House. It was actually a Māori Party policy back in 2006. He wasn't the leader then; Tariana and Pita Sharples were the leadership at the time. So they invited me in to give a whakaaro and a view in terms of the strategy. I said to him then that I thought he was 100 percent wrong not because the Treaty settlement process was a just process. It's one of the most unjust processes that we've ever had to engage in but I said to him then—and I don't know if he ever forgave me actually because my view was that we had no right to tell people not to take these types of settlements.You know if our people decide to take the settlements and they may well be peanuts then they have that right. That's their choice to take a settlement even though we have all worked out in Te Ao Māori that those settlements are only worth about 2 percent. But when you have the choice of 2 percent or nothing 2 percent becomes quite appealing and that's the problem. As I said to Te Ururoa at the time our people are not stupid. Tipene O'Regan was not stupid when he decided to take a $170 million deal with regards to Ngāi Tahu. Economists had worked out that the Ngāi Tahu deal was worth $15 billion—that was what the loss was somewhere between $12 and $15 billion. It might have been a little bit more. I think Tainui came in at about $15 billion too.But Sir Tipene O'Regan and Sir Robert Mahuta who did the Tainui settlement were not stupid people. They realised that it's better to take something than nothing and so they settled on $170 million—they settled on $170 million. As upsetting as that was to a number of my relations who were the main activists in the Māori movement—Hūhana Lyndon's relations too and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke's relations. They're all our relations—Tama Potaka's relations too. They labelled our leaders as sell-outs might I add. They went ahead and did these settlements because better something than nothing.So I remember telling my old mate Te Ururoa that I just don't think we have the right to say to a people No you can't take it." because our people took the opportunity in 1996 in terms of Ngāi Tahu and Tainui and we have had iwi making settlements like that every year since till now. So as much as it we find it appalling Steve and it's unjust and everything else in a choice between nothing and something you'll always take something. We know what Ngāi Tahu is worth today which is well in excess of it might be $1.5 billion $2 billion—you know over there our young hero from the media. No you know Mr Meager. You know what Ngāi Tahu's worth today. Tainui might be worth $1.5 $2 billion. It's amazing.So I always say that we're used to taking peanuts because from peanuts you can build gold mines and that's what we've done in Te Ao Māori. We did that in Tainui. We did that in Ngāi Tahu. We did that in the kōhanga reo movement where they took minimal settlements. Iwi have done that everywhere and built huge huge gold mines along the way and the challenge of course is can we get the flow back and the comeback from the iwi back to our people on the ground and so that's one of the big challenges for us.So Ngāti Hei I mean obviously there's not a huge amount of money there for Ngāti Hei. We're not talking $170 million or anything like that but they still have an opportunity. They still have—you know we talked about their negotiators. Toko Renata—we knew Toko really really well; one of our true-gun kaumātua from that area. John McEnteer—long-time negotiator for the area. We know these people well. We trust in them. I trust in them that they will be able to make something from these settlements.But I've always wondered from the very first time I came into Parliament was there something else we could do? Would we have Governments brave enough to change the process? These are the challenges in front of Mr Goldsmith right now particularly with Peeni Henare's relations in the north and Shane Jones' relations in the north. Huge challenges in terms of how we try and work that settlement. It's going to be fascinating to see what happens there. But I've always wondered from the time I first entered Parliament 25 years ago was there an opportunity where we might be able to tweak the system look at it again ask ourselves if 2 percent of the compensation is really just or really could we lift that up?Because in my view our people have done this country a favour: they have subsidised so much in this country when you look at the worth of what our people could have claimed what our people could have asked for in compensation. We have subsidised so much in this country and yet we still get people who are resentful in terms of the settlement process. They talk about us getting all this money but that is money that has been owed to our people. And I'm very proud of our people and I've seen them come through here over the years and they're so grateful to a process that in the end has only really delivered them crumbs but has given them opportunities.So as much as it pains us as much as we look at the injustice of those settlements we can't take away the rights of our people to assert their tino rangatiratanga—that's how it's always been; that's how it aways should be. Kia ora Mr Speaker."