Foster-Bell PaulPAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): E Te Māngai Tuarua o Te Whare mauri ora e ngā mema o Te Rōpū Reipa kia ora tātou e ngā mema o Te Rōpū Kākāriki tēnā koutou e ngā mema o Te Rōpū Aotearoa Tuatahi kia ora tēnā koutou.[Mr Assistant Speaker good health to you and greetings to the members of the Labour Party the members of the Green Party and to the members of New Zealand First; hello and salutations to you collectively.]In taking a brief call on this Papawai and Kaikokirikiri Trusts Amendment Bill in this second reading debate I want to actually agree with all that has been said by the members who have spoken so far. It is a wonderful thing—particularly this week when we started with some discord on the passage of legislation that is relevant to iwi Māori in this country—that we have managed to come together and put aside some of the game playing that has been undertaken by certain parties in this House which need not be named on this happy occasion and in fact progress this piece of legislation which does much good. It modernises an obsolete piece of legislation updates it for the circumstances of the modern world and gives the trust board the flexibility to operate in a way that maximises the benefit accruing to the people particularly of the Wairarapa but actually to Māori people throughout New Zealand. This bill does a number of very practical things. It reforms the governance arrangements of the trust board so that half of the board of eight will be appointed by the local iwi. The other half will be appointed by His Grace the Bishop of Te Upoko o Te Ika or the Anglican primate of this region in which we are currently standing. The whakapapa relationships of certain members in this House with the marae in question have been raised so far be it from me to fail to follow that precedent. Unfortunately I whakapapa to the very far north: Te Tai Tokerau. Ko Ngātikahu ki Whangaroa te iwi ko Ōtangaroa te marae. [Ngātikahu ki Whangaroa is the iwi Ōtangaroa is the marae.]My ancestor was the same as that of co-leader of the Māori Party Te Ururoa Flavell: his eponymous ancestor the chief Te Ururoa who was the paramount chief of Ngāti Kahu at the very start of the 19th century and also the famous victor of the battle of Kororāreka who made some significant progression south on his raids. I am not quite sure whether he got as far as the Wairarapa but you never know. There may be some very distant cousins present in that situation. My whakapapa is somewhat more tenuous than that of others than that of my colleagues and members opposite. I am Ngāti Kahu not Ngāti Kahungunu so cannot claim that direct connection. But any intelligent person on reading this legislation will see the benefits that will accrue to Ngāti Kahungunu and others who benefit from the use of the land. I just want to comment on a theme that has been raised I think particularly eloquently by the Hon Nanaia Mahuta which is that times have changed and that the assets of the trust board can be put to more productive and more lucrative use for the benefit of the beneficiaries of the trust than people would have imagined back in 1932 when the schoolhouse burnt down or even in 1943 in the midst of the Second World War when the legislation was most recently updated. In a wonderful area like the Wairarapa which is so ably represented by my distinguished colleague Alastair Scott as its local member you can imagine the kinds of industries that may now be the most prosperous and lucrative. Perhaps wine growing for export is a good industry to be in. Maybe high tech—the lands could be used perhaps to house cloud-based server systems and offer those services all around the world. These are things that people back in the 1940s could not possibly have imagined. I commend that particular aspect of the bill as being incredibly positive. As other members have stated this bill has had thorough but not slow consideration by the Māori Affairs Committee ably chaired by its wonderful chairman Tutehounuku Korako my distinguished colleague of noble heritage who bears that proud name and does so much good work on the Māori Affairs Committee and in such a consensual way with its deputy chair and with other members—Pita Paraone: Stop embarrassing him.PAUL FOSTER-BELL: —with Pita Paraone who also is a very hard-working member of that committee when his leader allows him to participate. This bill has been through the select committee process and as others have commented that old saying applies: If there isn't too much interest if there aren't people coming in to submit it must actually be a pretty good piece of legislation." You generally only get a huge queue a horde of submitters coming in to petition their case when there are flaws with the legislation. I think that is hugely positive and it is a huge credit to Nuk Korako to his committee and to all of those who have played a part—including the Parliamentary Counsel Office and others—and have contributed to the fine-tuning of this piece of legislation. It would be remiss of me not to comment on the very nature of this bill. This is a private bill. It is actually a relatively rare and obscure form of legislative instrument that we see in this House. It is the rarest form of bill that comes here—Government bills of course being the most common. We do see members' bills drawn regularly and we will be dealing with some of those later today. We have local bills. Local bills are not entirely uncommon; we have had several through this year. But private bills are relatively rare. We dealt with the Royal Foundation of the Blind Act Repeal legislation and that organisation transitioned into being just a conventional trust like any other charity or NGO. But it is appropriate that these trusts given their heritage given the conditions that prevail in the area—that we do not just simply repeal the previous piece of legislation as we are doing with 124 other pieces of legislation in the Statutes Repeal Bill. It is appropriate that the bill is modernised it is brought up to date it is made fit for purpose and it is done so in this way as a private bill in the name of Alastair Scott. I really want to commend Alastair Scott. He is both a strong local member and someone who clearly wants to support these institutions that do a lot of good in his own community. Without much further ado—actually there is one more point I would like to make and it is quite an important one. The committee recommends that this bill be enacted in Te Reo Māori as well as in English. We had quite a historical event earlier this year when Te Ture mō Te Reo Māori / Māori Language Act became the first where the text in both languages carried equal weight. This is not a unique situation in the Commonwealth. I had the pleasure of having dinner with the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales earlier in the year. He also happens to be a Welshman—a very proud Welshman—hailing from Cardiff. He was discussing the way the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff legislates in both the Welsh language and in English. We also have a Commonwealth equivalent in the province of Quebec in Canada. I also met the Chief Justice of Quebec. The French language is given equal weighting and bills are simultaneously dealt with in both French and English. They are debated in the House in both languages they are drafted in both languages and when lawyers are interpreting them they are given equal weight in both languages. Of course when judges are ruling on them the judges have to be completely fluent in both English and French in both the common law tradition and the civil tradition derived from that French Napoleonic heritage that they also have in Canada. It is a wonderful thing in this bicultural multicultural country of ours that we are embracing the indigenous language—one of New Zealand's official languages. The committee did make the recommendation that the bill be enacted in both languages and I hope that this becomes somewhat of a precedent in this House and that we do more and more as the capacity allows as the fluency in Te Reo of judges allows and as the ability of our legal profession to deal with two languages allows. Let us give maximum opportunity for the beautiful Te Reo Māori to be used in this way and also we should probably include New Zealand Sign Language which is the third official language of New Zealand—I had better say that as the Minister for Disability Issues is in the House today. This is a very good bill. It is non-contentious. I have taken up more than enough time on extolling its virtues. It carries my full commendation to the House.Bill read a second time."