Tirikatene Rino: Maraeroa A and B Blocks Claims Settlement Bill Maraeroa A and B Blocks Incorporation Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tirikatene Rino: Maraeroa A and B Blocks Claims Settlement Bill Maraeroa A and B Blocks Incorporation Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 25 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:3988. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga) 
:  
Tena koe. Tena koutou e te manuhiri tuarangi nau mai haere mai ki te Paremata e takatu nei tena koutou tena koutou katoa. 
[ 
Thank you. Greetings to you the visitors from afar welcome welcome to Parliament in readiness here salutations and greetings to you all. 
]  
It gives me great pleasure to speak at the final reading of these two bills for the Maraeroa A and B Blocks. May I acknowledge the claimants with us today those descendants of eponymous ancestors of different but related iwi. This is the uniqueness of this claim. The claimants are related by whakapapa to common ancestors who roamed between Taupo-nui-a-Tia Kawhia and Maungatautari long before the Treaty was signed in 1840. 
 These illustrious tupuna go back hundreds of years before Captain Hobson had even heard of Kororareka the Bay of Islands and Waitangi. They go back to a time of the extended whanau of Raukawa and his sons and grandsons and the relationships they had with the lakeside people of Tuwharetoa who were the descendants of Tia of the Te Arawa canoe and Raukawa being of the Tainui waka. And while there was the decision to allow a claim that for all intents and purposes pre-dates the Treaty the reality is that this type of historical korero of whakapapa and whanaungatanga is common throughout all Aotearoa. Indeed there is no Maori history without whakapapa.  
The descendants of the original owners of Maraeroa A and B Blocks acknowledge the special nature of this settlement and they acknowledge the leadership of Te Maru o Rereahu. The descendants also have interests in other claims via their separate iwi such as Raukawa Maniapoto Tainui waka among others. 
May I make mention of a particular area of interest for me in this whole affair—that is the Maraeroa settlements—and that is the work of the Crown surveyors discrepancies in surveys and the survey cost. It is a real mamae that has really hurt these descendants these whanau. As Mr Young mentioned it goes to the heart of irresponsibility of the Crown in the past.  
In 1866 surveys for the blocks were incomplete and sketch plans only were available. The absence of proper surveys caused discrepancies. Consequently there was alienation of land and therefore alienation of the owners’ mana. It seems to me that the work of Stephen Percy Smith Surveyor-General who went on to become an ethnologist and recorded a lot of Maori history needs to be called into question. For want of not following a ridge line to its conclusion or a creek to its source these claimants have been alienated from thousands of acres—4200 to be exact. I am not calling into disrepute his honesty in what he recorded but how he recorded it. The Crown’s mistakes have led to people being given mana by being named on ownership lists only for another inquiry to take that mana away by the removal of those names; back and forward it went on and off the list—not satisfactory at all. I will make mention of the survey costs and how they became a burden for most of the owners. The only way out from such a burdensome debt was to alienate their land an outcome all too inevitable and seemingly underhanded.  
I mentioned in my second reading speech the role of whakapapa and how the hapu that settled the boundaries between iwi were generally takawaenga families that joined one iwi to another. This is true of all takiwa and rohe throughout the motu and the uri of this bill are no different. But I make the point that this case is for all Maoridom because to understand again and acknowledge whakapapa is to understand and acknowledge Maori history.  
I would like to echo and support—tautoko—the comments that have been made by colleagues around the House in terms of this settlement and the significance of it of this historic occasion. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora tatou.