Turei Metiria: Maori Fisheries Bill — Second Reading 
Turei Metiria: Maori Fisheries Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:619;Page:15215] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 This bill is such a dog’s breakfast. But before I talk about the bill itself I first want to thank sincerely my colleagues on the Fisheries and Other Sea-related Legislation Committee the submitters who came before us to give their presentations on the bill the officials the specialist advisers and especially the select committee and Parliamentary Counsel Office staff. The select committee had an enormously complex bill that took an awful lot of work and we had to do this work in what felt at the time was a very tight time frame. This put an awful lot of pressure on the staff in particular and I want to make sure that their efforts and their work do not go unrecognised. 
The Greens will vote against the second reading of this bill. The issues we raised in the first reading debate have not been adequately addressed and we eagerly await the Committee stage to see whether those issues can be remedied. The Greens worked extremely hard in the select committee to press for changes—changes that reflected fairness and were supported by the submitters. Many of those issues fell on deaf ears. That was a very serious concern because this bill was introduced into Parliament only because iwi wanted some resolution to the process not because they supported the bill itself. A number of iwi who supported its introduction did so with significant reservations and it seems that many may have wrongly thought that the select committee would adequately take that into account and provide for their concerns. 
We support some of the changes that were made. There is some increased accountability for Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd but not enough to satisfy our concerns. We are pleased that there is a decent review process for example. The bill initially offered a 12-year review period which was wholly inadequate. The select committee inclusion of audits at 4-yearly intervals will help to make sure that all the newly created entities are doing what they are supposed to do. We acknowledge that there is now some recognition of Ngati Hine and Rongomaiwahine but these iwi are entitled to specific identification rather than this ridiculous half existence set out in the bill and I will get to that issue in a moment. 
There remain serious structural flaws in the bill. The recommended changes to the review provisions do not go far enough to remedy what is a fundamental conflict of interest in the governance and commercial structures established by the bill. Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd retains constitutional oversight of the mandated iwi organisations and remains unilaterally able to alter the requirements that the mandated iwi organisations must meet for recognition. This gives to Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd considerable authority over the mandated iwi organisations dictating the detailed content of their constitutions. It also means that Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd can add hurdles that the mandated iwi organisations must jump over before they can access their fisheries assets. If that were not bad enough Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd retains the sole voting share over Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd which is a commercial competitor to the asset-holding companies that will be established by the mandated iwi organisations for the management of their settlement assets. In fact we only just managed to stop the select committee from agreeing to allow Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd to have control over the constitutions of the asset-holding companies themselves which were set up by the mandated iwi organisations to manage their assets. 
The Government wanted Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd to have almost complete control over every organisation involved in the management of the settlement assets. This is an absolute abrogation of the principle of rangatiratanga inherent in the deed of settlement. Iwi cannot control Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd because they have only income shares not voting shares. So Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd retains an extraordinary power over in effect its competitors in a highly vulnerable industry. As it is there are no structural impediments to prevent Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd from altering the requirements for mandated iwi organisations to ensure that Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd gains a competitive advantage. It may never be the case that Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd is used in that unconscionable way but none the less this bill if passed in its present form would leave that possibility wide open. It is bad law in this form. It should have been changed in the select committee but should now be altered in the Committee stage. 
Many submitters raised this issue and expressed their concern that the provisions were designed on the arrogant premise that Maori cannot look after their own money. Iwi are entitled to voting shares in Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd as a commercial entity that will retain 50 percent of the settlement assets originally intended to be transferred to them. If the assets are to be retained in a centralised form iwi are at least entitled to exercise the responsibilities of shareholders consistent with standard commercial practice. We do not need a centralised bureaucracy holding Maori’s hand again. We have had that for far too long. This settlement is specifically designed to return that control to iwi but this bill fails to do that and it therefore fails to meet the purpose of the settlement. There remain too many layers between Maori and their own assets. 
The Greens have always considered that the criteria requiring acknowledgment from contiguous iwi for the recognition of iwi status to be unreasonable. Requiring such support from contiguous iwi creates a conflict of interest between those iwi on the basis of entitlement and this has caused unnecessary delay over the recognition of iwi for the purposes of the bill. The select committee attempted and rightly so to remedy this problem in two cases: Rongomaiwahine and Ngati Hine. The select committee considered the Te Ohu Kai Moana criteria for iwi recognition and looked at it in two ways: first whether the criteria was reasonable and second whether it was consistently applied. The committee decided that the criteria was reasonable—although I completely disagree—and it also decided that it was not applied consistently in the case of Rongomaiwahine and Ngati Hine—a position with which I certainly agree. The committee decided that both these iwi meet the criteria and that in objecting to their iwi status the larger iwi into which they are incorporated Ngati Kahungunu and Ngapuhi respectively were in effect exercising a veto over their recognition and that the exercise of that veto was not envisaged by Te Ohu Kai Moana when the criteria were developed. In effect Rongomaiwahine and Ngati Hine meet the criteria and should not be prevented from recognition by the exercise of that unjust and unconsidered veto. 
The committee agreed that Rongomaiwahine and Ngati Hine should be included in schedule 3 and listed in the notes to schedule 3. The committee agreed that it would clearly identify those two iwi as having the same status as their compatriots. But members will see that that provision is not in the bill because at the very last minute officials told us that the Minister would not accept their specific inclusion in schedule 3 and that if we included it the reference would be removed later in the process. Apparently the Minister does not want these two iwi to have such status even though the select committee agreed that they meet the criteria and are entitled to have it. In effect the committee was bullied and told that if it did not change its instructions on the bill the Government would ensure that Rongomaiwahine and Ngati Hine would not be recognised at all. 
The Greens are relieved that the new disaggregation provisions are required in the constitutions of the conglomerate iwi identified in the notes to schedule 3. These provisions enable any of these iwi within that conglomerate to disaggregate without having to negotiate new constitutional amendments that would otherwise require the support of 75 percent of members. To have 75 percent support from the larger iwi is a very big ask and there is very little incentive for the members of those larger iwi to give it. In our view each iwi within those conglomerates is independently entitled to settlement assets and should be recognised as such in the bill. 
Although there are disaggregation provisions there remains a restriction on disaggregated iwi in that they will not have an entitlement to vote for the board of Te Kawai Taumata. Instead they must negotiate to have their view represented by the grouping from which they have disaggregated. There is no justification for that restriction. The Government and Te Ohu Kai Moana recognise that those iwi are individually entitled to assets. They are recognised as iwi in the bill. When asked why the Government would not allow them to have a vote for Te Kawai Taumata officials said that it was important to have a disincentive to disaggregate. So those iwi that choose to manage those assets themselves in the exercise of their own rangatiratanga are not regarded as sufficiently competent to exercise a vote for the body that will appoint the directors of Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd. It is a disgraceful provision that must go. The Greens will put forward a number of amendments to this bill at the Committee stage and we look forward to a favourable reception from the House.