Flavell Te Ururoa: Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:11333] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora anotatou katoa. For a number of years my whanau and I lived in Taranaki. My wife is from Puniho and Parihaka in Taranaki and every day as we passed by some of the beautiful dairy farms in heartland Taranaki she would experience a range of emotions. None of them unfortunately are addressed in this Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2). I believe that the issues are of sufficient severity that it is impossible to consider this bill without thinking of the original dairy restructuring that occurred following what the Waitangi Tribunal has called the “wrongful confiscation and subsequent bungled return of Taranaki land.” 
 The context dates back to the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 the two west coast commissions of the 1880s the West Coast Settlement Reserves Act 1881 and 1892 and eventually the Maori Reserved Land Act 1955 which established a perpetually renewable leasing regime with rents at 5 percent of the unimproved value of the land. The imposition of an unjust leasing regime on the returned land has conclusively been determined as a breach of the Crown’s active duty to protect the rights determined in the Treaty. And so as we come to this latest piece of legislative change a bill that is promoted as allowing for greater participation and certainty in the dairy industry let us remember to consider the concept of greater participation and certainty for tangata whenua who were robbed of the opportunity to enter the dairy industry. 
Having done some homework on this bill I understand that it removes export restrictions from some markets and allocates export rights to dairy quota markets to a wider group. In essence this bill allows a wider group of dairy processors to participate in export markets and the Maori Party supports the opening up of wider opportunities for growth within the dairy industry sector. The Maori Party is also supportive of the concept of future certainty for the industry being provided by export rights becoming available during 2008-10 being allocated for 1 quota year and those becoming available in 2011 being allocated for terms of 3 quota years. 
We are also mindful of course that any interested parties on which this policy will impact most will have another opportunity other than the consultation that occurred at the start of this year to give feedback to the process through the select committee. Amongst that we would expect that the 18000 farming businesses represented by Federated Farmers will want to have a say; they will be pretty keen and I am also sure that the Federation of Maori Authorities would be keen to offer some comment. Within that of course the significant proportion of Maori who are involved in primary industries will have a voice. We know that as at the 2001 census 6.4 percent of people involved in the dairy cattle farming sector were Maori—some 2232. Roughly 20 percent of the population employed in services to agriculture were Maori as well. 
Members may not know that collectively Maori are the largest client of Meat and Wool New Zealand and also of Fonterra and of fertiliser companies. On a monetary basis more than 50 percent of the $9 billion of commercial assets estimated to be owned by Maori is in the primary industries of farming forestry and horticulture. I indicated in an earlier speech that Maori in the farming sector and Maori land - based organisations represent enormous potential for the national economy. So there is an obvious advantage in sending this bill to a select committee to hear from concerned stakeholders including Maori in the dairy-farming sector. 
I want to return to the large-scale land confiscations that the Crown enforced in the 1860s in the process depriving many iwi of their economic base. We recognise too the enduring impacts of discriminatory land laws and pastoral leaseholding arrangements which took effect from the 1850s right through to the 1970s resulting in entrenched alienation of Maori land. The impact of confiscation and alienation was that the prime land the most fertile versatile land was the first to go leaving only the land with fairly limited potential. 
Because of the long-lasting effects of that limited potential a case was taken by Edward RongomaiiraTamati and others on behalf of the beneficial owners of land held by Parininihi ki Waitotara Inc. known as the Wai 790 claim. The findings of the Waitangi Tribunal confirmed that indeed the cost of the claimants entering the dairy industry on their land will only increase as “fair value” shares increase in value. The tribunal found further in its 2001 report that first successive Governments over more than a century had failed to respond to claims for relief; second that that failure was in itself a breach of the Crown’s duty to protect Treaty rights; and third that had the Crown responded in a timely manner the claimants would have been in a position to enter dairy farming prior to the effects of unbundling becoming apparent. The tribunal’s conclusions were clear: the claimants were prejudiced by the difficulties they will encounter in obtaining sufficient capital to buy shares to ensure a right to supply milk from resumed farms. 
Some in this House may question the relevance of the Waitangi Tribunal to the bill. Well the Waitangi Tribunal labels that whole saga as the “whole sorry business of the Crown’s breaches in Taranaki” and they have some relevance to this new dairy industry restructuring amendment bill in 2007. How do the principles of participation and certainty promoted in this bill bear any relationship to the situation in Taranaki—or indeed any area throughout Aotearoa—of prime farming land that was illegally acquired from tangata whenua? Well I say it actually has everything to do with it. 
I return to the Wai 790 claim for one last reference which may make the relationship to this bill a little bit clearer. The Waitangi Tribunal summed up the Wai 790 claim by recommending that “the claimants’ opportunity to become dairy farmers in their own right should not have been allowed to diminish but should instead have been actively protected.” That is what it said; there we have it. The Taranaki dairy farm land case study offers this House an opportunity to learn. It tells us that the ability of Maori people to get back into the dairy industry is extremely limited. Maori interest in entering the dairy industry is very limited. Crown inactivity over subsequent Governments has meant that the opportunity to enter the dairy industry has become even more limited. Maori would need access to enormous investment to be able to buy shares based on milk solids and stock. 
So we support the passage of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) on two grounds. Firstly we want to hear how Maori farming interests will be affected by this bill how Maori dairy farmers will benefit from our allowing greater participation and certainty into the dairy industry. The second wider goal is under the cloud of the latest bad report from the United Nations. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination concluded in its New Zealand report that actions undertaken by the Crown “tend to diminish the importance and relevance of the Treaty and to create a context unfavourable to the rights of Maori.” We in the Maori Party are very concerned about this finding as every other member of this Parliament must be and it is our absolute commitment to take every opportunity that we can to enhance and consolidate the status of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in every aspect of our work. 
There is no time like the present to begin the pursuit of Treaty justice so the Maori Party will be monitoring the reaction to and developments of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) with a view to enabling stronger more confident implementation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. 
Bill read a first time.