Harawira Hone: Succession (Homicide) Bill — Third Reading 
Harawira Hone: Succession (Homicide) Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:12191] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tatou katoa i te Whare. I thank the previous speaker Kate Wilkinson for some of the points she raised. There were some very good points there. 
The Maori Party will also be supporting the Succession (Homicide) Bill which aims to tidy up the law around killers not being able to inherit from their victims’ estates. We do so because like others we believe that those who commit crimes should not benefit from the outcomes of those crimes. But we are also interested to note that such an important issue as the law on succession has been treated with rather a careless disregard for its significance and for the significance of the advisory bodies that provide the Government with much of its guidance. I am talking here about the Law Commission which investigates and reports back to Parliament on how laws can be improved including the laws and processes constituting succession law. The Waitangi Tribunal whose role is laid out in the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 is similar to the Law Commission in that it is also charged with inquiring into and making recommendations on claims and examining and reporting on proposed legislation. 
We see when we look at the commission and the tribunal how sometimes Government can be fickle in dealing with the authority of these bodies. With the Waitangi Tribunal for instance we see recommendations ignored urgent directives treated with disdain and findings denied. In fact members of this House may recall the comment of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that recommendations made by the Waitangi Tribunal are generally not binding and that only a small percentage of those recommendations are followed by the Government. The committee also stated outright that such arrangements deprived claimants of a right to an effective remedy and weakened their position when entering into negotiations with the Crown. It went so far as to recommend that Government consider granting the Waitangi Tribunal legally binding powers to deal with Treaty matters and providing the tribunal with increased financial resources. 
As it has been with the tribunal so too we see that the Law Commission is poorly treated in its role of enhancing and improving legislation such that its recommendations can take up to 10 years to see the light of day as it was with its July 1977 report  
Succession Law: Homicidal Heirs.  
The Law Commission had responded to a request from the Minister and in 1997 recommended that Parliament codify our homicidal heirs laws in one plain-language statute through the legislation we are considering today. The commission did its job; it was the Government that dragged the chain. 
In much the same way a major report produced by Pat Hohepa and David Williams called  
The Taking into Account of 
Te Ao Maori in Relation to Reform of the Law of Succession: A Working Paper 
 published by the Law Commission in 1996 was also ignored by the Government in considering this bill. Specifically ignored was one of the report’s key recommendations that Government engage in specific consultation with Maori. 
I was present too at the Justice and Electoral Committee to speak on the issue of Maori land succession. Under Te Ture Whenua Maori Act Maori landowners can will their land to people in their whanau. I note where the select committee stated: “We are satisfied that Maori land succession under that Act would not be unduly affected by this bill.” The House is aware of the importance of using correct terminology. I cite again a recent Waitangi Tribunal report on Tamaki-makau-rau as a case for using the correct language to convey accurate meaning. In that report the tribunal warned against using loaded language such as referring to claimants as overlapping or cross-claimants rather than properly referring to them as other tangata whenua groups in Tamaki-makau-rau. 
In much the same way we need also to be careful about the language we use in the commentaries and debates in this House. Although the debate on the issue concluded that the use of the lazy adverb “unduly” was inappropriate it still remains on the record from the commentary back to the House. Although we were assured that the application of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act was absolutely unaffected by this legislation we still need to be clear in this final reading that Maori land succession under Te Ture Whenua Maori Act will not be affected by this bill. 
Another issue of interpretation was the point raised by the National Council of Women in its submission about the lack of clarity around the definition of homicide in this bill. The first clause of the definition of homicide says that homicide does not include “a killing caused by negligent act or omission;”. The National Council of Women’s concern was that causing death by deliberate negligence should also be included as in the case of a person driving recklessly and causing the deaths of passengers in the car. This was a point raised by Age Concern in respect of elder abuse and the New Zealand Police Association as well. The committee report did not really deal adequately with these matters and there are certain grounds for further work on the issues and interpretations around neglect and acts of negligence. 
A final note on the matter of interpretation which we have raised previously is the impact of clause 7 on our whakapapa particularly our concern that a person’s conviction for murder not disenfranchise his or her tamariki or mokopuna from their rightful inheritance. We sincerely hope that these issues will be properly dealt with in the operational enactment of this bill to ensure all parties understand the implications of this important legislation. 
The Maori Party supports the principle that no one should gain from an act of wrongdoing as an important principle of moral and social significance. Although this bill is dealing with the extreme end of wrongdoing we will support it at its third reading. Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker.