New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNew Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13715. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering BillFirst ReadingTE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki): I moveThat the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill be now read a first time.Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Ka nui te mihi ki a koeitēneirā.[Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I appreciate you hugely today.]I nominate the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the bill. Ka nuitaku mihi ki a koutou ewhakarongo maināi roto o Tauranga Moanaitēneiwā. Ko tetūmanako iakua aro mai koutou ki te ia otēnei ongākōrero. Te tikanga ia kawhakahokiatēneiwāhanga whenua kiētahi ō koutou hoianōkoinei te mihi o tengākau ki a koutou katoa.Tēnā koutou.[My huge appreciation to you collectively listening in from Tauranga at this point in time. The hope is that you have taken aboard the tenor of this of the speeches. It means essentially that this parcel of land will be returned to some of you and so an acknowledgment from the heart to you all. Well done.]As I stand to open the discussion on this bill the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill I want to first acknowledge AlbertPuhirakeĪhaka the chair of theŌtamataha Trust and promoter of the bill. I think his leadership and perseverance in bringing this bill to fruition should be commended. In achieving this significant moment in the statute recognition must also go to Mr Alan Tate the trust administrator who has managed the preparatory work to get here today. He has liaisedwith the Department of Internal Affairs Land Information New Zealand Trinity Wharf TePīhopa o Aotearoa the registrar-general the Solicitor-General and Crown Law—all agencies that have a direct interest in this bill.I want to also acknowledge all of the trustees:MōrehuNgātokoRahipere DesmondMatakōkiriTata JoanneNgāpeeti GearPeriRāwetiKohu SylviaHemoataWillison RenaUruhina Bennett RaewynNgakumāmā Keith and William CharlesRetiretiMcGuigan. I first met the trustees in September 2009 to discuss their proposal to introduce a private bill to vary the terms of a trust affecting land at Dive Crescent in Tauranga Moana. Of course 4 years later it is a great day today to see this bill finally come before the House.But if I thought that 4 years appears to be a significant time to wait it pales into insignificance with the 117 years that these people have had to wait. This bill in acknowledging and recognising the mana ofNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho also appreciates their status over land that has been held by the New Zealand Mission Trust since 1896. The bill transfers land in Tauranga and other property from the New Zealand Mission Trust to theŌtamataha Trust so that it can be used for the beneficiaries of theŌtamataha Trust rather than of the 1896 trust. At the heart of the bill then we are talking about two trusts. TheŌtamataha Trust was established by thehapū ofNgati Tapu andNgaiTamarāwaho to own and manage land and other property acquired through those historical common interests of thosehapū in Tauranga Moana.The New Zealand Mission Trust Board is a body incorporated under the Religious Charitable and Educational Trust Boards Incorporation Act 1884. The purpose of that Act was to hold the assets of the board in trust for the spiritual benefit and spiritual instruction of Māori people in the North Island or failing that the evangelisation of heathen races in any part of the world. We have to remember that we are talking here about 1884 and that the Mission Trust Board itself was a by-product of the Church Missionary Society. The Church Missionary Society was formed out of the global goal to send the missionaries to “Africa and the rest of the heathen world” to “propagate the knowledge of the Gospel among the Heathen.”It would be a little bit remiss of me as the co-leader of the Māori Party to avoid the obvious which is to comment on the use of the word “heathen” to marginalise oppress and discriminate against Māori as the other. It fits within the context of political social economic and cultural discrimination of the day—a time in which tangata whenua were described in other comparable terms such as “the noble savage” and other terms denoting an immoral status.It was anticipated that the introduction of the Gospel to indigenous people would transform them from this supposedly heathen state to a world of civilisation. The process of converting indigenous populations to the doctrine of Western Christianity was meant to achieve beneficial return for the native congregation. It is outside the scope of this bill to pass any judgment on the Church Missionary Society other than to note its role in the land in question.The Church Missionary Society was established in Tauranga in 1835. In 1838 and 1839 the society purchased two blocks of land at Te Papa—the Te Papa Peninsula being the site of central Tauranga today. The 1838 purchase was carried out by deed by Rev. Alfred Nesbit Brown on behalf of the Church Missionary Society. He was charged with purchasing land at Tauranga includingŌtamataha from tangata whenua. The 1838 transaction however has never been accepted by tangata whenua as a sale of the land to the Church Missionary Society and therein lies the genesis of this bill.The core issue at the heart of this bill is to recognise that the awarding of the Crown grant in 1852 was in itself contrary to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. In 2004 the Waitangi Tribunal inTe Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: Report on the TaurangaConfiscation Claims after considering the manner in which the Crown grant for the land was awarded to the Church Missionary Society concluded “we find that Godfrey failed to ascertain and acknowledge the conditional nature of the transactions under Maori customary law and that he wrongly concluded that the [Church Missionary Society] had fully and fairly purchased the whole of the area. The Crown in accepting Godfrey’s recommendation and finally awarding the [Church Missionary Society] a Crown grant for the whole area was therefore in breach of the Treaty principle of active protection.”Fifteen years after the awarding of the Crown grant in 1867 the Church Missionary Society gifted the Crown four-fifths of the land and military settlers were settled on it. On 28 September 1896 the residue of that land includingŌtamataha was transferred by the Church Missionary Society to the New Zealand Mission Trust.Fast forward a century and in 1996 the New Zealand Mission Trust Board handed back control of the land to the new trustees appointed byNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho. That all appears to be very positive but there was a catch. Although the new trustees had control of the land they are still obliged to use the land with the newSebel Hotel built on it. The trust would collect the ground rent from that hotel. It has always been the intention of the two trusts that it be changed so that the twohapū can benefit from it directly.So 2 years after the control of the land was passed over in a deed dated 20 September 1998 the then trustees of the New Zealand Mission Trust Board in recognition of the manner and the process by which the land was acquired from tangata whenua resigned as trustees. They were immediately replaced by the trustees representing thehapū ofNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho. This bill then puts right a wrong that occurred over a century ago.In the letter that AlbertĪhaka wrote to the Clerk of the House of Representatives in submitting this bill he summed up the purposes in one clear statement. He said: “The reason for this bill is to enable property to be used for the benefit of people andhapū from whosetūpuna that property was originally derived.” That property will be transferred from the charitable trust that currently holds that property to a new common law trust. The beneficiaries of this new trust and indeed this bill will rightfully be the descendants of thetūpuna from which the property was originally taken.So ultimately the history and the context of this bill rest with the mana ofNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho. We look forward to hearing more from thesehapū about their historical common interests in Tauranga Moana and at Te Papa. That common interest extends from Tauranga Harbour to theWaikareao Estuary and includes all of the land north of that line including reclaimed land at Sulphur Point and the adjacent harbour bed. At the select committee we will also learn more about the significance of their whakapapa toTapukino in the case ofNgāti Tapu andTahuriwakanui in the case ofNgāiTamarāwaho.My fervent wish is that these people who have waited well over a hundred years for justice to be done will now be able to see this injustice righted in as quick a time frame as can be realistically achieved. I commend this bill to the House today.Hon TAU HENARE (National):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. My colleague Te Ururoa Flavell from the Māori Party sums up the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill in the nicest language possible. But to think that in the year 2013 we are in the House before you fixing up a rather messy and dirty episode—one small dirty episode—that happened in the Tauranga Moana area some 100 years ago. Two hundred years ago Samuel Marsden got on a boat and came out to New Zealand and that is where his deed—I was going to say “dirty deed” but it might not be correct of me because I suppose that in his day his adventure was to go to all corners ofthe earth and Anglicise everybody he saw whether it was right or wrong. That was his mahi; that was his job. I must say that when he first came here he had only a couple of supporters from the indigenous people. It took him a while to get them all signed up to this new and funny religion at that time Christianity. He did a good job because by the time he was sort of moving on in his life most ofMāoridom had signed up for Christianity.But as we have seen over our history especially members of this House in dealing with Treaty settlements on occasion—more than one occasion—there have been some suspicious deals done over landholdings and none more so than by the Church. It is pleasing to note that in this enlightened time the Church itself has realised that there were mistakes and bad deeds done in the name of the Lord and it is willing today to help fix those problems that caused so much damage. ToNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho I say well done. Well done for waiting for the return of land that is highly significant to you both. If I can be so bold as to say that bothhapū say it re-establishes their connection to the water of Tauranga Moana it provides an income to thehapū to finance other activities including allowinghapū to participate in the downtown economy of Tauranga and it comes just before the 150-year anniversary of GatePā which is next year. I am pretty sure that we will get the bill back into the House and done and dusted before that anniversary.TheŌtamataha Trust has been established by thehapū of like I saidNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho to own and manage land and other property just like any other normal person in this country. That is a great thing. The bill declares the new trustees to be a leasing authority for the purposes of the Public Bodies Leases Act 1969. The land being transferred will be subject to a lease granted under that Act. This enables the transfer to happen without affecting the lease and lessee’s rights. The Church Missionary Society the CMS was established in Tauranga in 1835 and in 1838 the society bought two blocks from tangata whenua on the site that is where the city of Tauranga is today. When I say “bought” I mean “bought” in inverted commas; bought in the language of the day. The transaction has never been accepted by tangata whenua as a sale of the land to the Church Missionary Society. In 1867 the Crown acquired by gift of the Church Missionary Society four-fifths of the land which had been vested in the Church Missionary Society by Crown grant in 1852 and military settlers were settled on it. This land was surrounded by confiscated Māori land that was also settled. In 1896 the remaining land includingŌtamataha was transferred from the Church Missionary Society to the New Zealand Mission Trust Board which held the assets of the board on trust for the spiritual benefit and spiritual instruction of Māori people in the North Island of New Zealand—and here is the bit that I really really like—or failing that the evangelisation of heathen races in any part of the world. So—Andrew Williams: There’s still hope for you Tau.Hon TAU HENARE: There is still hope for me. The interesting thing is that through the so-called purchase of this little block of land it was not only for the Anglicisation or the evangelisation of iwi Māori but for the rest of the world as well. So way back then we were having an effect on the world’s Christian population. Those people in the deepest darkest parts of Africa Australia America and England even should be thankful toNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho for their contribution to their evangelisation. In 1996 the New Zealand Mission Trust Board handed back control of the land to the new trustees appointed byNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho. This was done in recognition of the manner and process by which the land was originally acquired from tangata whenua.I want to mention the Treaty of Waitangi and what the Waitangi Tribunal said in itsTe Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: Report on the Tauranga Confiscation Claims in 2004and echo what my colleague Te Ururoa Flavell said “… after considering the manner in which a Crown grant for the land includingOtamataha was awarded to the Church Mission Society in 1852 [it] concluded … : ‘we find that Godfrey failed to ascertain and acknowledge the conditional nature of the transactions under Maori customary law and that he wrongly concluded that the CMS had fully and fairly purchased the whole of the area. The Crown in accepting Godfrey’s recommendation and finally awarding the CMS a Crown grant for the whole area was therefore in breach of the Treaty principle of active protection.’ ” The sad thing about that is that these people had to go to the tribunal only to find the tribunal rule in their favour but that it could not do anything about it because the land was not in Crown hands; it was in private ownership. And through the good deeds of various people from then on to this day—and I want to congratulate my colleague Te Ururoa Flavell on being the member who sees this bill through the House. Despite this conclusion section 6(4A)(a) of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 prevented the Waitangi Tribunal from making any recommendation affecting the future ownership ofŌtamataha because the land as I said was not owned or controlled by the Crown.It is a good day. I am pleased as the chairperson of the Māori Affairs Committee to have this before our committee and can guarantee that we will not only enjoy our work listening to submissions but make a bit of a pilgrimage to coin a phrase to the area to listen to those submitters and actually get a feel for what is being handed over. I also commend this bill to the House.Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to be able to take a call on the first reading of the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill. I also want to endorse the sentiments of the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee to congratulate Te Ururoa Flavell on bringing the bill to the House. It is a good example of where issues sit outside the context of Treaty settlements but where they are included within the context of Waitangi Tribunal claims. You can find a solution albeit it takes a long time getting there. So thank you Te Ururoa for the extensive history that you have given regardingNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho’s interests in Tauranga Moana.I had the privilege to be able to sit alongside a member ofNgāiTamarāwaho and listen to some of their history and connection to raupatu that occurred over there. Much of the interests of that particularhapū as I understand it actually extend into the central business district of Tauranga Moana of Tauranga City Council. So there is a level of concern that within the context of their broader Treaty settlement claims the nature of their interests may not wholly be satisfied by the claims settlement process. We can only wait and see because the Government is continuing its negotiations with the Tauranga Moana claimants. But for the purposes of this discussion and in the interests ofNgāiTamarāwaho it is a significant interest within the Tauranga central business district and I hope that they are able to achieve some greater settlement recognition come that time.Te Ururoa made mention of theŌtamataha Trust in particular the contribution of AlbertPuhirakeĪhaka. I too want to recognise the hard work and effort that have gone into preparing the bill and in getting it to a point where the interests of the trust and the New Zealand Mission Trust Board have been able to converge and present something that this House can have a level of confidence in. When the bill gets to the Māori Affairs Committee I am sure that members around our table will be hearing for the first time some of the extensive interactions of the missionaries during the 1800s in Tauranga Moana and the impact that they had on thehapū in that region. There will probably be a smattering of familiarity throughout their story that will be common to other stories in other regions as well. But the point of all that is to ensure that anenduring opportunity to recognise the connection ofNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho to this area can be achieved that there is a management structure in place and that there will be an ongoing opportunity for the management of the interests and purposes of what happens on that land that can take place.When I was reading through the notes on this particular bill I thought it was of some interest that the Waitangi Tribunal report was quite clear. Without repeating contributions of previous members I thought this particular statement was germane to how this bill came about. It is taken from the Waitangi Tribunal report on the Tauranga Moana confiscation claims. It said: “The Crown acquired the Te Papa lands without accounting for the implied trust which it was aware of. According to the Crown’s own records the land was held in trust for the benefit of Maori. In ignoring the trustee role the CMS”—the Church Missionary Society—“had in holding the land the Crown further breached the principle of active protection.” What we understand throughout the whole process of Treaty settlements and in the nature of interests that Māori have in instances like this is that where the Crown has failed its obligation in the active protection of interests there will always be an issue to remedy.So I am very pleased—very very pleased—that we have this bill which will go to the select committee. It will get a robust hearing that will inform the committee members of the history of the area and that will lead to what I predict hopefully will be a larger claims settlement bill that will hopefully come to the House before the end of the year for Tauranga Moana. I am sure that is the sincere hope of the member for Waiariki because the outstanding interests of the iwi in Tauranga Moana still need to be addressed.Nō reira ki a koe te memamō Waiarikitēnei te mihi atu ki a koeitau maitēneipireimuai tearoaro o te Wharenei.Tēnā koetēnātātou.[And so to you the member for Waiariki I commend you for bringing this bill before this House. Congratulations to you and to us collectively.]NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central): I am very pleased to be able to stand and support the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill at its first reading. As we have heard it is a private bill that has been brought to the House by Te Ururoa Flavell. I think it is important to thank him for the work he has done to bring this bill here because these bills are difficult they are convoluted and they have a long history.The purpose of this bill is to effect the transfer of assets from the New Zealand Mission Trust to theŌtamataha Trust so that those assets can be used in future for the benefit of thehapū ofNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho. This bill is an attempt to unravel the long complex and convoluted history of the land near the Tauranga area.The story started back in London in 1799 when the Society for Missions in Africa and the East was founded by evangelical Christians. Their goal was firstly to convert people in Africa and then in the East but this organisation became part of New Zealand’s history when its missionaries met Samuel Marsden in Sydney. They agreed to give Africa a miss and come to New Zealand. They joined him and they travelled and arrived here in 1814.Their early years in New Zealand were tumultuous but by the time they had the arrival of Henry Williams in 1823 they were the dominant group of Anglican missionaries amongst Māori right throughout the North Island. They were very active and they worked hard but by 1830 there had been only two conversions. However during the 1830s the tide turned and there was a mass conversion of Māori. By 1845 an estimated 43000 Māori were attending Church Missionary Society services.With this expansion they established mission stations throughout the North Island. In 1838 the Rev. Alfred Nesbit Brown acting on behalf of the Church Missionary Society purchased two blocks of land at Te Papa—Te Papa of course is now centralTauranga—and that includedŌtamataha from tangata whenua. In 1867 four-fifths of this land was gifted to the Crown and the Crown used that to settle military settlers. The area where this land was had adjacent land that had been confiscated from Māori and that was used as a settlement as well. The key point here is that this 1838 purchase by the Church Missionary Society was never accepted by tangata whenua.In 1896 the last remaining remnants of the land includingŌtamataha were transferred to the New Zealand Mission Trust Board which had held the assets of the board on trust—and this is the wonderful quote the Hon Tau Henare likes—“for the spiritual benefit and spiritual instruction of Māori people in the North Island of New Zealand or failing that the evangelisation of the heathen races in any part of the world.” It is a fascinating story and we look forward to unravelling it in the Māori Affairs Committee hearing the full story and making sure that we do the right thing by tangata whenua.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. He mihi ki te Whare. He mihi nui ki teNgāti Tapu meNgāiTamarāwaho o Tauranga Moana.Tēnā koutou. I would also like to acknowledge the member Te Ururoa Flavell who brought the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill to the House.This is an important day and it is great to have a process whereby this issue can be progressed given the way that it has struggled in other forums and how important it is to the people of Tauranga Moana. It is a beautiful area of the country full of natural resources but regrettably not shared with the original tangata whenua who are still struggling for basic justice today.All of my colleagues in the House today have clearly outlined some of the fascinating history around this very good example of what I would call the three “m”s of colonisation: the military the mass and the missionaries. Those three “m”s have had an important role in the colonisation process and are intertwined deeply in our history.The purpose of the missionaries as described in this bill was the evangelisation of the heathens. They managed to get to Aotearoa to carry this out in the 1830s and they were sincere in their belief that what they were doing was going to be beneficial. At the heart of the missionaries—and I have read a number of the diaries of the Williams families and other missionaries—was a deep-seated belief that they were superior and a deep-seated belief that they were bringing something that people who had not heard this message should hear but also that they were superior. That superiority created a lot of problems for them. It goes right back to Henry Williams and the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi where Henry Williams who was a fluent Māori scholar took an interesting approach to articles 1 and 2.However this bill is more specific than that. It is not just about Te Tiriti; it is about what happened in Tauranga Moana at Te Papa and the Tauranga mission station. I read last night some of the life of Alfred Brown who was the missionary who came in 1838 3 years after the mission was established after he had converted a very famous rangatiraWīremuTamihanaTarapīpipi of Waharoa. Alfred had an interesting life and was very sincere but he also purported to have purchased this land from thehapū and as others have said his understanding of “purchase” was deeply framed by the Western individual property rights view rather than the understanding of what customary rights reciprocity and land is actually about for the people of that place. So Alfred’s role in the Tauranga mission station is fraught with contradictions as are those of many missionaries around Aotearoa at the time.Alfred was involved in attempting to minister to the wounded and the dead at the battles of GatePā and TeRanga and he did attempt to be impartial it is said but it is also suggested that he lost the trust of the local Māori people not only because of thisŌtamataha land issue but because he was deemed to be associating with the enemies. So he was as many missionaries were in an invidious position where he had a particular set of goals that he failed to carry out. His aims he said were to protect Māori from European influence and convert them into perfect Christians which is deeply contradictory given that he was a European trying to convert them to a European view of the world. Such is the complex world of the missionaries.The missionaries in Aotearoa—not necessarily Alfred who was quite moderate in his acquisitions compared with some; for example the Williams family—acquired vast quantities of land and along the East Coast they still own that land. They certainly benefited alongside the military and alongside the mass who migrated in obtaining wealth power and privilege. It is only right now that this bill begins to redress some of that.The Green Party is very pleased to support this bill. We think it is high time after this very long battle that these people thesehapū should actually get complete authority and control. But as our first speaker said already the land has been unutterably altered. There is a hotel on it. They will get the financial redress which is a great thing. However they will never get what they lost and it will never be returned in the state it was when they lost it. Money is always helpful but mana is also important which is why although the Waitangi Tribunal was very clear they then had to go through a long process to get to this point that we are at today.It is really important and I am quite sorry I am not on the Māori Affairs Committee. I think it is a privilege to hear these stories. It is a privilege to be presented with this information by tangata whenua coming to this Parliament. I know that they will get a good hearing at the select committee. I have faith that this bill will actually take these people to a better place. I look forward to the wider issues that the Hon Nanaia Mahuta referred to in terms of the settlement of Tauranga Moana. We fully support this bill so that the mass the military and the missionaries can no longer dominate anyone’s land in Aotearoa.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill brought to the House by the member Te Ururoa Flavell. I congratulate him on doing this. There is a huge amount of history going back hundreds of years as we have heard from the member. This bill is now putting right aspects of that in terms of the New Zealand Mission Trust and the handover to the new trust which is theŌtamataha Trust on behalf of thehapū ofNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho.It is wonderful when you go to Tauranga and you look around this particular area of the headland and the central business district because it has a huge amount of history. To go into the mission house grounds there with the beautiful historic home that is there the library the other buildings and also the trees and garden that surround it—this is an important part of New Zealand’s history very similar to the mission house at Waitangi and other mission houses around the country. It is very fitting therefore that in this Parliament we are able to transfer this over to the new trust which is part of the local community the localhapū so that they will administer it and take what was very old legislation and update it to a modern situation.This bill is good for the people of Tauranga. It is good for the localhapū and local iwi. It brings the legislation into a modern context and it allows the trustees to now move forward with a lot more certainty. New Zealand First certainly supports this going to the Māori Affairs Committee. We will be supporting this through. This is a good sensible piece of legislation which the member can be proud to have brought to this House and we support it.Hon SHANE JONES (Labour): Ā kia oraanōtātou. Mekōreroi tetuatahiitōtātou Reo Māorimōtēneipire epāana ki tehāhiiwhakatipungiaaiahau me te whenua o ōtātouhuanga Māorii roto o Tauranga Moana. Memaharatātou ā teTīhema tewā o teKirihimete kapau te 200taumō teekenga mai o tewhakapono ki Aotearoa. Ko tekaimau mai koHāmueraMātenga. Ko tewāhiitau maiai ia koŌihi. Ko tekaumātua nana iaiwhakatau koRuatara.Nākīhairawarātoui noho kitēnāpito kiRangihouamō tehiaroakātahirātou kawhakatatū meneke kiwāhikē.Nōmurinoanei ka tae maingāmihinareiraroi tewhakahaere ā TeWīremu.Nā kotetahi ongārōpūpēneii teHāhiMihingareiwhaipakiakaai ki roto o Tauranga Moana heitorotoro heiwhakawhānui atui tewhakapono.Arānoa atuwetahikōreroiputai te koretake o tehāhiēngarikauatātou epōhēhē hekino te katoa ongā mahiiotii terōpūneimō te iwi Māori.Nāōkumātua o roto oNgāpuhi a HongiHikamāiwhakatūpatoi Te Ao Māori. Ko tekararehe heiwhakamatakui ō tamarikii ō mokopuna ko tekoti wheroēhara kongāmihinare.Nā kiawhārikitia eahaui tetuatahi e TeMāngai o te Whare hekōreropērā.[Greetings to us once again. But first I must address in our Māori language this bill which relates to the Church I was brought up in and relates to the land that belongs to our fellow Māori relations in Tauranga. We must remember that in the coming December at Christmas time 200 years will have passed since the arrival of the faith in New Zealand. The bearer was Samuel Marsden.Ōihi was where he landed andRuatara the elder was the one who welcomed him. They had not stayed at that end atRangihoua for any length of time when they decided to move elsewhere. It was later on that the missionaries arrived under the tutelage of Williams. One of these missionary groups like the Church of England established itself in Tauranga reconnoitred the area and expanded the faith.Much has been expressed about how useless the Church has been but we must never be deluded by the fact that what this group did for the Māori people was not all bad. My elders from withinNgāpuhi—HongiHika and others—cautionedMāoridom: the beast that our children and grandchildren will fear will indeed be the redcoats and not the missionaries. And thus I need to lay out a statement like that first.]ThishapūNgāiTamarāwaho and I have an association that goes back to an incident involving the library in Tauranga Moana. A chap by the name of Hone Ngata since disappeared—passed away should I say—who was married to a leading woman of this tribeNgāiTamarāwaho akaumātua by the name ofKōpū and a host of others occupied that particular library. The occupation turned very sour when the police just to show that they did not discover their foul ways in theTūhoe raid sent the police dogs into the Tauranga library in order to dislodge the occupiers. As a consequence a fire broke out. Considerable damage was inflicted upon the books the library and the members of thathapū who were seeking to recover their rights that they had lost I would say broadly through the process of colonisation but more to the point through the nexus of Crown action and the Church of England.I cannot help but think about those people—indeed one of them aPākehā chap who went to my old school St Stephen’s School—who made unsuccessful attempts in what is a pretty conservative area Tauranga Moana to push their agenda. That was in the late 1980s. When we pass a bill like this the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill it is good that we recite a little of the unknown history so that the efforts and the names of the members of thathapū—as I said most of whom have moved on—are recorded because this is the people’s House and we are talking about a group of people here who have received back from the Anglican Church a small portion of their former estate. Naturally I acknowledge Te Ururoa Flavell and follow onfrom what others have said. I am looking forward to hearing what my colleagues on the Māori Affairs Committee say about this piece of legislation.We tend to regard the centres ofMāoridom in the Bay of Plenty as beingTūhoe Te Arawa andWhakatāne but there is a proud and rich history that has been eclipsed in Tauranga Moana belonging to the tangata whenua and this makes a small step for—and I suppose that when you mention the nameNgāiTamarāwaho to the averagePākehā they cannot pronounce it for a start. It does sound a bit rude if you get the consonants around the wrong way but that is another matter. I would say that they are a truculent group of Māori. Indeed a number of conservative Māori did not like them but we should be here today to support this bill and we do.CLAUDETTE HAUITI (National):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. The National Party will be supporting this private bill the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill in the name of Māori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell going to the Māori Affairs Committee.What we are effectively doing here is amending a century-old trust. We have heard the story of the New Zealand Mission Trust as well as Samuel Marsden. When I hear the name Samuel Marsden I recall an area in Sydney inParramatta on New Zealand Street where Samuel Marsden had his market gardens. He had a mission there and he established an agricultural college there. A lot of our rangatira were encouraged to send their boys there to learn how to grow kai—as though we at that time did not know how to grow kai. However three of ourtamaiti our rangatahi fromNgāpuhi were sent to SamuelMarsden’s mission inParramatta on New Zealand Street. It was during a time when influenza was running rampant through Australia and our rangatahi there caught the flu. Three of our rangatahi to cool themselves off placed their feet in theParramatta River and subsequently they passed away. It was not until quite a few months later that their parents were told of their passing. However unfortunately they were never brought home. Whether at the time their parents their papa or their mama wanted them returned home or not I am not sure.However in the mid-1990s a very largeope thanks to Wairua Tapu Church in Sydney was invited by the council in Sydney to bless the area before the building on the site was demolished and then turned into a car park. So Wairua Tapu arranged a very largeope and the Māori Women’s Welfare League and the Māori Council brought iwi from Aotearoa over there to bless the area. What they thought would take a few hours took in fact almost 48 hours—obviously they had a break—but they felt that the area was so deep and rich in our history and our wairua that they were not able to leave without it being blessed to the extent that they thought it needed to be done.So that is part of our connection with the Mission Trust. It was not just around Aotearoa but it extended its arm right across the Tasman toPoihākena too. So with the assistance of Samuel Marsden we also have a very deep connection to theKurranulla people who are over inPoihākena. As I said the New Zealand Mission Trust is a remnant of the first missionaries in the 19th century and I think that this deed the original deed—and I would like to congratulate Te Ururoa Flavell the MP on his generosity in stating that it was a deed of its time. This bill therefore is a bill of its time its relevance and its pertinence today.We have also got to remember that this bill is not a precedent. In fact there was something very similar in 1986. A similar issue arose with money and investments derived from lands held by the Mission Trust in Port Waikato. It was to be transferred toNgātiKārewa andNgātiTāhina and the result was the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Port Waikato Maraetai) Empowering Act of 1986. With this bill the return of the land is highly significant to thehapū ofNgāti Tapu andNgāiTamarāwaho. Thehapū say that it will re-establish their connection to the awa—to the water—and provideincome to thehapū and as my colleague said it comes on the 150th anniversary of GatePā. Kia ora.LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): It is my pleasure and privilege to speak on the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill. I initially want to mihi to my colleague Te Ururoa Flavell for sponsoring this bill and also to thewhānau ofŌtamataha Trust engāhapū oNgāti Tapu meNgāiTamarāwahowhānau in Tauranga Moana whose lands will be returned to them [to the subtribes ofNgāti Tapu the family ofNgāiTamarāwaho in Tauranga]. My contribution really is to highlight that this continues to be part of New Zealand’s truth and reconciliation process. It highlights our colonisation history from the perspective of the missionaries’ contribution to creating relationships with tangata whenua which then eventuated in lands of tangata whenua being placed in such entities as the Church Missionary Society. I want to acknowledge that the society was established on 12 April 1799. In fact its mission was to spread the word of the Lord and the Gospel but it was also to go to parts of the world including Aotearoa New Zealand and create an asset base and a capital base that has meant that lands such as the land that is being returned via this private bill was taken so that the Church could establish itself.When looking at this piece of legislation and the history it is interesting to note that the Church made its first voyage here in 1814 via its representative Samuel Marsden. Over a period of 30 years what it did was establish itself to a point where it developed the relationship with tangata whenua which meant that it could give us blankets axes adzes trousers soap the New Testament scissors spades looking glasses razors handkerchiefs and tobacco. Those were the commodities that it gave us in exchange for our lands.What I want to acknowledge in that process is that from the beginning tangata whenua never treated it as a transaction. For us it was part of becoming Christians and part of that was having a relationship with the Church that meant it needed land to build its churches on. But what quickly happened was that we were displaced from a huge amount of land and so in terms of this specific experience what happened was that we are talking about close to 40000 square metres of central Tauranga land that in 1835 the Church purchased. What happened thereafter was continued dispute with the tangata whenua. The Crown intervened and in 1852 actually granted that land to the Church Missionary Society and in 1867 the Church Missionary Society in return gave the Crown 80 percent of the land that it had taken from tangata whenua. I find that really interesting because what we are talking about today is the return of 20 percent of the original piece of land that the Church Missionary Society had. So the tangata whenua get 20 percent back by virtue of this private bill but I am actually interested in the 80 percent that the Crown was gifted in 1867.But what I do want to acknowledge is that over a period of time the Church Missionary Society obviously developed a philosophy about this land and the fact that it needed to give it back to tangata whenua. So I want to acknowledge that from 1998 it replaced the trustees of the New Zealand Mission Trust Board with tangata whenua representatives and what this bill will do is ensure that those lands that property are transferred to theŌtamataha Trust. It will be a tangata whenua trust and it will benefit thehapū beneficiaries of that particular trust. Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker.JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am pleased to stand and speak on the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill in its first reading and I commend the Māori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell for bringing it to the House. This is a private bill in his name. It seeks to return transferred land in Tauranga and other property from the New Zealand Mission Trust to theŌtamataha Trust so that it can be used by the beneficiaries of that trust thehapū of that area.It is going to be interesting as we go through this bill in the Māori Affairs Committee and as we look at the history of events. I want to make the comment that we do hear sometimes I guess a converged history of what has happened here in New Zealand and not all of it in terms of the missionary work is as bad as some people may portray. As we go to the select committee I would like to ensure also that the good is acknowledged as well. I think not particularly of this area but of one of my own forebears John Hobbs who during the Northern War in 1845-46 used his influence with a number of Hokianga chiefs to limit the spread of the fighting and during other wars he used his influence among warring entities in order to seek to preserve life. I think that through all of these things yes there are things that need to be redressed there are histories that have to be acknowledged and there are things that need to be put right but let us be careful and let us also reflect the good that has happened in our country in the past. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Te Ururoa Flavell 5 minutes in reply.TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki): Firstly can I acknowledge all of the statements made by members of the House this afternoon. I appreciate very much the support and it sounds like it is across the House for this bill the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill. Can I just own up and say that the work that I did was relatively minimal and I acknowledge again Alan Tate who was the adviser to theŌtamataha Trust who basically over the last couple of years has been the communication person for me through my office and of course through the trust—so thank you to him.There are some interesting points I picked up in the discussion and in the couple of minutes that I have got just to wrap up I say that I am sure we will learn a lot of history when we go to Tauranga Moana and pick up much of the discussion when submitters present evidence in front of the Māori Affairs Committee. It reminds me of another bill that we had in the House here not long ago that related to sewage pipes and a large chunk of area of land being handed back to the Tauranga people that was originally taken for a sewage pond. Those sorts of things I think very much stick in the hearts of Māori people but I do acknowledge the point that Jonathan Young has made. Sure there were some good things that came with the arrival of the missionaries but some things very much stick in the heart especially if you have been hanging out for a long period of time to get your land back.This for me is a very important bill because I do not recall—not that I am the expert in it—that there are too many times that the Anglican Church has handed land back to Māori people. But in my area my constituency theTūhoe people up atMaungapōhatu received some land back from the Presbyterian Church I think it was through MrLaughton who had a close association with RuaKēnana back in the day. They set the scene a couple of years ago because they started handing land back but there is a hell of a lot of land out there that is still under the auspices of a number of churches that has not come back to the Māori people and I hope that the precedent set with these sorts of bills is going to be some good news for years to come.I do not think we can deny too some of the main thoughts of the missionaries as they came to New Zealand because they are pretty much set out in a lot of the doctrine that was set up at the time. I am thinking about my old school St Stephen’s School—Mr Jones’ school as well—which pretty much had a set charter if you like which was about educating the uneducated and indeed young Māori boys. Some of them were heathen—Mr Jones well I am not too sure about that but nevertheless he is all right; he came good after a couple of years at St Stephen’s but he has sort of faded away alittle bit since that time. Mr Hone Harawira is another old boy—a sort of similar pattern but nevertheless they might come good at some point or other.I have to say that I do cringe at times at some of the actions by the Church. When I was teaching Treaty education we always referred to two doctrines of the time of both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. One was called the papal bull set out by the Pope which I suppose set the scene for colonisation throughout the world and the other one under the Anglican doctrine was called therequiremento—meaning you were required to read a certain statement. Both of those statements were about “Take the land take the women and if anybody gets in the road deal to them and do it in the name of God.” Under those circumstances we have got a lot of work to do to catch up with those sorts of things.I do not want to take up too much time but I think the key point that was made by Louisa Wall around the reconciliation process is important—that we are on that line in particular with the efforts around settling Treaty settlements and that the work that has been done by Mr Chris Finlayson is along the way. Talking about the other 80 percent as Louisa Wall said it will be interesting to see what the people think about the other 80 percent of land that might come back to them. For those who are travelling through Tauranga Moana I think the easiest way to find this place is to look for the best fish and chip shop in Tauranga Moana down on the harbour—they are blinking nice fish and chips from the Palmerwhānau I think it is. They look after that fish and chip shop and I hope they give me free fish and chips when I go up next time. But also theSebel Hotel is sitting right on that land. It has all been reclaimed I think right on the harbour. If you are flying over there I am sure you cannot miss it.I look forward to hearing the stories from the people up in Tauranga Moana and congratulate them on advancing this bill. Today I think of the korouaMōrehu—the old koroua up there atNgāiTamarāwaho. I am sure that he would be pretty proud to finally get this land in their hands. Ka nui te mihi kia oratātou.Bill read a first time.Billreferred to the Māori Affairs Committee.