Davis Kelvin: Maori Trustee Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Davis Kelvin: Maori Trustee Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2333] 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 A te mea tuatahi maku he tapiri i oku mihi ki to tatou nei whaea rangatira nga mihi kua uhia ki runga i ona pokohiwi i te ahiahi nei. First of all I would like to acknowledge and support the words that were heaped upon our previous Prime Minister Helen Clark on her gaining her new job with the United Nations. 
I am not a member of the Labour Opposition who gets annoyed with Mr Quinn’s speeches. In fact I quite enjoy them and I can see a number of months ahead of us where—late into the night—we will need the likes of Mr Quinn speaking just to keep us awake. But I want to correct a terrible injustice that occurred earlier this evening—we were not speaking about the Maori Trustee Amendment Bill which I will get to shortly—when Mr Quinn drew an analogy between the Labour Party and a rugby team. A terrible injustice occurred to our good colleague the Hon Parekura Horomia when a terrible stereotype was perpetuated by referring to him as a prop. Parekura’s feelings were terribly hurt and he signalled to me that he will not play for the parliamentary rugby team unless he gets to play on the wing. He was prepared to have a sprint-off against Mr Quinn and to give him a 10-yard handicap. 
Coming back to the bill I refer the Hon Tau Henare’s comments earlier this evening when he wondered why the Labour Government had not found the beneficiaries and distributed the money owing to them. He said that it would take 5 seconds for a debt collection agency to locate these people. Based on that estimate I have figured that it would take 54 days—24-hour days I would have to say—to locate those 188000 owners of this money. Because the Labour Party would not expect people to work a 24-hour day it would mean 164 40-hour days! That means that in less than 6 months National will be able to find the beneficiaries and return all this money to them. To some extent this bill is actually a waste of time because in 6 months’ time the National Government will have distributed all this money so there is not much point in continuing the debate. However we know that is silly logic. It is difficult to find the 188000 beneficiaries of all this money. 
One of the big problems is multiplicity: the number of Maori owners owning a bit of land or whatever. I would like to use my own family as an example. My father has 94 first cousins—we are pretty prolific breeders. Each of those 94 cousins has on average five kids so if we roughly multiply 94 by five there are 500 of my generation. If those 500 have five kids of their own there is another 2500. Members can now understand how quickly there are a number of multiple owners and multiple beneficiaries in Maori whanau. 
I support in particular the purpose of the bill. The bill as introduced was intended to make changes arising out of a review of the Maori Trustee and Maori Trust Office to bring together functions supporting Maori businesses undertaken by Te Puni Kokiri the Maori Trustee and perhaps other organisations. The bill also provides for robust accountability for public funding by including the Maori Trustee on the fourth schedule of the Public Finance Act. I have nothing against accountability; we have to be accountable. But the part of the bill where I think we are really missing an opportunity was in splitting it. Where it is difficult to distribute those funds to the beneficiaries we do not make use of those funds. It is really important that those funds be used to invest in Maori enterprise Maori business and of course Maori employment. When those funds are used and Maori businesses become successful it would not take much thinking outside the square to create a facility within this bill for those people to return a dividend to the fund. 
I would like to describe a project that my whanaunga in Ngati Hine up north have participated in. The project has taken a lot of initiative and it has taken a lot of effort money and resourcing to get off the ground. It would have been really good if some of this type of funding was used to support this Maori initiative to get off the ground. It is the taunahanaha project undertaken by our whanaunga in Motatau which is very hilly country whereby they have developed a plan of the land using mapping where they can identify particular areas of the farms that suit particular crops or particular yields. So instead of planting potatoes they should be planting corn on particular blocks of land or raising sheep instead of planting pine trees. For that sort of initiative there is a lot of investment there is a lot of development and it has taken a lot of time. It would be really good if we could use the funds from the Maori Trustee to support that sort of Maori development. 
I also got a call from a mate of mine who runs an oyster farm in Te Hapua. He is upset that the Northland Regional Council expect oyster farmers to pay a bond of $22000 per hectare in case the farmers walk off their oyster farms for whatever reason. The oyster farms up north are very successful enterprises. However with a $22000 bond per hectare—and my mate has a 13-hectare oyster farm—it will cost him $286000 just to pay for the bond. This is an instance where the Maori Trustee funds could be used to support Maori enterprise to pay this bill. When that enterprise is highly successful then it would be really cool if we had a facility in this bill where it could pay part of that back. 
Another cousin of mine set up a Maori enterprise in Moerewa called the Tuna Café where different types of Maori food are for sale. For example instead of having egg bolognese and things like that— 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Egg whatever. 
KELVIN DAVIS 
: Whatever it is. They have tuna and kumara and those sorts of Maori-based recipes. It was not bolognese—I apologise for that one. But they have formulated a menu that is based around— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member. There is a lot of chit-chat going. I am having difficulty hearing the member. If members want to converse please go to the lobbies. I am sorry to interrupt the member. 
KELVIN DAVIS 
: To conclude I think there is money from the Maori Trustee that could be used to support Maori initiatives. We are in a recession and this is a great time to invest money from the Maori Trustee in order to create jobs to create employment to support Maori businesses and to help us just get on with life. It does not take much thinking outside of the square to use this bill in a positive way so that Maori are able to be highly successful participants in our society. 
I finish by saying that I support the Maori Trustee Amendment Bill and I would like to think that the second part that was cut off the bottom of the original bill will be included. Kia ora.