Turei Metiria: Maori Fisheries Bill — In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Maori Fisheries Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:15433] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party has two amendments on the floor for Part 1. The first is to delete clause 14E(2). As I explained earlier clause 14E(2) prevents any mandated iwi organisations among withdrawing iwi from having a vote on Te Kawai Taumata but it also prevents them from having a vote on the committee of representatives. I want to alert the Committee to that. 
The committee of representatives is the group that establishes the terms of reference for the 11th year review of the entities established in the bill. That is a critical operation and activity in the bill because Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd and the other entities established by the bill have 4-yearly audits but they have only this single review at the end of an 11-year period. The committee of representatives is the organisation that establishes the terms of reference for the review that appoints the reviewer and that then receives and distributes the report at the end of that process. 
Those iwi who withdraw from the conglomerates who have mandated iwi organisations who have asset-holding companies and who are then out doing their own business—having recognition and being established as iwi in their own right to do what other iwi are doing—will not be able to vote for the members of the committee of representatives if clause 14E(2) is allowed to proceed. 
The Greens also have an amendment to delete clause 15 in its entirety. Clause 15 enables Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd to prescribe further criteria that the mandated iwi organisations will have to meet in relation to their constitutional documents. Clause 38 sets out exactly how that happens. It enables Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd to make changes to the procedures for sale to set out the criteria that constitutional documents must meet and to govern access to the register. Effectively that means that for Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd—which in effect controls Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd the company that maintains 50 percent of the assets—to change the constitutional documents of the iwi who are operating companies in direct competition to Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd it has been given a huge competitive commercial advantage that is not justifiable. 
Clause 15 not only allows the trustee to make changes to criteria but gives no time limit on those changes. They can be made at any time from the enactment of the bill. They can be made after the mandated iwi organisations have been established and after the iwi have met the constitutional requirements at the time those have to be met. Those parameters can change in the future and iwi will then have to meet those changes as well. Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd does not have any limitations on whether the criteria that have changed will affect only one iwi or mandated iwi organisation all iwi or mandated iwi organisations or a range or group of them. 
Therefore Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd could change the criteria for those it does not like. That is not to suggest that the trust will necessarily do that but the bill allows for it to happen and those changes can be made. The criteria that mandated iwi organisations will have to meet can be established at any time in the future and can affect one a number or all of those mandated iwi organisations. They will have no opportunity to make the decision themselves. Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd will have to tell them about those changes. The trustee will then have to ask them for their submissions on the changes and take the submissions into account but in the end it will make the final decision. 
That gives the trustee an extraordinary power in a very sensitive and vulnerable commercial industry that cannot be justified under any circumstances whatsoever. Neither the ministry nor the ministry officials could explain why that provision is necessary except to say that the trust might need that power some time in the future for some unknown reason. If we are to enact legislation that gives one organisation which already has a commercial advantage extraordinary power to alter the constitutional arrangements of other organisations with which it is in direct competition it is extremely bad law. It is not law that this Parliament should pass. I urge members to consider the issues around clause 15 and to support the Green Party amendment.