Chauvel Charles: Rongowhakaata Claims Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Rongowhakaata Claims Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 26 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:4045. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 It is an honour to take a call in this debate and in particular to follow my colleagues on this side of the House the Hon Nanaia Mahuta the Hon Parekura Horomia and Rino Tirikatene because I want to associate myself with the remarks that they have made already in this debate. 
Next Wednesday I will have been a member of this House for 6 years but I have not asked to participate in a Treaty settlement debate until now. My conversation with my colleague Parekura Horomia earlier this afternoon led us to agree that I should do so on this occasion as shadow Attorney-General because as many people in the gallery know I am a person who was born and spent the first two decades of his life in the rohe of Rongowhakaata. My family and I experienced the great generosity of the tangata whenua of that part of our country while we were living in that part of New Zealand. I wish to add my personal words of tribute gratitude and acknowledgment to those who have already spoken in the debate today. 
My mother’s family arrived in Gisborne as immigrants from Scotland in the 1940s. My father came to Gisborne a little bit later. He came to New Zealand to go to school. He came to Gisborne to practice law. He did some work for a number of people whom I see present today helping them with their land and estate work before it was an area of practice that was popular or in vogue. He was very proud of the work that he did. In the 1970s and 1980s my sister and I went to school in your rohe. 
As I mentioned earlier the generosity that my family and I as manuhiri to that rohe experienced is always something that strikes me when I look back on my childhood and when we contemplate the context of the settlement debate today we realise just how extraordinary that generosity is. That is for at least two reasons. One is the fact that yours is one of the most blood-drenched episodes in our colonial history. I will not repeat the accounts that have been recounted earlier in the debates of the atrocities that your ancestors had to put up with at the hands of the Crown. But there is something that I think is even worse than the fact that those atrocities took place: it is the fact that many of us—most of us all of us—who went through the New Zealand education system in the 1970s and 1980s were not taught about them. So another important thing about this process is that we can record our history. Nobody will have the excuse to say that they do not know about it because all that history is now going to be recorded for ever in an Act of this Parliament and in the settlement documentation and that is absolutely as it should be. Earlier speakers are correct—we do not teach our history properly. And if we do not teach our history properly we cannot expect people to understand and appreciate the generosity that is being shown today by the fact that Rongowhakaata are accepting the settlement that we are now enacting. 
I have spoken about generosity several times in this call. It has always been on display by Rongowhakaata. The redress that they will receive under this settlement as with all Treaty settlements—and this an observation I think made many years ago now by the Hon Mark Burton—will never compensate the iwi for what it experienced from 1865 onwards. Never in a Treaty settlement is there adequate redress or compensation for the wrongs of the past. So it is very much always an act of generosity on the part of the Treaty partner to accept what is proffered by the Crown in a binding settlement. We are fortunate today that this Treaty settlement has been accepted and is being enacted. 
I think we are also very fortunate that the generosity that I mention has in a somewhat rare occasion in this House proved contagious. My colleagues earlier acknowledged the work that has been done by the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations in progressing this and other Treaty settlements and I join with them in acknowledging that work. 
The Minister in turn has very properly acknowledged another truth about the settlement process: it does not exist just in the present. The negotiators on both sides stand on the shoulders of giants and they rely on the work that was done in the past in order to bring the settlement about. For the part of the Crown the Minister properly acknowledged the work that was done by the Hon Michael Cullen as Deputy Prime Minister in the previous administration. The signing in principle on behalf of the Crown of the agreement for a collective settlement package in August 2008 was what enabled the detailed negotiations to occur and to progress to the point that they have today. The historical research that was done in order to back up the Treaty claim that was processed through the Waitangi Tribunal in the early part of the last decade was able to be done and resourced only because the fourth Labour Government had amended the Treaty of Waitangi Act in 1985 to allow for grievances back to 1840 to be heard and determined by the tribunal and for historical research and advocacy services to be resourced as part of that process. 
Thank goodness that that happened because that is how we were able to come to a definitive recording of the history that has been spoken about by previous speakers and will be recorded in the deed and in the Act of Parliament. It is a timely reminder that the Treaty process needs to continue to be resourced adequately. This applies to the tribunal and to those who present claims before it. It is no good to have a deadline for the cut-off of Treaty settlements if the process is not properly resourced by the Crown in all respects and we should all remember that in this House when we speak in support of Treaty settlements such as the one that is being debated today. 
It is an honour to have had an opportunity to speak in this debate. I want to conclude by again acknowledging the tremendous generosity of Rongowhakaata. I have been a beneficiary of it personally so I know that the people in the gallery will not be worried at all about what leads the  
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tonight. You have more important concerns than that given the long time that it has taken the long wait for justice to be brought to you. To Rongowhakaata and to Ngai Tamanuhiri—because I am not sure whether I will have the opportunity to speak in the next debate—I want to say that it is a marvellous thing that the generosity that you have shown is now being shown to the nation as a whole. Thank you.