Hayes Joanne: New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHayes Joanne: New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 07 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17601. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JOANNE HAYES (National):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I am privileged to stand and take this call to support the second reading of the New Zealand Mission Trust Board (Otamataha) Empowering Bill. I want to acknowledge the co-leader of the Māori Party and member for Waiariki Te Ururoa Flavell. I want to thank you for bringing this bill through and for shepherding it through the second reading and through to the third reading no doubt.I want to stand here because I was not here when this bill had its first reading. I came on to the Māori Affairs Committee at the beginning of this year and have been privileged to hear the submissions from thewhānau ofNgātiTapu andNgāiTamarāwaho. This bill returns the land this highly significant land to thehapū. I want to reiterate that according to thehapū the bill re-establishes their connection to the water. The water is a key component of who we are as Māori. It is something that we not only drink and replenish our body with but cleanse ourselves with spiritually as well. It is very key. I have been privileged to be part of Māori traditional healing groups in Aotearoa New Zealand and the power of the water we use is significant to us. So it is really key that thehapū acknowledge that this bill does re-establish their connection to the water.It also provides income to thehapū to finance other activities that they can get involved in. We all know about the dashboard that was released just recently to do with Māori business. We are looking at a growing Māori economy worth $38 billion to this country. It is all congratulations to the National Government on allowing that to happen and the claims process. It is a great feat for all iwi to be able to participate but especially for thishapū. It also marks the 150-year anniversary of the Battle of GatePā which happened on 29 April and is very significant for thehapū.I want to talk just a little bit about the missionary history because you are looking at somebody who was christenedRātana who was a Sunday school participant in a local Methodist church inRangiwāhia in theManawatū and who was sent to an Anglican boarding school. You know when you start looking at that I must be just about one of the holiest people in this room!Hon Tau Henare: A troubled child.JOANNE HAYES: No. When you start looking at that back then when you are young you think that it is great to go to Sunday school and it is fun and we go off to camp. But I started to look at the history of how missionaries came to New Zealand. Back in 1814 Samuel Marsden brought them and even further back than that in 1799 the Society forMissions in Africa and the East was founded. I think of the long history and the long time it has taken to get toAotearoa New Zealand. And then I hear things about the Church Missionary Society being established in 1835 and then in 1867 the Crown acquired four-fifths of the land and I read how in 1896 the land was transferred from the Church Missionary Society to the New Zealand Mission Trust Board which “held the assets of the Board on trusts for the spiritual benefit and spiritual instruction of Maori people in the North Island of New Zealand or failing that the evangelisation of heathen races in any part of the world:”.I want to talk just a little bit about that because this is a discussion that I had with my father before he passed away in 1997. We talked a little bit about that because my father was deeply religious. I said to him that for Māori we had our demigods and our history and our stories. We start looking atPapatūānuku and we start looking at all of thosegods that made us who we are. So the transition that we have made through to Christianity has been quite an amazing transition for Māori. It is amazing that we have still been able to hold on to the very crux of who we are as a Māori culture in Aotearoa New Zealand. We used to have these little discussions and I am sure he used to get a bit brassed off with me for challenging everything but that is what children are there for is it not?In 1996—I am going to reiterate this—the New Zealand Mission Trust Board handed back the control of the land to the new trustees appointed byNgātiTapu andNgāiTamarāwaho. This was done in recognition of the manner and process by which the land was originally acquired from tangata whenua. The square metreage was 7863 square metres on the waterfront site where the Trinity Wharf Tauranga hotel sits. Even though the trust does collect ground rent from the hotel soon it will be able to participate much more than that.I see that as a Māori people and as an iwi these twohapū have been very very—I am not going to say fortunate; what I am going to say is that they have been working very very hard to get to this stage in their claims process. I take my hat off to them because it is not easy. It is not easy to place your history in front of people to get the member here to bring it through and then to sit and explain it to all of us in the Māori Affairs Committee. It is a select committee that is very collegial and a select committee that has a chair as Meka Whaitiri has said and as other members have said who does crack the whip who does get the work done and who gets us all into a mode where we are all agreeing to move these through. I think that the committee has done well in being able to get this far. We are a hard-working committee and I thank everybody in the committee for the work that they do.I want to talk a little bit aboutNgāiTūkairangi.NgāiTūkairangi came and put their submission to us. It was very compelling for us to listen to theirkōrero their history of where they saw themselves in this. It was so compelling that the Ōtamataha Trust was amended by the New Zealand Mission Trust Board to allowNgāiTūkairangi members to benefit from the Ōtamataha Trust through whakapapa. I can tell you whakapapa is deep and it is so historical. Nothing breaks whakapapa. That is why as I stand here today I am very proud to be commending this bill to the House and I look forward to the next part of this process. Kia ora.