Clendon David: Waikato-Tainui Raupatu Claims (Waikato River) Settlement Bill — In Committee 
Clendon David: Waikato-Tainui Raupatu Claims (Waikato River) Settlement Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:662;Page:10471] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I will take just a short call on behalf of the Greens primarily to simply affirm our continued support for the Waikato-Tainui Raupatu Claims (Waikato River) Settlement Bill. We believe that the bill is a step towards both restoring the mana of the affected iwi and hapu and acknowledging what was taken away from them and going some way towards restoring what was taken away. It might also lead to some very positive environmental and social outcomes which will be very positive—and far from incidental—but additional benefits from this sort of settlement bill. 
I preface my comments by echoing my colleague who spoke when this bill was last debated in the Chamber in regretting the recent loss of Lady Mahuta who did an extraordinary amount of work for her iwi and indeed for the entire country specifically in advancing causes like the restoration of the management of the Waikato to its rightful owners. 
As a default position we support these settlement bills. It is timely to recall that the delay in bringing them to fruition has been a characteristic of the process over many years and we have seen too many generations of elders of all iwi fail to see the beneficial outcomes of many of these claims. We urge this and indeed every Government to adequately or even generously support resource and facilitate the conclusion of many of the outstanding settlements all of which have a common aim of settling claims in a proper fair and sustainable manner. 
We heard in an earlier discussion this afternoon and it has been stated many times that New Zealand’s natural environment is in a very poor state—an indefensibly poor state—and our economic cultural and social well-being and indeed our lifestyles are threatened by the degradation. The proposed clean-up trust that this bill establishes is to some extent a novel initiative. It is also a long overdue initiative. The Waikato along with many of our rivers is in an appalling condition. It is little short of a national disgrace. The sacrifice of the river—the quality of the river water—to the combined demands of farming urban development waste discharge and excessive extraction needs to be stopped and indeed reversed. We see this settlement and the various agencies and practices it will establish as a very positive step towards doing that. 
The co-management model that this bill proposes is not common in New Zealand; it is much more common overseas. I think it is useful for people to understand that co-management means much more than simply having two parties with an opinion with an ability to influence outcomes. Co-management is quite a sophisticated structure in terms of land and indeed water management. It is an adaptive approach which is to say that one learns by doing. It is adaptive in that one effects changes one looks at the responses both environmentally and socially to those changes and one continues to adapt to the real outcomes. It is not a theoretical approach; it is a very hands-on grounded approach at the operational level and that is one of the powers of a co-management approach. 
It acknowledges the value of the scientific input of Western science if you like but also acknowledges indigenous knowledge. It has had significant success internationally in incorporating the best of what we call hard or Western science and indigenous knowledge that has accumulated over many generations—indeed over centuries. It allows for putting a scientific assessment of water quality alongside a tool like a cultural health index which informs people in a very rich and positive way about the well-being of that environment in cultural terms and it puts things in a framework that both sides of a co-management arrangement can actually accept deal with and move on with. 
Co-management works only with a very high and sustained level of stakeholder engagement. It will fail to the extent that all stakeholders are not engaged and do not feel that they are participating and we hope that that will lay to rest some of the expressed opposition and some of the concerns of some of the opponents of this bill who continue to fear that engagement will be taken away from them. 
Finally a co-management approach always obliges practitioners to look at the detail and also to keep coming out and looking at the bigger picture. One does not get lost in the small detail and one does not get lost in what is happening on one site; one is obliged always to come out and have that wider look to take in that wider concern. So we actively and positively support the notion of co-management. Thank you.