Turei Metiria: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — Second Reading 
Turei Metiria: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:670;Page:16985] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 This is one of the more surreal debates if not the most surreal debate I have heard in my just about 9 years in this Parliament. The arguments made by one side are now being made by the other over an issue that would in other circumstances be quite amusing but actually is not because although there is a great deal of shouting going on here at the end of the day it is Maori who will be the ones who pay for this utter disgrace and this fallacy that is being repeated just a few short years after the first iteration. 
The Green Party has fought this legislation in all its various forms in the last 8 years and we will continue to fight it because the Green Party will never put its name to a confiscation of Maori land. We will never put our name to that. It is with enormous distress that I stand here listening to colleagues who stood with me in 2004 to say the same thing and who now agree to put their name to exactly the same confiscation of Maori land. Members should not get me wrong; I am talking here about Tariana Turia in particular and the Maori Party which was born out of the opposition to the confiscation that this bill undertakes. It is not an argument to simply say the legislation is good because it replaces old discrimination old confiscation if all it does is replace it with exactly the same thing. That is what is happening with this legislation. It is a repeal and replace with effectively the same bill that Labour put up mixed with the Ngati Porou negotiations that occurred a few years later. Anybody who looks at it can see that that is the case. No amount of intellectual “pretzelism” from Maori MPs in this place will change that fact. 
Just as last time the Green Party held the Labour Maori MPs to account today I need to hold Tariana Turia and the Maori Party MPs to account for their complicity in the confiscation of Maori land. Let me set out for the record what the Green Party position is and has been since 2003 when the Court of Appeal first made its decision. In our view collective customary title is to be upheld and is not to be extinguished by legislation. Public access to all parts of the foreshore whether held in customary title or in private freehold title should be—and can be—protected. In our view we can protect the transfer to freehold title of customary land by a simple amendment to Te Ture Whenua Maori Act and that will ensure that no customary title in the foreshore and seabed land could ever then be onsold. 
It is a fairly straightforward position. It is one I put to Michael Cullen as did Jeannette Fitzsimons in 2003 and 2004. It was rejected by Labour then but it is accepted by Labour now. I heard David Parker setting out precisely that solution to that issue in this bill. I am pleased that Labour has changed its position but this should never have had to happen in the first place. The solution was obvious then and it is obvious now. A confiscation of Maori land is not necessary to resolve this issue. 
In a second reading debate it is traditional for MPs to talk about the select committee process and I will talk about that briefly and draw some parallels. The select committee process was also simply a Groundhog Day—a repeat of what had happened last time but with different characters playing the same parts. It distressed me a great deal to see that the Maori Party representative on the Maori Affairs Committee played exactly the same role that Maori Labour MPs did the first time around. One of the ways it was most obvious was when Maori came to the select committee and talked about their issues their concerns and their opposition to the legislation—just as they did last time and just as they did to the panel. Te Ururoa Flavell would then ask them whether they had read the bill. If they had not read the bill all the way through he would deny their ability to understand the impact of the legislation on them their whanau and their land. He denigrated their tikanga their right to put forward their view on what this legislation would do to them their whanau and their customary rights—their tikanga Maori. 
That is exactly what Michael Cullen did when we toured around in 2003 talking about the previous legislation. Michael Cullen told Maori that they did not like the bill because they did not understand it and we heard that through the select committee process in 2004 as well. What did we hear from the Maori Party representative on the select committee this time? We heard the same thing: “I’m sorry Maori people but you do not like it because you do not understand it. If you just understood it better you’d be OK.” That denies entirely the Maori experience of what confiscation looks like and what it means. Maori people have watched the confiscation of their land for generations and they have fought it for generation after generation. They have fought it everywhere: on the land itself in protests in the courts and in Parliament decade after decade. Maori know a confiscation when they see one and they saw it in this legislation. That is what they told us. But the Maori Party told those submitters they were wrong just as Michael Cullen and Labour did last time. 
Labour now complains about the process. It complains that we did not get the chance to discuss or make changes to the bill after receiving the 500-page report on the bill and Labour is right about that. We did not get a chance to discuss it. We had 2 hours. 
Paul Quinn 
: You weren’t even there that day. 
METIRIA TUREI 
: Some will say that they read it word for word and we can believe them if we like. Some will say that but I sat there and watched National and the Maori Party agree that we would not look at the report and not only that that we would also not consider it. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Hon Nanaia Mahuta 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: I think I can anticipate what it is. The member will desist from being quite so boisterous. 
Paul Quinn 
: Speaking to the point of order— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: I have ruled. The member is being too boisterous. I have ruled. You are too boisterous. 
METIRIA TUREI 
: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and I thank my colleague. I sat there and watched as the Maori Party and National members agreed that they would not discuss this legislation. I watched them do that because I was there at the time. Not only was that the case but the Maori Party and National members decided that not one change would be made to the bill. What that means is that for every single Maori person every single whanau hapu and iwi who came to that select committee not a single word they said made any difference to National or the Maori Party about what this bill would do. It was a waste of their time. They need not have bothered coming. The whole idea of the process being one in which Maori could have a say was rubbished because the Maori Party and National denied them the right to have any changes made in this legislation. 
That is exactly what Labour did in 2004; in 2004 no amendments were made to the legislation in the select committee either. At the end of the day I agree with David Parker that this legislation on the confiscation of Maori land is about a political decision on where votes will come from. For some reason the Maori Party has decided that its political future lies with those who agree with confiscation of Maori land. The Green Party does not and we will never support confiscations such as are provided for in this bill. We refuse to put our name to this travesty and we ask as we have before that the Maori Party refuse to put its name to a confiscation of Maori land.