Ririnui Mita: Māori Trustee Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRirinui Mita: Māori Trustee Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 05 May 2009. Volume:654;Page:2841. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MITA RIRINUI (Labour):As the Hon Nanaia Mahuta is not in the Chamber I am more than happy to take a call in the Committee stage of this bill. Just to recap much of the earlier debate it is important that we go over some of the issues that were canvassed debated and certainly thrown around the Committee at that time. I welcome to the chair the Minister of Māori Affairs the Hon Pita Sharples—I welcome him back. Kia piki te ora ki tō hoa rangatira.[May your good lady’s health be restored.]As stated previously in the Committee stage the bill was introduced with some very very essential and long overdue changes. There is a strong focus on the establishment of the Māori Trustee as an independent organisation. The necessary changes to the Maori Trustee Act were put into place to legitimise much of the activities of the Māori Trustee.This bill was introduced to the House under the previous Minister of Māori Affairs the Hon Parekura Horomia. Our support for this bill still stands although when people listened to the earlier debate in the Committee stage they may have wondered whether members in this Committee were really aware that this bill was introduced by the previous Minister.Essentially the bill was divided into the Māori Trustee Amendment Bill and the Māori Development Amendment Bill in order to address two distinct subjects. The first was to introduce changes to establish the Māori Trustee as a stand-alone organisation. This sets up a new independent statutory corporation to further Māori economic development by using the resources available to Māori. Having considered and heard submissions on the bill the Māori Affairs Committee concluded that the first intention of the bill was to establish the Māori Trustee as a stand-alone organisation and Part 1 is essentially focused around that. But the committee expressed the view that the arrangements proposed for the statutory corporation to further Māori development were very contentious and that they naturally deserved further consideration. That is desirable and that sentiment was expressed during the round of consultations on the bill. Although there was support for the Māori Trustee as a stand-alone organisation it was also made clear that Māori economic development would benefit very much through the utilisation of the Māori Trustee funds.In terms of the main changes to the bill we see that there are changes to the termination and appointment of the Māori Trustee. The changes to the operation of the Māori Trustee accounts make it very clear that where money held in the common fund has been invested the investments are to come back into the fund. I suppose that this change was necessary to make that very clear because obviously it has not been clear in the past.It is also interesting that section 41 of the Maori Trustee Act 1953 allows the Minister of Finance to recover the amounts paid for the expenses of the Māori Trust Office before 1 July 2008. The previous Government was authorising the writing off of the accumulated debt of the Māori Trustee. The Crown wants this bill to pass through all its stages in the House. Obviously we have seen some changes over a number of months.This is a very very important step forward for the Māori Trustee as the bill clarifies a lot of the trustee’s operations and functions as well as making it very clear that it will become a stand-alone organisation. I look forward to the next debate we have about the Māori Trustee taking another gigantic step forward by playing a major role in the acceleration of Māori economic development. In the past we have seen organisations benefit from Māori Trustee funds and I see no reason at all why that cannot continue into the future. I would be very very interested to hear the views of the Minister of Māori Affairs the Hon Dr Pita Sharples who is now in the chair on the way forward for Māori through the assistance of the Māori Trust Office.