Tirikatene Rino: Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tirikatene Rino: Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 08 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2067. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Speaker. I am pleased to be standing and speaking on the first reading of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill. Labour and I support this bill going to the Local Government and Environment Committee. This bill really marks quite a big change I guess in terms of bringing the New Zealand Historic Places Trust into being a focused regulatory statutory function - type body as opposed to a broad membership-supported volunteer-based heritage protection organisation which it was originally established as back in the 1950s.  
The Historic Places Trust is the leading national historic heritage agency and under this bill it is moving from those volunteer roots through to a completely autonomous Crown entity with its own Act and a new name Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. So a completely new organisation is constituted under this bill—its own legislation—and the major changes really are to focus on the regulatory side of what it does. That is around the regulation of destruction investigation of archaeological sites identification and maintenance of a register of historical and cultural heritage and managing its portfolio of some 48 properties.  
 Heritage New Zealand as it stands will see a real significant change with its new organisation and a change at the governance level. Currently the Historic Places Trust has a nine-member board: six are appointed by the Minister and three are elected by the members. This is the major significant change: the disestablishment of the 24 branch committees which were representing some 20000-plus members of the Historic Places Trust. Those committees are no more under this legislation.  
The new Heritage New Zealand will be a member-based organisation. However it is difficult to see what scope will be given to its non-regulatory - type roles given that the branch committees will no longer exist and therefore there will be no real say from the members of the organisation on the governance and the activities of the new organisation.  
The new governance arrangements will mean that there will be an eight-member board all of whom will be appointed by the Minister and sort of operating alongside that board will be an eight-member Maori Heritage Council. I am pleased to see that the bill has retained the full composition and membership of the Maori Heritage Council four members of which will be from the board and another four appointed from Maoridom at large from appropriately qualified and skilled people in the heritage area. The eight-member board alongside the eight-member Maori Heritage Council signifies a good in terms of numbers alignment in terms of the Treaty principles which have been embodied in the Treaty clause within the bill.  
Just looking at the Maori Heritage Council there are some very esteemed members from within Maoridom who make up that council. We have Sir Tumu te Heuheu the chair and paramount chief of Tuwharetoa; Naida Glavish a well-known kuia from up in Ngati Whatua; Apirana Mahuika paramount chief of Ngati Porou; Manos Nathan from up north; and whanaunga Gerard O’Regan from the south. It is good to see some representation from down in the south; Gerard has done a lot of work in terms of the rock art down south way. We also have Jamie Tuuta the rep from Taranaki. He is a Maori Trustee and wears quite a lot of hats these days; he is also on the Maori Heritage Council. There is also Che Wilson from up the Whanganui River. Those current members of the Maori Heritage Council are a very esteemed group and they have a very important role to play and it is encouraging to see that the bill not only retains that full Maori Heritage Council but makes sure that its role has been expanded. It will now be consulted on all applications regarding the modification of archaeological sites or for archaeological authority.  
Returning back to the governance arrangements the whole emphasis regarding the changes that have been made in this legislation has revolved around the conflicts that arose between the trust trying to exercise its statutory responsibilities and regulatory functions and staff being able to take positions on heritage issues versus contrary views by particular regions or branch committees that were promoting heritage in their own regions. That led to situations where it was not very clear who spoke for the trust and also what the position of the trust was.  
The emphasis has now moved to purely a regulatory statutory function and in light of that I guess the hope is that those branch committees and organisations will now being disbanded become independent heritage advocates in their own right or also join up with existing heritage organisations in their particular locality. There are quite a lot of those as I mentioned. There were 24 branch committees. I understand not all were functioning. There were about 20 functioning committees which still represents a large cross-section of individuals interested in heritage protection. Some 10 of those committees are situated within the vast electorate of Te Tai Tonga from Wellington all the way down to the far south. Those branch committees will be no more but that is the intention of this bill and it will be in the hope that there will be more expeditious processing and decision-making achieved by the new Heritage New Zealand.  
I want to conclude by just touching on the archaeological consenting provisions. I concur with the remarks by Ms Delahunty that it is on the face of it encouraging to see that the Maori Heritage Council will be consulted on all applications. However there is the exception that it will not be consulted if the development is of a minor nature. So I look forward to hearing back in terms of what submissions are made to the select committee in terms of how in the push for expeditious processing of applications and granting of authorities we do not disregard the importance that wahi tapu archaeological sites have to the tangata whenua. I would hope that the Maori Heritage Council will be extremely busy in terms of making sure that with the 350-odd applications that on average are being made for the archaeological authorities each year it will be fully involved on behalf of the tangata whenua to make sure that Maori heritage is protected under this new set-up in this bill.