Kerekere ElizabethDr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. Tēnā koe e te rangatira Nanaia Mahuta mō tō mahi tipuna i tēnei Whare.[Thank you Madam Speaker. Thank you esteemed woman Nanaia Mahuta for your great achievement in this House.]I stand to take a short call to note that the Greens support Te Pire Whakatikatika Kāwanatanga ā-Rohe (Rētitanga o te Whenua Māori) [the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill]. I wish to note that Aotearoa is 268000 square metres and all of it is Māori land—all of it is whenua Māori. It was removed from us by a range of means including theft—as Tāmati Coffey pointed out—and legislation which systematically broke down communal ownership to individual title. One example is the Native Land Act 1924 upon which the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill is based.As defined by Te Ture Whenua Maori Act we have 5 percent of freehold Māori land left—5 percent of the whole country. So no amount of hiding behind the principles of partnership participation and protection can disguise the fact that this Government is clearly in breach of a Treaty that the Crown signed which gave us undisturbed possession of our lands. To add insult to injury though we got charged rates for keeping the little land we had left and 30 percent of the Māori freehold land that exists is in Te Tai Rāwhiti. So this has a particular impact on my whānau including those that Arena Williams pointed out. We're not talking of course about prime real estate. Much of it is inaccessible and unusable. Much of it is fragmented and rates arrears are a barrier to whānau consolidating the land back to larger blocks.I look forward to a complete overhaul of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act and acknowledge that we will continue to go through incremental changes across multiple pieces of legislation until that is done. So in the meantime we welcome this bill that will remove rates as an impediment to the use and development of whenua Māori by its owners. Land blocks that are entirely unused will be made non-rateable and existing rates arrears on those blocks will be written off. Our land which has been set aside under Ngā Whenua Rāhui kawenata will also be made non-rateable and this has been a very long time coming.We also support that the process of local authority chief executives granting rates remissions for the development of whenua Māori will be made consistent across the country because in the committee of the whole House I identified my concerns about Māori engaging with their local councils. This is very inconsistent across the country. Iwi and hapū organisations often struggle to make headway with them let alone small groups of owners or even huge groups of owners who are scattered all across the country and around the world. We hope this bill does make it easier for the owners of whenua Māori to engage with their whenua and access the Whenua Māori Fund.We hope that that will give life to the hopes and aspirations of their whānau hapū and iwi—to call home whānau from across the country and the world because they've got land where they can build houses and develop their papakāinga to create economic independence and sustainability and alongside our rūnanga our iwi trusts our kura our marae our organisations providers and our businesses to contribute to the collective health and wellbeing of all Māori. Nō reira I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.