Delahunty Catherine: Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 05 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15335. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I would like to take a call on this bill the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill because it is an important bill. Our heritage is vital and central to our nation. We are very supportive of aspects of this bill and we will be voting for it. I have been discussing with the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage some of our concerns. I also support Eugenie Sage’s speech about the good things that are in the bill. I understand the concerns of the last speaker Andrew Williams.Obviously we need a robust regime for any review of what was the Historic Places Trust. I think it is quite easy to romanticise how heritage has been dealt with in the past. Actually the Historic Places Trust has been very constrained for quite a long time. It has not had the resources to advocate for all of the issues that it would like to advocate for and I am not sure that this bill changes that. But we are supportive of many of the changes in terms of the focus on Māori heritage issues. The issues around Māori heritage are important.My partner was an archaeologist for many years and I guess we lived through some of the frustrations of the tension between localPākehā heritage—and the interpretation of heritage—versus the reality for Māori and their access to the protection of theirwāhi tapu and their taonga katoa. This is a very politicised issue and on the ground it has been hotly contested. History is about whose story we are going to tell whose objects we are going to protect and whose landmarks are given pre-eminence. In local communities for example in Te TaiRāwhiti where I live these issues were very very contested. For example whether the story of TeKurī aPaoa was both TeKurī aPaoaand Young Nicks Head or whether it was only Young Nicks Head was a very interesting issue. It was hotly debated amongst the different versions of history and the different holders of history in our community.So I am interested in the provisions in this bill that actually allow for tangata whenua to have a greater voice. As a person who speaks regularly about the implications of Te Tiriti o Waitangi I want to see those voices manifest in all the legislation that we work on and pass in this House. So I have been engaging with Minister Finlayson in a very constructive way about this issue. We have not reached any conclusion.I am not sure yet that I will be putting up some Supplementary Order Papers in the Committee of the whole House but the kind of issues that I am concerned about are around words such as “significance” and “minor”. These are very difficult words. If you look at the Resource Management Act they are very difficult in the Resource Management Act as well. Nobody really has ownership of what is considered to be significant in terms of heritage and what is considered to be minor.For example clause 42 is one of the clauses that I am interested in. Clause 42(1)(b) says “if the effects of that activity on the site will be no more than minor” and that sites can be destroyed without consulting mana whenuahapū. Again who decides what is minor is a very important question. Is the local heritage committee—or the former local heritage committee—deciding it or the localPākehā deciding what is minor? Is it the Historic Places Trust archaeologist in Wellington deciding what is minor? Or is it the tangata whenua who have a historic relationship with a place over a thousand years saying whether something is minor or not? The problem with this clause is that we are not asking them so how will we know? If we do not ask we do not know. That is part of the “invisiblising” of the mana whenua voice so often present in the structures that surround our archaeology and our heritage. So that is one the clauses I am very interested in.I am also interested in the issue—and this is one where we have not reached a conclusion in the debate with the Minister—of who gets to decide which archaeologist is going to work on those sites that are going to be modified and destroyed. At the moment developers decide the archaeologist and in the contested field of archaeology and heritage there are archaeologists who are dedicated to getting the job done for the developer as fast as possible in the most efficient manner possible and there are archaeologists who are dedicated to finding out whether the values of the mana whenuahapū and the values of the history are going to be protected at all costs. That is a real tension because he who pays the piper—and I use the word “he” advisedly—often calls the tune in development. I think that that has been the problem for mana whenua and archaeologists who are passionate about making sure that we do not modify and destroy without at least talking to the right people about what is at stake and finding ways of upholding preserving and researching what could be lost through development. So these are not small things. This is about the bulldozing ofurupā. This is about changing the face ofwāhi tapu for ever. If nobody asks mana whenua nobody will know.Apart from having those concerns we are supporting the bill. We are willing to see a review of the Historic Places Trust. We do think it has been under-resourced in its role. We do think there is value in the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill but we do want to see further on in the Committee stage the possibility of looking at the word “minor”. Because really one of the most laden concepts that we have in resource management in archaeology and heritage is who gets to decide what is minor. For some people the colonisation of Aotearoa was a minor effect but it did help them gain quite a lot of land. But for other people it was the end of their relationship with their land and their culture. So I cannot emphasise enough the importance of recognising who shall get to decide what is minor how subjective such terms are in the law how difficult theyare and how they end up being contested through very expensive appeal processes which most mana whenua and other people cannot afford. So we need to write legislation carefully. We need to be really clear about what we mean by terms like “minor” and like “significant”. We will continue this theme and this dialogue as we continue to support this bill. Thank you very much.