Delahunty Catherine: Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 07 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6384. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. I am reluctant to speak before the Hon Parekura Horomia who has very graciously given me the call. I was wondering whether there was going to be anyone else speaking. 
I think it is interesting that this Mount Maunganui Borough Reclamation and Empowering Act Repeal Bill is being described as a tidying-up bill. Tidying-up in my experience is sometimes a euphemism for some of the most profound things that we do. It is really great that we are getting to the third reading because it is long overdue. It is a bill that everybody supports a bill that the Local Government and Environment Committee supported unanimously and a bill that for once there is no dispute over—apart from the fact that it has taken so long. 
I think it is a bill that also symbolises the importance of the role of protest. Often those of us who have stood up and protested against things have been vilified—on a regular basis in fact—but without protest by people like Nga Potiki the changes do not stay in front of the people who have power and privilege. So it is necessary sometimes to draw a line in the sand literally over these issues take that stand and be vilified in order to get change. Change happens. The beast of power and the beast of authority particularly local authority I have to say can move very slowly particularly on issues to do with culture Te Tiriti o Waitangi and—one of my passions and the Green Party’s passions—sewage. It is an important issue. We can put man on the moon but we cannot deal with the most fundamental issues about how to deal with our own waste. We are great at celebrating our marvellous technological achievements but we are still pumping a lot of human waste into water and that of course is a profound cultural offence in many places in this country. In fact the origins of this bill come from a reclamation that was about where waste water was being sited and about the creation of a cultural offence which this bill will go a long way to deal with. 
So I would like to acknowledge the select committee and Te Ururoa Flavell but primarily the Tauranga City Council and Nga Potiki and primarily Nga Potiki themselves for their persistent and courageous challenge through protest through lobbying and eventually through dialogue and negotiation to get to this point to deal with what I heard was laid down a long time ago. If we are going to find solutions to the issue around sewage and waste water we actually need to involve all the parties particularly those whose land it is on whose waters are affected and whose cultural relationships have been trampled on. In the experience of the Green Party all over the country there are iwi and hapu that have for a long time asked us not to site waste water pipelines sewerage pipes waste-water ponds and all the rest of the paraphernalia of our current unsophisticated way of dealing with waste water on their sacred sites. 
So this is progress indeed but it is still an issue that many many people around the country who are not in power are struggling to be heard on because we still have those pipelines we still have those discharge pipes and we still have those ponds that leach into waterways and rivers. That is why you will hear not only from me but from many groups around the country constant calls for a more modern approach towards this very fundamental issue of human waste. 
This bill is about saying that it is no longer acceptable to ignore the views of tangata whenua. So it is a Treaty issue. I would just like to point out that we often have bills in the House to do with a land settlement and we have Te Tiriti o Waitangi bills—in fact I have heard it eloquently said in this House that we should have Tiriti o Waitangi days where we deal with those—but actually Te Tiriti o Waitangi which lives on well beyond the end of settlement is about all of these matters. It is about water it is about sewage and it is about taonga katoa; it is about all of those things—how we deal with those with honour and respect towards each other. And ultimately it is about relationships. This bill for us is about a relationship that was breached through an abusive practice and an abusive treatment not only of the environment but of the people of the place who have the whakapapa the ancestral whakapapa to their turangawaewae in terms of the way they were treated the land was treated and the water was treated. It is about saying that we are not going to do that any more. 
The Tauranga City Council and Nga Potiki have moved to a new era and that is something we should support and celebrate. So I commend the bill to the House. Kia ora.