te Heuheu Georgina: Waka Umanga (Maori Corporations) Bill — First Reading 
te Heuheu Georgina: Waka Umanga (Maori Corporations) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:644;Page:13859] 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) 
: 
 The public may well wonder why it is that at 10.30 tonight under urgency until midnight this House is debating a range of bills one of which is the Waka Umanga (Maori Corporations) Bill which is before us now when no Maori leader that I know of and no tribe that I know of asked for this legislation when the entities that it sets up are voluntary in any event and when there are far more pressing matters that relate to Maori development than the setting up of yet another governance entity which this Government seems determined to press on to Maori. I do not doubt the sincerity of the Minister’s speech but really there are far more pressing things that he should be addressing his mind to after 8 years in Government. Some of the things that are preventing Maori from moving forward have nothing to do with the kind of thing that is in this bill. 
We could go into urgency to address the appalling rate of child abuse that goes on in many of our communities but we will not. We could go into urgency to address the educational failure that is inherent in some Maori communities but we will not do that. Instead we will debate a bill about the setting up of entities that are voluntary and whose value is untested and debatable; a bill that has the potential to create more problems than it solves and more tension within tribes than tribes need at this particular time in their development. Suffice it to say for those reasons and for other reasons National does not support this bill. 
Maori did not seek this legislation. There is no demand for it from Maori. The initiative is one that was developed solely in Wellington and now it seeks to be imposed on Maori tribes. It is voluntary so it may never come to pass. Maori do not have to pick it up so one wonders why the Minister would waste his time introducing it. Maori in the 21st century are quite capable of developing their own entities and managing their own affairs. In fact there are a number of increasingly high-profile Maori entities in New Zealand now which bears testament to the fact that Maori are capable of managing their own affairs. They do not need a Labour-led Government to yet again impose on them an entity that as I said is debatable in its value. 
The Waka Umanga (Maori Corporations) Bill as the Minister has outlined makes provision for the establishment of two types of entities. It makes provision for their formation and their registration for accountability back to their stakeholders or beneficiaries and for the Maori Land Court to oversee all. There in itself is a huge problem. Sitting overall is the Maori Land Court with whom Maori have had not the best of relationships over the decades and that court now seems to be so much the decider of Maori affairs that one would think we have not moved out of the 19th century. But of course oftentimes with this Government one gets that feeling anyway. 
Although the Minister has gone into some detail in relation to the bill probably to enhance his own understanding nothing he has said gives any confidence that the purposes as set out will be achieved particularly the purpose designed to give legal certainty and stability to Maori governance entities because this bill has the ring of an Act that was passed by the Labour Government of the 1980s—the Runanga Iwi Act. That I think was also passed under urgency against the wishes of Maori. Nobody had asked for that either but that Government determinedly pushed it through and imposed it on Maori and of course it came to an end when the National Government in 1990 sensibly repealed it. There is a bit of déjà vu here and the Labour Government should think about that. Again it finds it difficult even to contemplate that Maori are capable of managing their own affairs. 
I want to take just one example from the bill. Clauses 9 to 11 deal with the formation of waka pu which is the tribal entity being proposed. On the face of it a group of hapu are able to form themselves into a waka pu for the purpose of settling a claim which they may rightly decide they have proper claim to and at the same time however a leader or leaders at an iwi level which embodies those same hapu could also say that they are the ones who should form the waku pu. What will the Government do then? It seems to me as I said earlier that this has the potential for divisiveness and for far more tension than anybody needs at this stage in Maori development. 
I want to be quite clear as to why National does not support this legislation. Maori did not seek it. They did not ask for it. Although the Government said it consulted Maori—I might say consulted in inverted commas—the initiative was not Maori. It was the initiative here in Wellington developed first by the Law Commission—and nobody asked the Law Commission to do this other than the Government—and then armies of bureaucrats busied themselves over a number of years to put this legislation into place. There is no great rush for it. I am sure there will be no great rush for it when it is passed if the support parties of the Government help it through. It does seem to be an utter waste of time. This is a model developed by bureaucrats in Wellington and it is now sought to be imposed on Maori. 
As I said this bill had its genesis in the Law Commission and that in itself does not engender great confidence especially now with Sir Geoffrey Palmer pushing legislation left right and centre. But I suppose when the Government is not capable of doing its own legislation it has to turn to one of its own. Thirdly this is typical of the Labour Government’s mode of operation which is: “We know best. Maori you need us to tell you how to run your lives.” Frankly the Minister should be ashamed of himself for coming to the House with legislation that Maori have not asked for. He has had bureaucrats in Wellington busy wasting time working on it. Maori do not need any Government in the 21st century telling them how to run their lives—how to suck eggs actually because that is what this is all about. 
The experience of Ngai Tahu and Tainui—and I bring those two tribes into this debate with the greatest of respect—is a shining example of what Maori can do when they are released from the shackles of the Maori Land Court for one and when they are freed from an overbearing Government that seeks to push legislation on them. Indeed in the 21st century all Maori ask for is to have full capacity to exercise their rangatiratanga to find their way to develop their own structures and to manage their— 
Sue Moroney 
: Is that National Party policy? 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: There is some person on the Labour side who thinks she knows better than Maori people. Goodness me! She is typical of the Government she is part of. She is a Pakeha woman as well. National in Government in the 1990s gave Maori the freedom to develop their own entities and Ngai Tahu and Tainui are prime examples of that approach. If only that Government could get it into its head that it does not have the solutions for everything that it does not know best how to manage Maori and that it should set them free. 
I said at the beginning of my speech that there are far more pressing issues to worry about than this but this Government has wasted human and financial resources in developing a bill that has no value—it is voluntary so the Government actually admits it has no value—and it is likely not to be picked up by any Maori group because no one is asking for it and it flies in the face of Maori exercising their tino rangatiratanga in the 21st century.