Henare Tau: Te Urewera-Tūhoe Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHenare Tau: Te Urewera-Tūhoe Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 07 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17648. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TAU HENARE (National): Te mea tuatahi kei a koutou e aku rangatira e aku tuākana Mātaatua tēnā koutou katoa.[Firstly to you collectively my leaders and elder siblings of Mātaatua salutations to you all.]Theft lies blackmail and then more lies. Those are the ingredients for a ripping Dan Brown or John le Carré novel that you would love to pick up and read. But no it is a historical record of what happened to an indigenous nation some 100-odd years ago. That is the litany of Government theft lies blackmail and more lies. I will keep this reasonably brief and I will leave the esoteric to my other colleagues who can think better than I can. No. 1 is the theft as the story goes. This is the first chapter that you read in the Singapore airport as you pick up the novel. Tūhoe were an independent nation who did not sign up to the Treaty of Waitangi had no rebellious thought—they were not in rebellion against the Crown or anybody else for that matter at that particular time. Then out of the blue the most productive land was confiscated by another nation—the Government more particularly. The confiscation was directed solely at Tūhoe.The next chapter is the lies. The prejudice created by the confiscation was exacerbated by the Compensation Court process which returned much of the confiscated land to other Māori and not those from Tūhoe who had traditionally occupied and cultivated that area of land. So it begins and the story starts to unravel. The blackmail came in 1875 when the Crown induced Tūhoe to sell a large area of land at Waikaremoana by threatening to confiscate their interests if they did not sell. So you can see the story unravelling and it is like a novel. You would think that this could happen only in somebody’s head. Unfortunately it did not.Now we get to the more lies part. After years and years of struggle Tūhoe sought to protect their remaining lands from sale and in 1896 Parliament—this Parliament—enacted the Urewera District Native Reserve Act. This provided for local self-government over a 656000-acre Urewera District Native Reserve and for decisions about the use of the land to be made collectively and according to Māori custom. Tūhoe believed that this system would protect their lands from sale. As we know however the Crown did not implement the self-government provisions of that Act and undermined its protective provisions.So there are four things in that litany of a Government attack of theft lies blackmail and more lies on what was and still is to me an independent nation. The final chapter of this book—of this story—for us will come in the third reading. I will leave my other pearls—maybe not pearls of wisdom but pearls—to that third reading process. But I must say and this is from deep down within me that Tūhoe have a particular mystery about them and that is why I love Tūhoe people. When they talk they miss out a few letters. When they talk of their stories and of the people they are the whole “legend”—and I put that in inverted commas—of Tūhoe resounds around our nation. They are one of the people who make us who we are. Whether we are from the north south east orwest and whether we are black or white Tūhoe has a particular place in New Zealand’s folklore. I will leave the rest for the third reading and thank you very much. Kia ora.