Horomia Parekura: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — Third Reading 
Horomia Parekura: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17647] 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA (Labour—Ikaroa-Rawhiti) 
:  
E tu atu tenei ki te mihi ki a koutou i tae kaha ake ki konei ki te whakarongo ki te otinga o te pire nei. E mihi kau ana ki nga kanohi Maori katoa i roto i te Whare nei mo tenei tino take. Tena tatou. 
[ 
I rise to acknowledge you for being resolute to get here to listen to the completion of this bill. I particularly pay a tribute to all the Maori in this House in respect of this great matter. Greetings to us 
.] 
I stood in front of the 2004 hikoi and it was unnerving because a lot of young whanau members were there. It has been a telling time from then until now. The Maori Party came to Parliament and said that it would repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Act. I recognise the chair of the Maori Affairs Committee the Hon Tau Henare especially for the very important statement he made in which he said he believed that the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill is a wee bit better. I think that puts the bill into a clear framework. Whether the bill is a wee bit better or a whole lot worse is something that only time will tell. I certainly recognise the Attorney-General for his sterling effort but I will also go back and recognise my colleague and friend Michael Cullen for his effort. 
I will raise a couple of salient points. There is insufficient legal analysis on the threshold test for the establishment of customary title which has been criticised as being both too high and too low. It was very interesting to hear the Deputy Prime Minister state that we need to modernise and that we should not stay back in 1840. The right given to Maori here is in relation to the kawenata—that document—that forged the relationship between Pakeha and Maori; it is nothing more nothing less. I am not too sure if this is a forewarning for why of all the things to attack the Government starts attacking Maori programmes and activities. I could get into a bunfight with the present Minister of Maori Affairs by telling him what Labour did and what he has not done but I will leave that for another time. I do not have the time now and there are more important things to say but I would tell the Minister and convince him that when I was Minister I did a whole lot better than the Government is doing at the moment. I also have a question about the veto rights conferred upon iwi in respect of developments within customary title areas. I believe they undermine the full and final nature of the commercial aquaculture settlement—these are points to watch as we go along—and that the hapu and iwi planning documents are rated second in relation to what is already there. 
There are some really interesting things that have come out during this great debate since 2004 in the sense of this being the supposed end-all and be-all. We can wax lyrical about Don Brash’s red-neckery and Tau standing with him near the board sometimes—I will never forgive him for that—and supporting it but some of the worst vitriol I have heard from useless Pakeha in this Parliament has been from the people in the ACT Party. It is outrageous disgusting and gutless that we should go to those extremes. There is nothing worse than extreme Pakehas; they are no better than extreme Maoris. That is one of them down there. I took umbrage at my sister Metiria saying that we were sell-outs or whatever and that we need to have further discussions because what I have learnt that this place is that it is about numbers. Sure maybe in 2004 we could have done better and there were different numbers in our own organisation. I have no shame in standing here and saying that. If it has hurt some of my whanau I apologise but that is exactly what has happened. 
Matua Pita said that no organisation is sitting over him. The irony is that the Maori Party members are caught in the same catch-22 situation we were in. They are four of the defining numbers that would make a difference in the vote for this bill. Even at this late stage I humbly ask them to reverse their decision. They have four of the defining votes. I tell members that I have never known any Maori to cut off access to the beach. Where I come from we control the land along the beach and irrespective of the legislation and the courts we will define and determine what happens there. But it is good that we are at this stage. It is good that we can bring finality. I could go on and on about the highest level of Maori unemployment in this country since the Second World War. I could go on and on about people not being able to feed their kids fill their cars up to go to the hospital and all of that “rubbish”—as people think it is. That is what the Deputy Prime Minister was suggesting: that we should modernise everything and drop the culture. I say to Bill English tell the Scots to stop playing the bagpipes.