Maori Purposes Bill - First Reading

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. The Green Party is opposing this bill. The bill raises a whole lot of issues, and we will deal with a number of them later on, in the select committee and at the Committee stage. But the most important one for the Green Party is, of course, the closing date for the lodging of claims. This was an election promise Labour made — one of the three main election promises it made before the 2005 election. It was a policy that was developed in direct response to the very racist comments and positioning of the National Party.

Effectively, Labour was trying hard to scrabble back some of what it considered to be lost votes — what is often termed the redneck vote — that had gone to National because of things National had been saying. So Labour put itself in the position of advocating for a closing date and made it a major election promise. Now Labour is stuck with that, even though it knows, as we all do, that a closing date for historical claims is fundamentally and seriously unjust in a process that is supposed to be about providing just redress to victims of historical wrongs — very serious wrongs: property loss, loss of mana, imprisonment, murder, and rape. That is what this process is supposed to be dealing with justly and fairly.

The fact is the Treaty settlement process is a complete farce and provides no kind of just redress at all. It is another process similar to the processes set up 100 or 80 years ago to try to find ways to keep Māori under control so they would stop complaining about the loss of property — their loss of te rangatiratanga, actually — by providing them with some kind of redress, some kind of financial compensation, and hoping that they would then be quiet for a while, which, of course, will never work. The closing date is set down as 1 September 2008 — just a little over 2 years from now. The bill defines historical Treaty claims as those relating to events occurring before 21 September 1992.

I can see why the public — and even people here in this House — do not understand why the Maori Purposes Bill is such stupid, terrible, and unjust legislation. For the Green Party, part of the reason it is unjust is that it is based on the Office of Treaty Settlements policy around large natural groupings. This large natural grouping process forces iwi and hapū to gather together their Wai claims and negotiate directly with the Office of Treaty Settlements, using just a few people to negotiate very large claims for very large areas and very large numbers of people.

The process itself picks winners. It identifies specific individuals the Government is prepared to negotiate with. They are the ones who effectively decide, because the hapū are stuck in what has been described as a duress of poverty. If a hapū is without resources, and there is a process for trying to claim some of those back in some form, and there are serious needs in the community that need to be met, and this is the only way to meet them, then there are very few choices. That means the negotiators on the Government side — the Office of Treaty Settlements — have a lot of control over whom they negotiate with and how. It is up to the Office of Treaty Settlements negotiators to decide how they negotiate.

The Office of Treaty Settlements collects groups of Wai numbers. So when people make a claim to the Waitangi Tribunal, that claim gets a Wai number; and is in process. The large natural grouping policy gathers together large quantities of these Wai numbers and then attempts to negotiate and settle all of them at once. But the Office of Treaty Settlements makes those decisions. It has set up a process that looks fair, but iwi have said they have no choice but to include Wai numbers and particular claims into their large natural groupings process, and then their negotiations, and they may not want to.

They know why it is wrong — why people should not be forced to settle their Wai claims without their consent. Māori know why it is wrong, but the Office of Treaty Settlements will refuse to deal with people unless they do it, and what choice do people have? In the end, it leaves iwi and hapū — the negotiators of the claim — to have to cajole these other Wai claimants into the process. It leaves them with the mess to clean up. The Office of Treaty Settlements says that these are internal issues and it is up to Māori themselves to sort them out. But it is because the Office of Treaty Settlements will not negotiate with people unless they include everybody that they are then left with the responsibility of having to include everybody.

It cannot work; it does not work that way. People do not want to be included. So iwi and hapū are left trying to fight with their own whānau. They are separated out from their own whānau and huge divisions are created because there is no choice. Negotiators of the Office of Treaty Settlements leave iwi and hapū to do its dirty work. It is a revolting and disgusting process.

My first real experience of this at a practical level was in this House during the Ngāti Ruanui settlement. I had people coming to me from Tangahoe and Pakakohi who had Wai claims that they did not want settled in the Ngāti Ruanui settlement. Ngāti Ruanui was the settlement around Taranaki, so it was one of the Taranaki Wai claims. A very serious issue was being settled there; it was the first, I think, of the Taranaki ones. Tangahoe and Pakakohi people, and others involved in that settlement, begged us not to support that settlement. They did not want to have their claim settled; they did not want their property, their lands, and their resources going into the hands of a mandated organisation they did not support and did not trust. But they had no choice. There was nothing they could do about it. Their lands and resources, their mana, were put in the hands of others and they could do nothing about it, because the Office of Treaty Settlements and the process — which previous Governments set up and this Government maintains — strip them of their power. That is what this process does.

A deadline that requires people to be engaged and to identify themselves with a Wai claim by 2008, when they have so few resources and so little support, forces them to put themselves on the line and put themselves at serious risk of having their claims negotiated without their consent and beyond their ability to do a good job of the negotiations, and get back those resources and that mana that was stolen from them.

This is about the duress of poverty. This is about stripping Māori and hapū and iwi of the vestiges of control that they have, by forcing them into a process over which they have no control. Claimants tell of this if they are asked the right question but, frankly, very few people in this House ever ask that question because they do not want to know. What people want is an easy process. People in this House — the Government, National, New Zealand First even, if it supports this bill — want an easy process where they do not have to deal with the hard and dirty facts that Māori, every time a settlement happens, are being stripped of even more of their rangatiratanga that they are fighting to retain. We sit here and we allow this to happen over and over again. Hapū are being punished, not rewarded, by this process.

It is absolutely atrocious to me that Government members — and particularly the Māori members on the Government side — have not even bothered to consult with people. The whole process was never properly consulted about; it was developed over 4 years and then taken out. There was widespread opposition to it then. There continues to be widespread opposition. The only reason hapū get involved is because they have no choice. Then a deadline is set where no one has even bothered to ask those victims for whom this process is supposed to provide redress, whether a deadline is appropriate for them. The Government has set a target. It wants everything settled by 2020. A target for them is fine; but Māori have a deadline imposed, because in the end it has nothing to do with providing justice or redress.

In the end this legislation is about finding an easy way to get out of taking responsibility for the fact we live in a country whose Treaty is daily trampled upon, and that we treat the indigenous people of this country like they are rubbish — that we will steal their properties from them even in the 21st century. We write apologies to coastal hapū in the settlements, then steal their foreshore and seabed from under them. The injustice continues in this country. This ridiculous legislation and the cut-off closing date for it is just a perpetuation of it. The Green Party will have no bar of it.