Hone Harawira Speech: Property Law Bill
te-pati-maori
Fri Sep 21 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Hone Harawira Speech: Property Law Bill
Friday, 21 September 2007, 9:59 am
Press Release: The Maori Party
Property Law Bill; third reading
Hone Harawira, Member for Te Tai Tokerau
Thursday 20 September 2007
I asked to be on the Justice and Electoral Select Committee because I have a genuine interest in understanding how parliament deals with bills that may impact on Maori rights, and the rights of all others in Aotearoa as well.
And I note the committee’s comment that we were “disappointed at the paucity of submissions we received from the Bill, especially from the legal fraternity. The Bill represents the largest single change to property law in the past 55 years”.
And I’m asking myself – what was it about the 365 clauses, 7 schedules, and the 55 years of history that meant we only got 9 submissions, and only heard 6?
I mean, what isn’t there to get excited about when considering the changes to clause 60 (2), to refer to “the time” fixed for a lease rather than “the date”?
Or the movement in the position of the sub-clause of Clause 267a (1) (a) to give more priority to the wording “on reasonable terms”.
I mean seriously, folks, when the legislation is this riveting is it any wonder why nobody bothers to write in?
Now if the Bill took a look at the property law references in Article 11 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, now that would be a matter for great interest.
Article 11 says:
“Indigenous peoples have the right to practise and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artefacts, designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and literature.
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States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs”.
Now that makes a lot of sense to me, so I had a look to see how this Property Law stacked up with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and to no-one’s great surprise, it doesn’t.
A search of the 284 pages comes up with nothing on intellectual, religious or spiritual property interests, except for a reference to Maori cultural values in Part 6, clause 331, on page 205.
And funnily enough, on the day government announces initiatives on climate change, we find the word “cultural” pops up in this Bill, around trees, specifically in section 328, that in making an order to cut down or trim trees, the court must have regard to Maori cultural values.
Now that may seem kind of minor, but in fact it’s a radical and significant step, coming as it does from a government that stole the Foreshore and Seabed from Maori, cancelled support for Maori students, took the Treaty of Waitangi out of the Curriculum, voted to delete Treaty principles from legislation, passed laws to take Maori off various Boards, and voted against the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Being Maori in the new millennium is tough when all your cultural values are being subjected to ridicule from rednecks, rejection by government, and no support whatsoever from Maori MPs in the government either.
And long-held concepts about our connection to the forests through our whakapapa connections to Tane-Mahuta are difficult to promote in an environment where members of the Labour Maori Caucus are happy to dismiss those very concepts, and laugh about indigenous rights.
But we need to hold to those concepts because they give us a deeper sense of who we are, where we have come from, where we are today, where we might be tomorrow, and our obligations and our responsibilities to caring for this world because we are an integral part of it, and not just the rapacious landlords that western culture would have us believe.
IT IS important that we recognise and pay due respect to our origins, to our place in Aotearoa, and to the stories that tell us:
• of Tanemahuta separating Papatuanuku and Ranginui, so that our world might have light;
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• of Tanemahuta, providing sustenance through food, shelter and clothing;
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• of the importance of trees for whakairo, and as the source of rongoä;
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• of the traditions, rituals and ceremonies for selecting and removing trees;
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• of protecting and preserving the tapu associated with particular trees;
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• of the need to take seriously our responsibility to treat the resources of the forest with the care and respect they deserve; and of course,
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• of the great father of the forest, the 4,000 year-old kauri named after Tane Mahuta himself.
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Unfortunately however, this Property Law Bill has precious little else of direct relevance to Maori, until we get to Schedule 7, and see the amendments to a whole host of ‘Maori Acts’ related to housing, lands, the Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 and the Maori Trustee Act.
But instead of protecting Maori property rights, it unsurprisingly, continues down the path well trodden by colonial governments of doing its best to separate Maori from their land, and I note that under the suggested amendments in this Bill, if a whanau decided to mortgage their Maori land and failed to make payments, a mortgagee sale would be carried out as if it were general land.
In this way, the restrictions on the sale of Maori land under the Ture Whenua Maori Act to keep Maori land from being lost, would not be able to be used.
Mr Speaker, in the same way that it is often difficult to talk about Maori cultural values in a world attuned to disrespecting anything Maori, so too is it difficult to talk about Maori connection to land, in a place where land is but a consumer item, to be purchased and sold to the highest bidder.
So I won’t.
In closing though, what I will say is that in a parliament where government refuses to honour its obligations to Maori in Aotearoa, and to indigenous peoples anywhere else in the world, the Maori Party accepts with great humility, its role ofdefending Maori rights, and promoting Maori interests, for the benefit of all who live in Aotearoa.
The Maori Party will support this Bill at third reading, because for all its flaws it is compatible with our commitment to kaupapa Maori, and our responsibility to uphold the rights of indigenous peoples with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property.
Ends
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