Speech: Flavell - Eden Park Trust Amendment Bill
te-pati-maori
Thu May 07 2009 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Speech: Flavell - Eden Park Trust Amendment Bill
Thursday, 7 May 2009, 12:07 pm
Speech: The Maori Party
Eden Park Trust Amendment Bill
Wednesday 6th May 2009
Te Ururoa Flavell, MP for Waiariki
_TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki)245FLAVELL, TE URUROA19:59:43TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa i tēnei pō.
Some unusual things have been apparently happening at Eden Park, without a rugby ball in sight. Last July, I am told, Ngāti Whātua o Ōrākei Chairman Grant Hawke* and the trustee Cyril Talbot launched the $240 million Eden Park redevelopment project with mihi, karakia, and a hīmene. Last month, international singer Hinewehi Mohi sung the song “Beneath the Māori moon” to a recording of her great uncle George Nēpia. A book was launched at Mount Eden bringing together a *first XV of Māori greats to launch a history of Māori rugby since the 1860s. My relation—a short fulla, stocky, with short hair but still very good looking—by the name of Hika Reid from my home town was one of them.
What has all that got to do with the bill? I suppose it is all about knowing about all these histories, which are quite important. It is about knowing about the peoples and the stories. As other speakers before me have said, the Eden Park Trust Amendment Bill simply amends the Eden Park Trust Act 1955 to establish new governance arrangements for Eden Park. These have all been made in preparation, as Mr Nathan Guy said, for the Rugby World Cup 2011. The new governance arrangements were agreed to by the Government, the trust board, and the Eden Park Board of Control. The trust board is being set up to promote, operate, and develop Eden Park as a high-quality, multi-purpose stadium for sports and recreational, musical, and cultural events for the benefit of the public of the region. It all sounds pretty good. The goal of the trust is to administer the park and the trust assets on a prudent commercial basis so that Eden Park is a successful, financially autonomous community asset.
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This is where the challenge comes. When the trust receives public money, we in the Māori Party say that it should be accountable to the public as well. With public money involved, there should be greater opportunities for the public to be involved.
Despite what the policy uncertainties around Auckland governance arrangements might be, Māori, the Treaty partner, are actually a significant part of the public. I think we can all learn from the response of Tukoroirangi Morgan in his reaction to the Government’s decision to reject the proposal to formalise Māori representation in Auckland. Only a brave person could rationalise how no seats for Māori can be better than three. Tukoroirangi’s analysis was that the decision to marginalise Māori to the sidelines showed that the National-ACT partnership was not prepared to enable a Māori voice as a legitimate amongst other power brokers and decision makers. That is how he saw it. Those are challenging words, of course, which should be considered carefully in other settings, such as in relation to this bill. The iwi of Tāmaki Makaurau will thus be watching this Eden Park bill with a bitter sense of disillusionment that the Auckland decision has still been left hanging there.
I will put certain things in context. The area we are talking about is what we call waahi whakahirahira.
The Ngāti Whātua people whakapapa to the site, as an old wetlands where they used to harvest kai. There are other sites of significance around Tāmaki-makau-rau for the people of Tāmaki. The Eden Park area has close associations with the volcano Maungawhau. One of the springs that provided fresh water for those living on Maungawhau is named Te Ipo Pakore. It has a particular history linked to the Waikato warrior Kawharu during the Ngāti Whātua taua of retribution in the late 1700s.
The point I make is that these particular areas of Tāmaki-makau-rau are important and cannot be treated simply as towns, suburbs, or boundaries. They have deep significance to the people of Ngāti Whātua. I will make one particular point as I close this particular discussion. The development of Eden Park is not just about respecting and protecting the significance of the land to mana whenua; it also cuts right to the heart of issues around Māori representation. From the Māori Party point of view, there is one key point I would like to make on the back of this bill. The reconciliation between kāwanatanga in the hands of the Crown as provided by article 1 and article 2, the guarantee of *tino rangatiratanga over taonga tuku iho of the Māori people, is one of the most urgent challenges facing this nation. Of course, the tension is inevitable when both parties of the Treaty want to occupy the same space. The key issue here is how we address this tension, and we can learn from the Auckland City proposal to know how not to get it wrong. Kia ora tātou.
ENDS
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