Source: Govt’s austerity Budget to cause real harm in communities
CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Te Wai, Pirirākau, Ngāti Taka, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Pango, Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Hangarau, Ngāi Tamarāwaho, Ngāi Te Ahi, Ngāti Ruahine, and all your tīpuna and all your ancestors that you represent here today and your descendants to come.
I have stood and spoken in this House on behalf of the ACT Party on a few Treaty settlement bills. In the 18 months since I’ve been elected, I’ve been privileged to speak on the Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Act—close to home—and, recently, the Te Ture mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara 2025/Ō-Rākau Remembrance Act 2025, the history of which touches deeply in some of the history outlined in the Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill.
This is, for me, an emotional moment to speak on such a bill. I am a child of Pāpāmoa. I come from the Bay of Plenty; this is where I am from. I read about the history, and it’s history that I know quite well—as much as one who didn’t descend from it and live part of it can hope to know. These acknowledgments are long overdue. When I was a young fulla—I actually said something similar in the Ō-Rākau Act—I probably spent too much time wagging school, but I was doing some things. At one point, I drove over to the site of the Battle of Ō-Rākau by myself when I should have been at school, because I was interested in the history. But that history stemmed from a story that I have shared with some people, some who are even in this gallery today, where I went about trying to understand the history of my own area because I didn’t feel like I was learning it properly. I remember, one day I left school—probably during English class—and got my way over to Pyes Pā and went looking for a battle site that I’d read about but didn’t know anything about and wasn’t being taught about.
Actually, first I should say, growing up, my generation started learning about Gate Pā, better known as Pukehinahina. We started learning about that, and it was talked about the way the toa and the wāhine treated with their enemy—there was a declaration on the way that Māori toa were going to treat with their enemies. I found the great line: “If thy enemy hungers, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink.” to exemplify what I’m trying to talk about here. So Pukehinahina was a known battle. It was sat there as a monument with an Anglican church on it, and we all knew it was there, but we didn’t know about Te Ranga. I went looking that day for the battle site. I had old maps that I’d found—God bless the internet for giving information out. I was trying to track the topography of the land and the rivers and the road, trying to find this place. So imagine a 15-year-old—myself—bashing through a bramble bush on the side of the road and finding this concrete plinth with old writing on it that could barely be understood. You know, it was not a well-kept mark of the site. But, as for me, I could start to see the way things happened there, and it was deeply emotional for me sitting there—I mean, remember, I was 15 years old; this was quite a shocking thing to try and discover for oneself.
I’m glad and proud that today that site has been taken care of, acknowledged, and shown to the people of Tauranga and the people that travelled that road between Rotorua and Tauranga. But I recognise also the deep pain of the battle of Te Ranga, and the way that pain has carried on through the generations probably reflects why it was not in the state that it is now. It is a good thing that it is now being looked after, but I can completely empathise with those who would rather have just looked away and not thought about that particular site.
The raupatu and confiscations are something that Tauranga was—you know, reading Victory at Gate Pā?, Buddy Mikaere’s book, you can see the constraints on the descendants. You know, moving into areas like Judea, in Tauranga—”Ju-daya”, I suppose, if anyone else is reading it—how that was marginal land, and how they no longer had access to places like Kōpūrererua and the fertile places around to harvest kai and grow. It was not a great—”not great” is an understatement; it was a horrible, horrible situation for a century, for decades and decades. But, today, this House starts to recognise, by going through the motions of passing into law, deed of settlement. That has, as we’ve heard, been a long time coming back from the splitting of the Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress Bill.
Also, I note that in some of the settlement, there is land to be returned. A lot of people outside of the Bay of Plenty know about Mount Maunganui—Mauao—know about the hill that sort of sits there and is the symbol of our area and a sacred hill to you—sorry, Mr Speaker—to Ngāti Ranginui. But there’s also hills like Pūwhenua and Ōtānewainuku getting returned in this settlement in a way—still with access to the public, but returning.
Talking to my wife this morning, I asked, “What are you doing today, darling?” She said, “I’m going to go and get the bloody stoat that I’ve heard is running around in Ōtānewainuku right now.” So as I stand here speaking about the settlement and how Ōtānewainuku is being returned, my wife is currently out there trying to eradicate pests on that very piece of whenua, and I felt that was quite a poetic situation to find myself, and ourselves, in.
My children are getting raised in the area. They’re learning about where all the reefs are. They learn where the hills are and the rivers. I don’t shy back from telling them about the history of Tauranga, but I also tell them that this is their place. This is where they’re from. This is where they’ll always be able to come back to. We know the rivers, as much as I can discover them and my family can discover them. We know the waters, the hills, and the bush as much as we can. It probably was a bit too much as a young fulla trying to get out and go places that perhaps weren’t always public access, but I wanted to experience everything that our beautiful rohe, your beautiful rohe, has to show.
Tauranga was supposed to be a safe harbour. It was discovered by Tamatea-arikinui and the waka Tākitimu, eventually opening up for your people to settle. Te Awanui, Tauranga Harbour, was supposed to be—and it is—a safe harbour. Te Awanui was supposed to be a safe harbour and it was not. The Crown ships came in, opened up another front of the Waikato Wars, and that’s where this pain starts. Today, we’re not finishing the pain but we’re taking another step on that path of sorting it out. I thank you very much for listening to me ramble on. Ngā mihi. Thank you, Mr Speaker.