Rapua ngā tuhinga ruku tātari

In January 1990, the Waitangi Tribunal registered claim Wai 84, concerning the construction of the Turangi township. The town, which was built in the 1960s to house several thousand construction workers and related service people employed on the Tongariro power development scheme, was situated on ancestral land of the Ngāti Turangitukua hapū of Ngāti Tūwharetoa. The claim was made by Mahlon Nepia on behalf of himself and Arthur Grace of Ngāti Turangitukua and sought the return of certain properties in the township.

The Tribunal constituted to hear the claim comprised Professor Gordon Orr (presiding), Sir Hugh Kawharu, Professor Evelyn Stokes, and Hepora Young. In August 1993, the Tribunal granted urgency to the claim on the ground that the Crown was selling land within the claim area over the objections of claimants and that sacred sites were involved. The claim was heard in April, September, and October of 1994.

The Tribunal heard evidence from both Crown and claimants on the process by which the hapū were alienated from much of their land in the period between 1964 and 1983; the assurances and undertakings made to Ngāti Tūwharetoa by Crown officials which persuaded the owners to agree in principle with the proposal to build the town within their rohe; and the Crown's alleged failure to honour many of these promises.

As well, many people recounted their personal experiences. Bill Asher spoke of what had been taken from Ngāti Turangitukua:

We certainly have gained much in the way of facilities. But we have lost much too. When I was young, I didn't think about the implications of the coming of the township to our wahi tapu. We younger people regarded those as the responsibility of our kaumatua. We left all that to them. But once the project got underway, the role of those kaumatua diminished, and they weren't consulted about the effect of the works on the wahi tapu. As a result, many of those places have passed from us, and we are emotionally, spiritually, and culturally poorer as a result.

Tuatea Smallman summed up the effects of the hydro development on his family:

By severing the lands from the Maori title, the Ministry of Works has alienated the owners, our grandmother and her children, from the land. Younger members of the whanau have been denied their land. Loss of land to us means a loss of dignity, pride, and a distancing of whanau members through alienation to a feeling of mokaitanga [dependency, like being slaves]. We have lost our values, and our esteem, and a rift between families has developed. We fear our children will leave their turangawaewae.

The Tribunal heard much moving evidence about the effect of the township's construction upon the small rural community:

The desecration of our precious wahi tapu caused our people, and particularly our old people, great distress. In all the confusion and enormous changes that were happening in Turangi, we often didn't find out until too late that more was being done in sacred areas. And the Ministry of Works didn't want us to find out. …
Those places are like important signposts to our history and mana. Many of the signposts have disappeared without trace. Other signposts are so changed as to be unreadable. We will never have the same access to our past as a result. …
When the Ministry of Works came to our area, we had kaumatua here who had great authority and many responsibilities. After the Ministry of Works took over, these people were reduced in status almost overnight because they no longer had any authority over what happened in our rohe. There was nothing they could say or do which would make the government people listen. This was very hard for those old people to accept and it affected them very badly.
—Arthur Grace

I was told by Arthur Grace that my grandfather was still in the house when they came to bulldoze it down. I don't know why they had to bulldoze that house. It was only 21 years old. My grandfather was watching what was happening, standing there on the road with my little sister Josephine, another whangai who lived with my grandfather. He was crying and his suitcase was there beside him. Arthur went and spoke to the men with the bulldozer but they didn't listen and they drove a bulldozer into the back of the house right in front of my grandfather. They didn't even wait until he had left before knocking the house down. So Arthur picked up Josephine and my grandfather and took them away in the truck. All our turkeys and pigs and dogs and cats were let loose running around. We had about 30 turkeys then. They were all just left to run away. My grandfather was taken to the [Ngāti Hine] marae to live, because there was nowhere else for him to go. He was moved from family to family, but he used to lock himself up in his room all the time. It was only a few months later that he died.
—Taima Bell

At about the same time, one of our whanaunga [relatives] Mr Tewe Eru, who was also an old man, refused to leave the house that Ministry of Works wanted to take from him. The house was bulldozed before his eyes, and all his belongings were left on the road. All of the local people knew this and it terrified my mother. She thought that she would be the next one, that her house would be bulldozed and she would be left with nowhere to go.
It was at this stage that my mother took to her bed. …
My mother was not an old woman. She was only 62, and a woman of vitality. She had asthma, but she was not an invalid. It was the Ministry of Works that killed her. I hated the Ministry of Works for what they did to my mother. They seemed to have no feeling at all for how their actions were affecting the lives of our people.
—Dulcie Gardiner

The way the Ministry of Works went about doing what they did caused great agony to people and affected their lives very deeply. The damage to our old people's happiness and health can never be compensated for. What makes me particularly resentful is that I don't believe that there was any necessity for the Ministry of Works to take that land from the backs of people's houses, and the road taking and survey could have been located elsewhere to the many acres where no one lived. Another anomaly is that the rest of that area … was never used for the development of the township; it was just sold off.
—Hono Lord

The report was presented to the Minister of Maori Affairs and the claimants in September 1995. In it, the Tribunal found that, in regards to Turangi, the Treaty of Waitangi 'was all but ignored by the Crown in its dealings with Maori'. And, further, that, in fulfilling its wish to construct the Turangi township on the claimants' ancestral land, the Crown had the unqualified backing of 'draconian statutory powers' (ie, the Public Works Act 1928 and the Turangi Township Act 1964) to take the land:

These Acts gave the Crown the power to take the claimants' land compulsorily for the establishment of a permanent Turangi township. This could be done without any notice to the owners or any right of objection by them; without any obligation to consult the owners; without the owners' consent; without any obligation to return land not required for the purpose for which it was taken; at a price negotiated with a statutory official on behalf of multiple owners rather than with the owners themselves; and on conditions laid down by legislation and not freely negotiated. The Crown could insist on taking the freehold of the land, irrespective of the preference of the owners. In addition, the Crown asserted the right, which was of dubious legality, to enter the claimants' lands with its bulldozers, without notice to or the consent of the owners, well before any proclamation taking the land had been gazetted. Against these powers, the Maori owners had no defence. It is not possible to reconcile these far-reaching powers with the Crown's Treaty obligation actively to protect the rangatiratanga of Maori in and over their land.

The Tribunal recorded 13 breaches of Treaty principles by the Crown, most of which stemmed from the Crown's failure to actively protect the rangatiratanga of Ngāti Turangitukua over their ancestral land. The Tribunal wrote that:

At the heart of the claim lay the failure of the Crown to honour many of the undertakings and assurances it gave to the owners, which formed the basis of the approval in principle they gave to the construction of a township on their land. This failure effectively vitiated such approval.

As a result, the Crown took up to double the amount of land that it had undertaken to take and valuable industrial land was not returned after 10 to 12 years as promised. Compensation was inadequate; the economic base of the people was seriously eroded; irreplaceable wahi tapu have been destroyed or desecrated; waterways and fisheries are degraded and flooding has occurred; and the lack of adequate consultation with the tangata whenua and the failure to respect the mana of the people throughout the whole distressing experience has increased their level of alienation.

The Tribunal found that the claimants had been prejudicially affected by the provisions of the Public Works Act 1928 and the Turangi Township Act 1964, in that both Acts were fundamentally inconsistent with the basic guarantee given in article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi that Maori could keep their land until such time as they wished to sell it at a price agreed with the Crown.

The Tribunal recommended that amendments be made to the sections of the Public Works Act 1981 dealing with the taking of Maori land by the Crown or a local authority and the offering back of surplus land, and it recommended that the Act should be amended so as to give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

In the interest of facilitating an early settlement of remedies, the Tribunal proposed that the claimants and Crown enter into direct negotiations but noted that, if the parties were unable to reach an agreement, the Tribunal would be amenable to hear the parties on the question of remedies and to make appropriate recommendations.

Ngāti Turangitukua and the Crown did enter into negotiations, which took place during 1995 and 1996, but by July 1996, they had come to a standstill. The claimants then returned to the Tribunal to ask for a hearing on remedies.

After hearing evidence and submissions from the claimants and Crown in February and July 1997, the Tribunal retired to consider the issue of remedies. The following year, in July, the Tribunal released the Turangi Township Remedies Report, in which, for the first time, the Tribunal exercised its power to make binding recommendations. These recommendations were that memorialised and Crown-owned non-memorialised land to the value of $6.1 million be returned to Ngāti Turangitukua by the Crown. The Tribunal further recommended that the Crown pay Ngāti Turangitukua monetary compensation of at least $1million and that it meet the costs incurred by the hapū in pursuing the claim.

The Crown and claimants had 90 days to reach an agreement before the binding recommendations became final. This, they did, and the Crown and Ngāti Turangitukua signed a deed of settlement at Turangi in September 1998. The deed, which contained a mix of fiscal and non-fiscal redress and a clear acknowledgement of the Crown's Treaty breaches, would 'help restore Ngāti Turangitukua's mana and rangatiratanga' said the Minister in Charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Honourable Doug Graham. The compensation package was valued at $5 million.

Claim Wai 414 was lodged in January 1994 by Haki Wihongi on behalf of himself and the Te Whanau o Waipareira Trust, of which he was the chairperson. The trust had been established by Te Whanau o Waipareira, a non-tribal Maori community based in west Auckland, in order to provide effective social services and to lead the community's efforts to help itself. The claim alleged that the Crown, through the Community Funding Agency of the Department of Social Welfare, had failed to recognise the special status of Te Whanau o Waipareira as a Maori organisation and had failed to properly consult and deal with it in accordance with the Crown's obligations under article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Tribunal constituted to hear the claim was made up of Joanne Morris (presiding), Sir John Ingram, Sir Hugh Kawharu, Pamela Ringwood, and Hepora Young, and it sat five times between August 1991 and April 1995 to hear evidence and submissions.

John Tamihere of the trust described the claim as being:

essentially about fairness, due process and equality of opportunity. It is about our right as a pan-tribal wha-nau in the urban area to be acknowledged as a Treaty partner and our right as urban Maori to organise ourselves in accordance with our own tikanga to address our own problems our way.

Dr Pita Sharples noted that:

Waipareira is the appropriate organisation to administer and deliver services and create responsibility and hope and dreams amongst our people in West Auckland. We are better suited to know our needs and to deal with them than any government organisation. That is what the claim is saying.

The members of Te Whanau o Waipareira were not all linked by kinship, and most lived outside the traditional territories of the tribes from which they were descended. The claim thus broke new ground by contending that a non-tribal group of Maori had rights under the Treaty. According to claimant counsel, at its heart the claim said that ‘the rights and interests of urban Maori, separated from, distanced from and disenfranchised from the home iwi, are rights which fall properly within the Treaty of Waitangi’.

The Te Whanau o Waipareira Report was released in Auckland on 6 July 1998. In it, the Tribunal upheld the trust's claim that Te Whanau o Waipareira was prejudiced by policies and operations of the Community Funding Agency, and it found that, if a Maori community exercised rangatiratanga, then it deserved special recognition in terms of the Treaty:

Rangatiratanga, in this context, is that which is sourced to the reciprocal duties and responsibilities between leaders and their associated Maori community. It is a relationship fundamental to Maori culture and identity and describes a leadership acting not out of self-interest but in a caring and nurturing way with the people close at heart, fully accountable to them and enjoying their support … The principle of rangatiratanga appears to be simply that Maori should control their own tikanga and taonga, including their social and political organisation, and, to the extent practicable and reasonable, fix their own policy and manage their own programmes.

In examining this claim, the Tribunal said that it was important to read all parts of the Treaty together in order to understand it, instead of trying to interpret the separate words and articles of the texts. It rejected the argument that only 'traditional iwi' are the Crown's Treaty partners, saying that the Treaty was for the protection and benefit of all Maori:

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed by rangatira of hapu, on behalf of all Maori people, collectively and individually. Therefore, conversely, protective benefits and rights of autonomy in terms of the Treaty are not limited to traditional tribal communities.

The Tribunal also found that the Treaty partnership made the Crown accountable to Maori for the outcomes of its social and welfare policies. Waipareira's efforts to provide better integrated and coordinated programmes were frustrated by its having to deal with many different Crown agencies, each with its own policies and procedures.

The Tribunal recommended that, in developing and applying policy for the delivery or funding of social services to Maori, the Department of Social Welfare and the Community Funding Agency deal with any Maori community that had demonstrated its capacity to exercise rangatiratanga in welfare matters and that social and welfare services to Maori communities stand as a separate output class designed to promote community development. It also recommended that there be better consultation and a greater devolution of decision-making power and resources to Waipareira in particular and a greater reporting of the outcomes for Maori of the Government's social policies:

We reminded ourselves that the intent of the Treaty was something like a marriage of two nations, two cultures, who wanted to share a house which they planned to build together, accommodating each other's needs with respect and goodwill, for their mutual benefit. …

The success of a marriage depends not on the ability of the parties to formulate or interpret vows advantageously to themselves, nor on their ability to enforce them in the case of dispute. Rather, it depends on their commitment to work through problems in a spirit of goodwill, trust, and generosity, actively seeking creative solutions, and taking opportunities to bolster each other.

This short report sets out the Tribunal’s proposed remedies in regard to the Wai 55 claim about Te Whanganui-a-Orotu, or the Napier inner harbour.

The quantification of property loss, personal injury, social impairment, and forfeited development opportunities may assist the consideration of comparative equities between claimant groups, but it is not necessarily determinative of the measures appropriate for relief in any one case today. As we consider further at the end of this report, in resolving historical claims a pay-off for the past, even if that were possible, may not be as important as the strategies required to ensure a better future.
—The Waitangi Tribunal

When The Taranaki Report: Kaupapa Tuatahi was released in 1996, it was hailed by many as one of the Tribunal's most important reports. Indeed, the Minister in Charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations at the time, the Honourable Doug Graham, urged all New Zealanders to read it. The report dealt with 21 claims concerning the Taranaki district and canvassed the land wars and confiscations in the area, as well as the story of Parihaka.

The Tribunal constituted to hear the claims was made up of Chief Judge Eddie Durie (presiding), Bishop Manuhuia Bennett, Emarina Manuel, Professor Gordon Orr, and Professor Keith Sorrenson. Twelve hearings were held between September 1990 and June 1995, and the report was presented to the Minister of Maori Affairs and the claimants on 11 June 1996.

The Taranaki claims could be the largest in the country. There may be no others where as many Treaty breaches had equivalent force and effect over a comparable time. 'For the Taranaki hapu, conflict and struggle have been present since the first European settlement in 1841. There has been continuing expropriation by various means from purchase assertions to confiscation after war. In this context, the war itself is not the main grievance. The pain of war can soften over time. Nor is land the sole concern. The real issue is the relationship between Maori and the Government. It is today, as it has been for 155 years, the central problem.
—The Waitangi Tribunal

The complaints stemmed from land confiscations that took place during the 1860s wars, which began in Taranaki before extending elsewhere. In fact, armed initiatives did not cease in the region for an unparalleled nine years, and the Tribunal commented on the effect that this had on local Maori:

If war is the absence of peace, the war has never ended in Taranaki, because that essential prerequisite for peace among peoples, that each should be able to live with dignity on their own lands, is still absent and the protest over land rights continues to be made.

The confiscations came with an undertaking that the lands necessary for hapu survival would be returned without delay, but the Tribunal found that this promise was not maintained. Instead, many hapu were left with nothing of their own to live on and became squatters on Crown land:

Taranaki Maori were dispossessed of their land, leadership, means of livelihood, personal freedom, and social structure and values. As Maori, they were denied their rights of autonomy, and as British subjects, their civil rights were removed. For decades, they were subjected to sustained attacks on their property and persons.

The Tribunal thus saw disempowerment as the main foundation of the claims:

By ‘disempowerment’, we mean the denigration and destruction of Maori autonomy or self-government. Extensive land loss and debilitating land reform would likely have been contained had Maori autonomy and authority been respected, as the Treaty required. Maori autonomy is pivotal to the Treaty and to the partnership concept it entails.

As Sir William Martin, our first Chief Justice, said, when opposing land confiscation in 1864:

The example of Ireland may satisfy us how little is to be effected towards the quieting of a country by the confiscation of private land … how the claim of the dispossessed owner is remembered from generation to generation and how the brooding sense of wrong breaks out from time to time in fresh disturbance and crime.

The Tribunal considered that an endowment that provided adequately for tribal autonomy in the future was what was important, not payments for individual benefit. While the Tribunal thought that, based on legal principles, some billions of dollars were probably owed for the land, leaving aside exemplary damages or compensation for loss of rents and the devaluation of annuities, it accepted that such a quantum of damages would not be possible and recommended only that generous reparation be made:

the settlement of historical claims is not to pay off for the past, even were that possible, but to take those steps necessary to remove outstanding prejudice and prevent similar prejudice from arising; for the only practical settlement between peoples is one that achieves a reconciliation in fact.

Claim Wai 449 was lodged in 1994 by kiwifruit growers Marata Norman and Wi Parera Te Kani on behalf of themselves, their whanau, and their iwi, and alleged that the Crown had breached the Treaty of Waitangi in regards to the kiwifruit industry and, in particular, to the export of their kiwifruit as the produce of their ancestral lands.

Specifically, the claim challenged the Primary Products Marketing Act 1953 and the Kiwifruit Marketing Regulations 1977, which gave the New Zealand Kiwifruit Marketing Board a monopoly to export kiwifruit to all foreign markets except Australia. The claimants alleged that this monopoly violated their right to exercise te tino rangatiratanga over their own affairs.

The claim was accorded urgency on the ground that, if the claimants' Treaty rights were not determined quickly, then they could have been locked into a regime that could have caused them irreparable economic damage.

The Tribunal constituted to hear the claim comprised Judge Patrick Savage (presiding), the Honourable Dr Michael Bassett, John Kneebone, and Sir John Turei. The evidence and submissions were heard between 24 July and 1 August 1995, and the report was presented to the Minister of Maori Affairs and the claimants three months later, on 6 November.

The central issue in the Tribunal's deliberations was whether the right to export kiwifruit was a taonga with protection under article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Tribunal concluded that it was not a taonga and that, even if it had been, 'the regulation of export trade is a legitimate exercise of kawanatanga'. The Tribunal thus found that the claim was not well founded:

in pre-contact times the exchange of treasures by iwi and hapu might have been regarded as a taonga. It would, in our view, be an unjustified straining of Treaty principles to hold that the right to develop such a treasure could extend all the way to the modern kiwifruit export trade.

The Tribunal did, however, make some points with regard to consultation, noting that 'there did not seem to be an adequate recognition of Treaty duties by the parties to this claim'.

The Tribunal ended by saying that it was confident that those who had been involved in the claim had learnt much from it and hoped that all who were involved in the kiwifruit industry would try harder to develop the spirit of partnership that was implicit in the Treaty.

In January 1990, the Waitangi Tribunal registered claim Wai 84, concerning the construction of the Turangi township. The town, which was built in the 1960s to house several thousand construction workers and related service people employed on the Tongariro power development scheme, was situated on ancestral land of the Ngāti Turangitukua hapū of Ngāti Tūwharetoa. The claim was made by Mahlon Nepia on behalf of himself and Arthur Grace of Ngāti Turangitukua and sought the return of certain properties in the township.

The Tribunal constituted to hear the claim comprised Professor Gordon Orr (presiding), Sir Hugh Kawharu, Professor Evelyn Stokes, and Hepora Young. In August 1993, the Tribunal granted urgency to the claim on the ground that the Crown was selling land within the claim area over the objections of claimants and that sacred sites were involved. The claim was heard in April, September, and October of 1994.

The Tribunal heard evidence from both Crown and claimants on the process by which the hapū were alienated from much of their land in the period between 1964 and 1983; the assurances and undertakings made to Ngāti Tūwharetoa by Crown officials which persuaded the owners to agree in principle with the proposal to build the town within their rohe; and the Crown's alleged failure to honour many of these promises.

As well, many people recounted their personal experiences. Bill Asher spoke of what had been taken from Ngāti Turangitukua:

We certainly have gained much in the way of facilities. But we have lost much too. When I was young, I didn't think about the implications of the coming of the township to our wahi tapu. We younger people regarded those as the responsibility of our kaumatua. We left all that to them. But once the project got underway, the role of those kaumatua diminished, and they weren't consulted about the effect of the works on the wahi tapu. As a result, many of those places have passed from us, and we are emotionally, spiritually, and culturally poorer as a result.

Tuatea Smallman summed up the effects of the hydro development on his family:

By severing the lands from the Maori title, the Ministry of Works has alienated the owners, our grandmother and her children, from the land. Younger members of the whanau have been denied their land. Loss of land to us means a loss of dignity, pride, and a distancing of whanau members through alienation to a feeling of mokaitanga [dependency, like being slaves]. We have lost our values, and our esteem, and a rift between families has developed. We fear our children will leave their turangawaewae.

The Tribunal heard much moving evidence about the effect of the township's construction upon the small rural community:

The desecration of our precious wahi tapu caused our people, and particularly our old people, great distress. In all the confusion and enormous changes that were happening in Turangi, we often didn't find out until too late that more was being done in sacred areas. And the Ministry of Works didn't want us to find out. …
Those places are like important signposts to our history and mana. Many of the signposts have disappeared without trace. Other signposts are so changed as to be unreadable. We will never have the same access to our past as a result. …
When the Ministry of Works came to our area, we had kaumatua here who had great authority and many responsibilities. After the Ministry of Works took over, these people were reduced in status almost overnight because they no longer had any authority over what happened in our rohe. There was nothing they could say or do which would make the government people listen. This was very hard for those old people to accept and it affected them very badly.
—Arthur Grace

I was told by Arthur Grace that my grandfather was still in the house when they came to bulldoze it down. I don't know why they had to bulldoze that house. It was only 21 years old. My grandfather was watching what was happening, standing there on the road with my little sister Josephine, another whangai who lived with my grandfather. He was crying and his suitcase was there beside him. Arthur went and spoke to the men with the bulldozer but they didn't listen and they drove a bulldozer into the back of the house right in front of my grandfather. They didn't even wait until he had left before knocking the house down. So Arthur picked up Josephine and my grandfather and took them away in the truck. All our turkeys and pigs and dogs and cats were let loose running around. We had about 30 turkeys then. They were all just left to run away. My grandfather was taken to the [Ngāti Hine] marae to live, because there was nowhere else for him to go. He was moved from family to family, but he used to lock himself up in his room all the time. It was only a few months later that he died.
—Taima Bell

At about the same time, one of our whanaunga [relatives] Mr Tewe Eru, who was also an old man, refused to leave the house that Ministry of Works wanted to take from him. The house was bulldozed before his eyes, and all his belongings were left on the road. All of the local people knew this and it terrified my mother. She thought that she would be the next one, that her house would be bulldozed and she would be left with nowhere to go.
It was at this stage that my mother took to her bed. …
My mother was not an old woman. She was only 62, and a woman of vitality. She had asthma, but she was not an invalid. It was the Ministry of Works that killed her. I hated the Ministry of Works for what they did to my mother. They seemed to have no feeling at all for how their actions were affecting the lives of our people.
—Dulcie Gardiner

The way the Ministry of Works went about doing what they did caused great agony to people and affected their lives very deeply. The damage to our old people's happiness and health can never be compensated for. What makes me particularly resentful is that I don't believe that there was any necessity for the Ministry of Works to take that land from the backs of people's houses, and the road taking and survey could have been located elsewhere to the many acres where no one lived. Another anomaly is that the rest of that area … was never used for the development of the township; it was just sold off.
—Hono Lord

The report was presented to the Minister of Maori Affairs and the claimants in September 1995. In it, the Tribunal found that, in regards to Turangi, the Treaty of Waitangi 'was all but ignored by the Crown in its dealings with Maori'. And, further, that, in fulfilling its wish to construct the Turangi township on the claimants' ancestral land, the Crown had the unqualified backing of 'draconian statutory powers' (ie, the Public Works Act 1928 and the Turangi Township Act 1964) to take the land:

These Acts gave the Crown the power to take the claimants' land compulsorily for the establishment of a permanent Turangi township. This could be done without any notice to the owners or any right of objection by them; without any obligation to consult the owners; without the owners' consent; without any obligation to return land not required for the purpose for which it was taken; at a price negotiated with a statutory official on behalf of multiple owners rather than with the owners themselves; and on conditions laid down by legislation and not freely negotiated. The Crown could insist on taking the freehold of the land, irrespective of the preference of the owners. In addition, the Crown asserted the right, which was of dubious legality, to enter the claimants' lands with its bulldozers, without notice to or the consent of the owners, well before any proclamation taking the land had been gazetted. Against these powers, the Maori owners had no defence. It is not possible to reconcile these far-reaching powers with the Crown's Treaty obligation actively to protect the rangatiratanga of Maori in and over their land.

The Tribunal recorded 13 breaches of Treaty principles by the Crown, most of which stemmed from the Crown's failure to actively protect the rangatiratanga of Ngāti Turangitukua over their ancestral land. The Tribunal wrote that:

At the heart of the claim lay the failure of the Crown to honour many of the undertakings and assurances it gave to the owners, which formed the basis of the approval in principle they gave to the construction of a township on their land. This failure effectively vitiated such approval.

As a result, the Crown took up to double the amount of land that it had undertaken to take and valuable industrial land was not returned after 10 to 12 years as promised. Compensation was inadequate; the economic base of the people was seriously eroded; irreplaceable wahi tapu have been destroyed or desecrated; waterways and fisheries are degraded and flooding has occurred; and the lack of adequate consultation with the tangata whenua and the failure to respect the mana of the people throughout the whole distressing experience has increased their level of alienation.

The Tribunal found that the claimants had been prejudicially affected by the provisions of the Public Works Act 1928 and the Turangi Township Act 1964, in that both Acts were fundamentally inconsistent with the basic guarantee given in article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi that Maori could keep their land until such time as they wished to sell it at a price agreed with the Crown.

The Tribunal recommended that amendments be made to the sections of the Public Works Act 1981 dealing with the taking of Maori land by the Crown or a local authority and the offering back of surplus land, and it recommended that the Act should be amended so as to give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

In the interest of facilitating an early settlement of remedies, the Tribunal proposed that the claimants and Crown enter into direct negotiations but noted that, if the parties were unable to reach an agreement, the Tribunal would be amenable to hear the parties on the question of remedies and to make appropriate recommendations.

Ngāti Turangitukua and the Crown did enter into negotiations, which took place during 1995 and 1996, but by July 1996, they had come to a standstill. The claimants then returned to the Tribunal to ask for a hearing on remedies.

After hearing evidence and submissions from the claimants and Crown in February and July 1997, the Tribunal retired to consider the issue of remedies. The following year, in July, the Tribunal released the Turangi Township Remedies Report, in which, for the first time, the Tribunal exercised its power to make binding recommendations. These recommendations were that memorialised and Crown-owned non-memorialised land to the value of $6.1 million be returned to Ngāti Turangitukua by the Crown. The Tribunal further recommended that the Crown pay Ngāti Turangitukua monetary compensation of at least $1million and that it meet the costs incurred by the hapū in pursuing the claim.

The Crown and claimants had 90 days to reach an agreement before the binding recommendations became final. This, they did, and the Crown and Ngāti Turangitukua signed a deed of settlement at Turangi in September 1998. The deed, which contained a mix of fiscal and non-fiscal redress and a clear acknowledgement of the Crown's Treaty breaches, would 'help restore Ngāti Turangitukua's mana and rangatiratanga' said the Minister in Charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Honourable Doug Graham. The compensation package was valued at $5 million.

Claim Wai 55, dealing with Te Whanganui-a-Orotu, or the Napier inner harbour, was lodged with the Tribunal in March 1988 by seven local hapu. It was granted urgency because leasehold sections in the claim area were about to be sold.

The claimants sought a finding that Te Whanganui-a-Orotu was their taonga and that they had never knowingly or willingly relinquished their tino rangatiratanga over it. They wanted the Tribunal to recommend that legislation vesting the title to Te Whanganui-a-Orotu in others be repealed or amended, that all Crown and other public lands in Te Whanganui-a-Orotu be returned, and that compensation be paid for those parts of Te Whanganui-a-Orotu that had passed from the Crown into private ownership.

The Tribunal that heard the claim comprised Bill Wilson (presiding), Bishop Manuhuia Bennett, Sir John Ingram, Mary Boyd, and Georgina Te Heuheu. Six hearings were held between July 1993 and July 1994, and the report was released in July 1995.

The Tribunal found that a number of clear breaches of Treaty principles had occurred, beginning with the Crown's inclusion of Te Whanganui-a-Orotu in the Ahuriri purchase in 1851, and it recommended that there be no further alienations of any Crown or State-owned enterprise land within the pre-1851 boundaries of Te Whanganui-a-Orotu. It also suggested that a substantial fund be set up to compensate for what the Tribunal concluded were irretrievable losses caused to the claimants.

At that stage, however, the Tribunal considered that it was inappropriate for it to make final recommendations on the issue of remedies, and it set aside a week in early November 1995 to hear submissions on that issue. In June 1998, the Tribunal released its report on remedies, which recommended that various lands in the claim area be returned to the claimants and that monetary compensation be paid.

The Te Maunga Railways Land Report of August 1994 concerned the use of the Public Works Act 1928. The claim, lodged by Michelle Henare and others, was granted urgency because the land involved at Te Maunga, in the Tauranga district, was the subject of a Māori Land Court order. That order revested the land in its former Māori owners, but with the condition that a payment of $70,000, plus GST, be made before it was returned. The claimants sought relief from this condition. Ms Henare put it this way:

I only want to express our concern about these things that have happened to us over a long time. My dad would have liked to have seen us give it our best shot. We felt it unjust that land be taken, pass from us, by Railways. We felt it has always been ours. We should not have to pay the $70,000. It is not the monetary value. It is the cultural tie that we do not want to lose. … My personal view is that the land will always be ours. They may use it as and when. It does not cease to be ours because the Crown has used it.

The land had been taken in 1955 for railways purposes under the Public Works Act 1928 and used for housing employees of the New Zealand Railways Corporation. The Tribunal found no evidence that ‘this transaction, a compulsory taking under the Public Works Act 1928, [could] be construed as a voluntary agreement to sell, on a willing seller basis’:

There was no attempt to explore alternative forms of tenure, such as a lease or licence to occupy, which would have preserved the parent title, and therefore their mana, and the rangatiratanga of the tangata whenua over their lands guaranteed to them in article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi.

In 1985, the land was considered to be surplus to Railways Corporation requirements. At that time, the Public Works Act 1981 set out the procedures and conditions for disposing of Maori land that had been taken by the Crown for a public work but was no longer required that purpose. The land at Te Maunga was a small block, but the issues raised by the claim involved important principles of the Treaty of Waitangi: the Crown right to make laws and take land in the public interest (kawanatanga), against the guarantees of protection of Māori ownership of lands (rangatiratanga):

There was no concept of compulsory taking in customary Maori tenure systems. … the Crown guaranteed (ka wakarita ka wakaae) to Maori te tino rangatiratanga, the full authority over their lands until such time as they chose to dispose of them at an agreed price. There is in the Treaty, therefore, no assumption of a fictitious willing seller for the purpose of compulsory taking of Maori land by the Crown.

In reaching its conclusions, the Tribunal discussed the values assigned to land:

In the Maori world there are also values attributed to land and identity, ancestry and occupation, over many generations, which can never be translated into monetary terms. This is why Maori land, compulsorily acquired, is not seen by Maori as paid for, or adequately compensated, by a mere sum of money.

The Tribunal referred to the words of Justice Richardson in a 1987 court case, New Zealand Maori Council and Latimer v Attorney-General and Others, that the 'possession of land and the rights to land are not measured simply in terms of economic utility and immediately realisable commercial values'. It also quoted the words of the New Zealand Māori Council:

[Māori land] provides us with a sense of identity, belonging and continuity. It is proof of our continued existence not only as a people, but as the tangata whenua of this country. It is proof of our tribal and kin group ties. Maori land represents turangawaewae. It is proof of our link with the ancestors of our past, and with the generations yet to come. It is an assurance that we shall forever exist as a people, for as long as the land shall last.

The Tribunal of Judge Hingston, Pamela Ringwood, Evelyn Stokes and Makarini Temara concluded that this claim was well founded and recommended that the Crown take all necessary steps to ensure that the Te Maunga Railways land was revested in the former Māori owners without the payment of the $70,000 purchase price required by the Minister of Railways. They also made some more general recommendations for changes to public works legislation and the offer-back procedures to reflect more positively the Treaty principle of the Crown's fiduciary obligation toward Māori. In support, the Tribunal quoted a 1988 statement by the Minister of Lands, the Honourable Peter Tapsell, to the Māori Land Court:

Where the people were required to be divested of land, it is my view that if it is not essential for a Public Work it ought to be returned to them. It is, moreover, my view that the land ought to be returned to them unencumbered. That is it seems to me an injustice to say that we took your land eighty years ago and gave you fifty pounds, and now you can have your land back, provided you pay half a million dollars. That seems to be grossly unjust.

Claim Wai 176 was lodged with the Tribunal in early 1991 by Huirangi Waikerepuru and Graham Latimer. The claimants alleged Treaty breaches by the Crown in its broadcasting policies, and they sought, inter alia, that the Broadcasting Act 1989 and the Radiocommunications Act 1989 be amended to ensure that Maori, their language, and their culture had a secure place in broadcasting in New Zealand.

In its report of 22 July 1994, signed by Chief Judge Eddie Durie, the Tribunal noted that many of the issues raised had been canvassed in earlier reports (the Report on the Te Reo Maori Claim and the Report on Claims Concerning the Allocation of Radio Frequencies) and in the general courts, and accordingly it was to make no further inquiry into the claim.

The Maori Electoral Option Report concerns the exercise by Māori of the Māori electoral option under section 76 of the Electoral Act 1993, by which Māori may elect whether to register on the Māori roll or the general roll. In 1986, the Royal Commission on the Electoral System had noted that:

Although they were not set up for this purpose, the Māori seats have nevertheless come to be regarded by Māori as an important concession to, and the principal expression of, their constitutional position under the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Crown had provided certain funding and services to Māori to assist them to promote the enrolment of their people and to gain an understanding of the nature and implications of the choice they are required to make. The claim, brought by Hare Wakakaraka Puke on behalf of himself and those iwi and other Māori authorities that attended a Māori electoral option hui at Turangawaewae in January 1994, questioned the adequacy of the funding in terms of the Crown's Treaty of Waitangi obligations. The claim was also supported by the National Māori Congress, the New Zealand Māori Council, and the Māori Women's Welfare League.

Urgency was accorded the hearing of this claim as the two-month period during which Māori were required to exercise their electoral option ran from 15 February to 14 April 1994. The report was released on 14 February 1994.

The Tribunal of Professor Gordon Orr (presiding), Brian Corban, Professor Keith Sorrenson, Makarini Temara, Keita Walker, and Hepora Young found that the present level of funding was substantially less than would be reasonably required to meet the Crown's Treaty obligations to protect Māori citizenship rights:

The right of political representation has now been enhanced by the Electoral Act 1993 and the evidence before us strongly suggests that the present rights are highly prized. The Tribunal considers that … if adequate funding is not provided for both a vigorous kanohi ki te kanohi and a targeted mass media programme to ensure that as many Māori as possible are enrolled and exercise an informed choice then Māori will be seriously prejudiced.

The Crown conveyed its decision to the Tribunal on 1 March 1994, stating that Cabinet had declined to follow the recommendations contained in the report. This decision was made after a consideration of the extent and nature of the Crown's involvement in voter education activities as part of the electoral reform process.