E oho! A short history of Te Arawhiti — The Office for Māori Crown relations

Speakers

Paul Diamond, Tanja Schubert-McArthur, Warren Fraser

Mihimihi

Paul Diamond: Tēnā tatou.
Whakataka te hau ki te uru.
Whakataka te hau ki te tonga
Kia makinakina ki uta, kia mataratara ki tai
E hī ake ana te atākura
He tio, he huka, he hau hū
Tihei mauriora

Tēnā tatou. He hōnore, he korōria, he maungarongo ki runga i te mata o te whenua, he whakaaro pai ki ngā tāngata katoa. Ki ngā mate kua hinga i te toki o Aituā. Haere koutou ki te moana nui, te rerenga o ngā waka i hoehoe ai e rātou mā, ka ngaro i te tirohanga kanohi. Heoi anō, e mau tonu ana i ngā tōpitopito o te ngākau. Apiti hono, tatai hono, rātou te hunga mate ki a rātou. Apiti hono, tatai hono, tātou te hunga ora ki a tātou katoa. Matariki hunga, Matariki ahunga nui. Ngā mihi o te Tau Hou ki a koutou kua whakarauika i tēnei ruma. Ka mihi hoki ki ngā iwi mana whenua o te rohe nei, ngā tāngata o te Raukura, Taranaki Whānui ki te Upoko o Te Ika, me Ngāti Toa Rangatira. Tēnā koutou.

Ka mihi hoki ki te kaupapa o te rā, tēnei kaupapa kōrero e ki a nei, ko e oho! Kia noho tahi, kia whakarongo, kia korero, kia rere ngā whakawhiti whakaaro e pā ana ki te taonga ra, Te Tiriti. Kia whakaohooho i a tātou. E tika ana kia tu tēnei kaupapa kei te whare nei, te whare kaipupuri i ngā taonga, Te Te Tiriti, Te Wakaputanga, te Te Petihana Whakamana Pōti Wahine. Hei te rā nei, ka tuku mihi ki ta tātou kaikorero, Warren, tēnā kōe.

Nau mai ki te whare, nau ma ki te kaupapa nei hoki. He whare hou a Te Arawhiti, engari, he whakapapa tona. E te tīmatantanga, kei whanau mai kei te kohanga a Tāhū o te Ture, TOWPU, kare tai e kimi te kupu Māori mo te Treaty of Waitangi Policy Unit. Tera pea kei mohia, a Barry. Nā, ka puta Te Tari Whakatau Take e pā ana ki te Tiriti o Waitangi. Office of Treaty Settlements, i reo Pākehā, nā ka puta a Te Arawhiti. Tetahi Te Tiriti kei waenganui i te Karauna me ngā iwi Māori, ka puta a Te Arawhiti – tetahi o ngā whare pātata ana ki a mātou o te Puna Mātauranga.

Na reira, e te hoamahi, Warren, tēnā anō koe, otira tēnā koutou katoa.

Waiata

Kōkiri Kōkiri Kōkiri (waiata composed by Bella Tarawhiti)

Whakarongo ake au ki ngā reo o te motu
e karanga mai ana huakina huakina te whare ē
ka oti ka oti ngā mahi ē
haere mai e te iwi kia piri tāua
kia ki te atu ai ngā kupu whakairi ē
ēnei ngā wariu o ngā mahi tuhinga
hei mahi ketuketu
ngā whakaaro rerekē
ko hanga whakatū ngā aria ki te iwi
e kore e mimiti he puna wairua ē
he puna wairua ē

Welcome

Paul Diamond: Hei ta te rarangi whakamutunga o te waitata rā ‘He kore e mimiti, he puna wairua e’. No reira, tēnā tatou katoa. Kia ora Everyone, I'm Paul Diamond, Curator Māori at the Alexander Turnbull Library. Just to recap what I've done, we just opened with our karakia, and I acknowledged those who've passed on, acknowledged the mana whenua, of the land that the library is sited on, and acknowledging that it's Matariki. So that's why I was acknowledging we're heading into a new year, and acknowledging our kaikōrero who I was trying to explain is one of our neighbours across the road, and that he's from Te Arawhiti which is quite new, but it has a Whakapapa which actually, technically, probably goes back to DIA, since they say DIA was the first government department.

But acknowledging that there have been these early organisations, TOWPU, the Treaty of Waitangi Policy Unit, which as far as I could tell, didn't have a Māori name which seems strange, but. And then the Office of Treaty Settlements, which had a really long name, Te Tāri Tautake Whakatau Take e pā ana ki te Tiriti o Waitangi Treaty of Waitangi. So it just remains for me to hand over to my colleague, Doctor Tanja Schubert-McArthur, who's organised this series, the E oho, which, as I was saying, is a terrific initiative of our public engagement team, that right through the year we've got these opportunities to get together and thrash out and talk about kōrero relating to the treaty.

And it's super appropriate that it's here because we, with Archives New Zealand, are looking after the treaty and the other important documents. So kei a koe, e hoa.

Introduction

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: Nau mai, haere mai ki Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa. Welcome everybody, and thank you for coming to the E oho Series today. Paul Diamond, Curator Māori here, thank you for the mihi. And you've stolen my thunder, so I'll keep it very short. Welcome back, if you've been to the series before.

We tried to have laid a foundation with this series for all people living in Aotearoa by exploring key events in history that shaped the nation we call home. And we also want to provide a safe space for robust discussion. Last month we had a great panel discussion about past, present, and future of the Waitangi Tribunal. And we continue this theme today with a presentation by Warren Fraser, about a short history of Te Arawhiti The Office for Māori Crown Relations.

As we only have one speaker today, we'll probably be finished in time at 1 o'clock. But if not, we can accommodate for discussion afterwards. So it's my great pleasure to introduce to you today's speaker, Warren Fraser, the DCE Strategy, Policy, and Legal at Te Arawhiti. Warren was appointed to this current role in July 2019, having previously served as the regional director responsible for treaty settlement negotiations in Te Rāwhiti.

He had a lengthy career at The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, including posts in Ottawa, Brussels, and Canberra. His last role was as head of the Trade Law Unit. Warren joined the policy group at The Ministry of Justice in 2012. He moved to The Office of Treaty Settlements in 2015.

Secondments early in his career to the Capital Markets team at the Ministry of Economic Development, and more recently as General Manager of The Ministry of Justice, Provider and Community Services group have added to Warren's experience across a number of challenging environments. Please welcome Warren Fraser.

[APPLAUSE]

Presentation begins

Warren Fraser: Tuia ki te rangi, tuia ki te whenua, tuia ki te ngākau o ngā tangata, ko te mea nui, ko te aroha. Tīhei, mauriora. Tēnā koutou, ngā mihi ki a koutou e huihui mai nei. Ko Warren Fraser toku ingoa. Nō Te Arawhiti ahau, The Office for Māori Crown Relations. Ko au te tumuaki tuarua o te tari, DCA Strategy, Policy, and Legal. Ko uri au o Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga. Kei te harikoa au ki te kōrero o tēnei Kaupapa, nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

It's a pleasure to stand before you today as part of the excellent E oho Series. And I'm really pleased to be able to represent Te Arawhiti in providing a step in that series for coverage of Waitangi issues.

My presentation today, a short history of Te Arawhiti, the Office for Māori Crown Relations. I have to give a few disclaimers about it. First of all, I'm not an historian so a lot of the things that I might cover off today have been well traversed and I hope they are not too controversial. But the way that I've stitched them together, the way that I've woven them into a history of our organisation, I have to take responsibility for that.

They're my ideas. They're unofficial. So please don't attribute them to the Office too much. But I hope they'll make sense. Here's what I plan to cover today, essentially the whakapapa of our organisation. But as Paul said-- and thank you for that welcome, Paul-- the predecessor organisations of Te Arawhiti are long and lengthy. And to understand the reasons why they were created I think it's important to set them in a context.

So that's why I'm also going to try and traverse some milestone developments and treaty policy. And in doing so I hope to be able to describe the work of Te Arawhiti. I'm going to be covering quite a lot of ground. I've set myself the challenge, I think, of 50 years in less than that many minutes. So it will be quite broad. There will be gaps. You will have questions. And hopefully we'll have time for that near the end.

Māori Crown relations in the 1970s and 1980s

So I'm starting in the 1970s and 1980s. And I'm going to take a decade-by-decade approach to Māori Crown Relations. And here's my first big generalisation right up front about Māori protest, political and social unrest. What I'm wanting to do is to make my case that the organisational Whakapapa of Te Arawhiti is linked to the sociopolitical climate of the time.

So in this period, the '70s and '80s, the Treaty of Waitangi began to enter mainstream political discussion. And it led to the creation of the Treaty of Waitangi Policy Unit. So political and social unrest, my evidence-- brief as it is-- this was the period that contained the 1975 land march, iconic images of Dame Whina Cooper heading out from Pangarū on her hīkoi to Wellington. Bastion Point occupation, around 1977, 1981 Springbok tour. Lots of social upheaval.
Throughout the '60s and '70s Māori had been looking for a single forum to have a look at claims, at grievances from the past. And in 1975 the government responded. Led by Matiu Rata, the Waitangi Tribunal was established. You heard from the Tribunal last week and got a good discussion there. So I'm not going to stay for long on the Tribunal. But they will weave their way in and out of this discussion.

But the establishment of the Tribunal was to hear claims by Māori against the Crown concerning breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, to determine the validity of such claims, and to make non-binding recommendations to the government about what to do about them. In 1975, there was a forward-looking jurisdiction to have a look at those grievances from '75 onwards. So probably, as momentously, I should have put up there.

In 1985 the Tribunal's jurisdiction was extended to be able to look back into the past to 1840. When Parliament enacted the State Owned Enterprises Act in 1986, the courts were able to weigh in on the status of the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand. This was the time of Rogernomics and one of the key planks of that endeavour was to overhaul the state sector. That included things like corporatisation, leading to privatisation, of former state departments.

And I realised yesterday, as I was talking to our staff hui that the audience I had in front of me there, full of a lot of young, bright people, words like "Rogernomics" or "commercialisation" may not be terribly familiar to them. So forgive me if some of them in the audience might not recognise those. I think lots of people will. I'm 51 years old so a lot of this has lived history for me. So forgive me if I skip over a few things.

So the State Owned Enterprises Act in 1986, transforming state departments into commercially oriented organisations to operate with efficiency and profitability, too. What it entailed was the transfer of Crown land to the new State Owned Enterprises. And that resulted in a case taken by the New Zealand Māori Council that went all the way to the Court of Appeal. What the Court of Appeal was interpreting was Section 9 of that Act, which I've quoted up there.

So the court had a go at what did the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi mean? And it characterised the treaty relationship as a special relationship akin to a partnership. The court said that the Crown has a duty to actively protect Māori interests, and that the treaty requires that each party act reasonably and in good faith toward one another. And critically in this case, it found that the Crown should not impede its capacity to give fair and reasonable redress for historic breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi.

The outcome of the case meant that the Parliament needed to pass the Treaty of Waitangi State Enterprises Act of 1988 that created the resumption, compulsory jurisdiction, in the Waitangi Tribunal, able to recommend the return of land that was part of the transfer of those two State Owned Enterprises. And it meant that Māori claims could still be satisfied via that means.

In 1989, there were a couple of other cases concerning forestry and coal that had a similar outcome. The Crown Forest Assets Act was passed in 1989. And that, too, referenced the binding powers of the Waitangi Tribunal with the ability to return the land under Crown forests to Māori.

With the Tribunal looking at historical claims and courts opining on the treaty principles, the government created the Treaty of Waitangi Policy Unit in 1988. When it was created, TOWPU was housed within the Ministry of Justice. It had seven staff. And its key kaupapa was to coordinate the Crown's response to Māori claims.

Originally it was conceived as a forward-looking organisation but it got quickly drawn into face-to-face settlement negotiations with iwi. And the director of the Treaty of Waitangi Policy Unit was brought in to lead negotiations with Waikato Tainui for Raupatu claims, and later for fishing rights.

The 1990s

Into my second decade, the 1990s. In response to the need to deal with Māori grievance, governments began building a principled framework for negotiating and settling historical Treaty of Waitangi claims. It was not always plain sailing, nor did they get it right first time. But nevertheless, governments recognised the need to build it.

I think critically and gradually throughout the decade, Māori engaged in that settlement process. 21 September 1992 is an important date, for the reason I've got there. Cabinet agrees to some general principles about how to settle Treaty of Waitangi claims.

It's important in the modern day context because that date, 21 September 1992, it delineates historical claims on the one hand-- everything that happened from 1840 up until that point-- and contemporary claims, Crown acts and omissions from that date onwards.

In 1993, for the first time a portfolio was created for the minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi negotiations. And in the years since there have been six ministers in that portfolio. Doug Graham was the original. He was followed by Margaret Wilson, Mark Burton, Michael Cullen, Chris Finlayson, and today, Andrew Little.

Fiscal envelope

Fiscal envelope, that's another one of those terms that many of you will recognise and some younger members of the audience may not. But in 1994, Crown proposals for the settlement of Treaty of Waitangi claims were published and consulted on. This came about from the national government coming to power in 1990 with a manifesto commitment to settle all historical treaty claims by the year 2000.

That was an ambitious aim. Successive governments have produced other targets for the completion of Treaty of Waitangi settlements. We're still going. But at the time it led to a plan that the government announced in 1994 to impose a $1 billion financial cap on all future treaty settlements. This is the fiscal envelope. And it sparked massive protests throughout the country.

So Wira Gardiner, who was the CEO of Te Puni Kōkiri at the time and charged with leading consultation on the proposals, described the experience at hui as like being subjected to the flames of hell. In Turangi the fiscal envelope was called an affront to tino rangatriratanga. In Tauranga the government's proposal document was thrown on the ground and stomped on. In Te Kuiti], a copy of the proposal document was shredded in front of the prime minister.

And on the East Coast blankets were returned to the Crown in a symbolic exchange for the return of land to the tribes. Māori were upset. So the fiscal envelope perhaps wasn't the way forward, but in the same period there were some early wins. The 1992 Fisheries Claims settlement was a big deal. It arose over a dispute in respect of the Quota Management System. And it led to the joint venture purchase of Sealord's products company.

There was also $150 million granted to Māori for the development and involvement of Māori and New Zealand fishing, and 20% of further quota that entered the Quota Management System would be reserved to Māori, it's additional species. The other two early wins that I've got, the Waikato Tainui and Ngai Tahu I think are important and related to that fiscal envelope debacle.

One of the reasons that the Waikato Tainui settlement is important is that it's the first time that the Crown offered an apology in a settlement, which both parties agreed was a necessary part of reaching a settlement. The Waikato Tainui and the Ngai Tahu settlements each contain a relativity mechanism clause. So these two were going very early in the treaty settlement process. And it was uncertain where the treaty settlement process would lead. The fiscal envelope had been proposed but was roundly rejected by Māori.

But what the settlements managed to agree was that should the total value of all treaty settlements over time exceed a billion dollars in 1994 terms, the value of the Waikato Tainui settlement would be revalued upwards by 17% of the total value above a billion dollars, and for Ngai Tahu, a revaluation upwards of 16% would occur.

So relativity making mechanism payments have been made to Ngai Tahu and to Waikato Tainui in the subsequent years. The value of treaty settlements today, I think, is about $2.5 billion. There's an excellent part of the He Tohu Exhibition where you can press on an interactive map. You can see when and where settlements across the country have occurred. And it gives their financial value.
Those two settlements were really important, though, for building momentum in the treaty settlement process. Two major claims to big iwi participated in the settlement process. And it gave some momentum.

Office of Treaty Settlements established 1995

So while the fiscal envelope proposal was roundly rejected, the government nevertheless recognised that it need machinery to take settlement negotiations forward, which is why the Office of Treaty Settlements was established in 1995. Cabinet took the decision in July 1994 to create the office. And it was housed again within the Department of Justice. At the time that the Cabinet decision was taken, the Treaty of Waitangi Policy Unit had grown from seven staff to 30.

So OTS was established to negotiate settlements of historical claims directly with claimant groups under the guidance and direction of Cabinet. So direct negotiations between iwi and the Crown is in distinction to the Waitangi Tribunal process, where the district inquiry program looking at historical breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi was ongoing. But what the crown was offering at this point was an alternative pathway, direct negotiations with the Crown to settle claims.

OTS had a number of functions. They needed to work closely with claimant groups so that they understood the process of settling claims. OTS was the principal interlocutor with iwi groups. And it was charged with understanding what did the claimant group want out of settlement negotiations, understand its grievances, and where they wanted to go.

OTS was the coordinator of other government agencies involved in the settlement process. So it meant a lot of government agencies involved in treaty settlements, from the Department of Conservation concerning conservation land, Treasury for the money, Ministry of Primary Industries MFE, Land Information New Zealand, there's a long list of agencies who have different roles in being able to offer redress to iwi in their treaty settlement. But in the main part, what OTS was charged to do was to work together with iwi groups to find a settlement.

Into the 2000s

Into the 2000s, this is where, in this decade, successive governments from both sides of the political divide embraced and built upon the Treaty settlement framework. Missteps in the Māori Crown relationship-- and that's how I'll characterise the Foreshore and Seabed Act-- were flash points for protests. And they had political ramifications. So the incoming Labour government decided, let's abandon that fiscal envelope approach. It's not working.

But what it did do was adopt principles that were largely based on the 1994 proposals. The idea for these principles, this was from the 2000 review, was to ensure that treaty settlement negotiations resulted in fair, durable, and final settlements, and that they occur in a timely manner. So the principles elaborated were good faith, negotiations will be conducted in good faith based on mutual trust and cooperation, restoration of the relationship between the Crown and Māori-- that was the purpose, one of the underlying purposes of the Treaty settlement.

There should be just redress. Redress should relate fundamentally to the nature and extent of breaches of the Treaty. So things like the extent of land alienation and how that land was acquired, whether through purchase or perhaps through confiscation. There's a principle of fairness between claims so that like claims from iwi were treated in a like manner.

Transparency was principle. The claimants would have sufficient information to understand the basis on which claims were going to be settled, and to understand the process that they were embarking upon. And finally, a principle that these were government negotiated. They could speak to that direct negotiations point, that the only two parties who could, by agreement, achieve a durable, fair, and final settlement would be the government and an individual iwi.
That also meant that redress could be delivered by the government. And it minimised costs to all parties.

What’s in a settlement?

It's probably worthwhile pausing just for a moment, and not assuming too much, to think about what's in a settlement. So since 1997, most settlement packages have been made up of a Crown apology. That includes acknowledgments of breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi and an historical account of the Crown's relationship with the group that's settling. That's an agreed historical account about the events between the two parties.

A Crown apology, financial and commercial redress, that's the cash and property, probably the thing that you read about in the newspapers, the value of a treaty settlement and the thing as I said that's on that great interactive display in the He Tohu exhibition. Cultural redress, this recognises traditional, historical, or spiritual connections between the group settling and places and sites owned by the Crown within the area of interest.

It can include things like changing place names or the transfer of Crown land to the claimant group, and perhaps input into the governance and management of natural resources like rivers and lakes. Treaty settlements are negotiated in a comprehensive way. That means that all of the historical claims of a group are bundled together.

So while early treaty settlements might have been on a single claim issue, there were just so many claims that that was going to take an awfully long time to get through. Bundling the claims up in the Tribunal through its district inquiry process did the same kind of thing, meant that negotiations could be a little more timely, efficient, and cost effective.

The other thing that the Crown's strong preference was to negotiate with large natural groups. So instead of negotiating with individual hapū or whānau, it meant that aggregating up to mostly the iwi level and having those groups mandated by the [INAUDIBLE] settlement on their behalf became the way that the Crown would engage.

That meant that the treaty settlement process was easier to manage. It meant that you could deal a little bit easier with overlapping claims between different groups. And it allowed for a wider range of redress, more durable as it addressed a greater range of needs. The large natural group's policy has been endorsed by the Tribunal for practical and policy reasons.

So during this decade we got a little bit of momentum in treaty settlements. And I've just mentioned a couple of highlights, the Central North Island Forests Iwi Collective, that one dealing with forestry had a significant value attached to it. The redress was valued at approximately $450 million.

And the Waikato River settlement is notable for the clean up fund that was associated with it, $210 million to clean up the Waikato River, restore and protect the Waikato River environment, and then also for the creation of the Waikato River Authority, made up of equal numbers of Crown and iwi-appointed members.

What they set out in terms of a vision and strategy has given effect to by the regional and territorial authorities along the river.

Foreshore and Seabed Act

And if those were some of the highlights of the decade, then getting to the low point is, I guess, the Foreshore and Seabed Act in 2004.

This all came about again through court action. In 2003, the Court of Appeal held that Māori customary rights to the foreshore and seabed had not been extinguished by statute. And again, trying not to assume too much, we're talking about the foreshore and seabed marine and coastal area, it's the wet part of the sand, the high tide mark on the foreshore, right out to the seabed, 12 nautical miles out from the coast.

And when we talk about customary rights we're talking about the activities that Māori had been conducting since 1840, and also the ability to regulate or prevent activities that would adversely affect those rights. What was not talked about was bestowing title or ownership.

But nevertheless, at the time there was a lot of ill-informed debate, lots of talk about the Queen's Chain and other things like that. Then, the thought that Māori would be controlling access to the nation's coastline caused an awful lot of controversy. So the Labour government at the time decided to pass legislation, the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 and then it confirmed Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed.

It sparked huge Māori protest, a massive hīkoi to Parliament, a Waitangi Tribunal claim that found that the government had made serious breaches of the Treaty, and it also led to the birth of Māori Party. Dame Tariana Turia left the Labour Party and discussed and formed Māori Party.

Into the 2010s

Into the 2010s, I have to start with the Marine and Coastal Area Act because that's the cleanup of the foreshore and seabed. But this decade saw significant achievements in the settlement of historical Treaty of Waitangi claims. This is the momentum I was talking about. And the mix of settled and unsettled groups changed. The more successful there was in treaty settlements, the more groups that were settled. The map of New Zealand was changing, about the number of groups settled compared to those yet to reach a settlement.

The Tribunal shifted gear, too. The historical district inquiries had been nearing their end. They issued a large number of significant reports with contemporary treaty implications. And it embarked upon its Kaupapa inquiries program. And echoes of that work are definitely present today.

But to start with, Foreshore and Seabed part two, the 2008 national government, formed with the support of the Māori Party, came to office and realised they needed to repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Act. And what they replaced it with was the Marine and Coastal Area Takutai Moana Act in 2011.

And the solution they came up with was to say, well, no one would own the foreshore and seabed, but Māori could pursue their claims to protect their customary rights and customary marine title. This is where a part of the Whakapapa of Te Arawhiti comes from as well, because with the new Act, the Office of Treaty Settlements was made the administering body. Up to that time policy in this area had been conducted through the Ministry of Justice.

So under the MCAA Act, Marine and Coastal Area Takutai Moana Act, Māori had until April 2017 to engage directly with the Crown or to apply to the high court to have their customary interests recognised. Applicants could opt for both applications pathways if they wished. And over 380 applications were made under the Act. I will come back to that as we get more to the present day.

But in this decade, 73 negotiated settlements of historical claims by the end of 2015, we're really filling in the map of New Zealand-- again, just a couple of highlights. Ngai Tūhoe, a significant settlement with $168 million in financial and commercial redress, but also significant redress in relation to Te Urewera National Park. There was also the Whanganui River Settlement, which had the unique instance of creating legal personality in the river.

I think this decade also recognised the need to sustain gains made through treaty settlements. Having settled historical grievances, the last thing the government wanted was to go backwards to have the new settlement commitments breached and repeat history. So in 2013, the Post Settlement Commitments Unit was established, another part of Te Arawhiti's Whakapapa.

So the PSCU was established within the Ministry of Justice. Its job was to have an overview across departments of the Crown's progress towards meeting its Treaty settlement commitments, to assist those departments in implementing them, and to be a point of contact for iwi when they either had questions or something went wrong. So in those ways the Post Settlement Commitments Unit was tasked to safeguard the durability of treaty settlements and to ensure that the gains made to the Crown Māori relationship through treaty settlements were maintained and built upon.

My last bullet point up there is meantime at the Waitangi Tribunal. In addition to iwi claims and river claims, et cetera, there were a number of significant reports. Wai 262 Ko Aotearoa tēnei, that's the report into claims concerning New Zealand law and policy affecting Māori culture and identity-- that came out in 2011, we're still dealing with that today-- the Kohanga Reo Claim in 2012, and also then in 2014, He Whakaputanga me Te Tiriti, the Declaration and the Treaty, the report on stage one of the Te Paparahi o Te Raki inquiry. That's the inquiry that found that northern Māori tribes had not intended to cede sovereignty to the Crown in 1840. And it's a large part of negotiations-- a significant aspect in negotiations-- with Ngāpuhi today.

The Tribunal also in 2015 instigated its Kaupapa Inquiry Program. So Kaupapa Inquiries are thematic. They deal with nationally significant issues affecting Māori as a whole. They're both historical and forward looking. But what's important about them, I think, is that they also propose policy fixes to the issues that they deal with. It's not just compensation, per se.

So Kaupapa Inquiry topics-- and this is on the list of scheduled for inquiry-- are Military Veterans, Health Services and Outcomes, Takutai Moana -- there was a hearing yesterday in that inquiry-- Mana Wahine which has just kicked off, Housing Policy and Services, and then still to come-- might have just added, I'm not quite sure-- the Constitution, Self-government, and the Electoral System, Education Services, Social Services, Economic Development, Identity and Culture, Natural Resources and Environmental Management, the Justice System, and finally, Citizenship Rights and Equality. And maybe that list will grow.

So into the 2010s-- and I've got to 2015 or so-- but the election in 2017, I think, is quite important.

Speech from the Throne 2017

And I've got-- forgive me for all those words-- but I wanted to pause and ask you to read them. This was the Labour New Zealand First Coalition Government, and this, the speech from the Throne in 2017, that's where the government lays out its policy platform, I think gave a really good indication of the ambition that government had for Māori Crown relations.

Excerpt Speech from the Throne 2017:

When our forebears signed the Treaty of Waitangi more than 170 years ago they did so in a spirit of cooperation. Whatever else that agreement might have meant, it was supposed to bring opportunity and mutual benefit for tangata whenua and settlers alike. It was supposed to provide a place for all peoples in this country. Instead what followed was a long process of colonisation, in which one of the treaty partners acquired most of the power and the resources, and the other was sidelined.

[….] It is time to start considering what the treaty relationship might look like after historical grievances are settled. To consider how we, as a nation, can move forward in ways that honour the original treaty promise.

And I use this quote because, well, it's an official one, and because it's a significant statement, I think. It shows the government's shift in focus to the future of Māori Crown relations. Up till now we've been talking about historic treaty settlements for the most part. But the government was asking, well, as we near the end of that process-- and it may have been a little premature-- but as we near the end of that process, what comes next for the Māori Crown relationship? What of the future?

So if the speech from the throne set out the intent, part of the other things that happened along with that intent was the creation of the Māori Crown relations portfolio. So this was November 2017, the first ministers, minister Kelvin Davis, and it prompted within the Office of Treaty Settlements a hastily put together creation of the Crown Māori relations roopū.

That group-- it's another part of Te ArawhitI's Whakapapa-- but that group was essentially put together to support the new minister, and particularly in his aim to conduct a series of hui around New Zealand to ask New Zealanders what the government should do to strengthen the Māori Crown relationship and what the priorities of his portfolio should be, which I thought was an amazing thing to do.

There were 32 hui attended by over 1,600 people, 230 submissions from individuals, groups, and organisations, all trying to say, what should this portfolio do? Submissions were received from Māori and non-Māori, from people who supported the portfolio, and for people who did not. And in March 2018, Cabinet considered a report on that feedback and gave directions for the portfolio.
Up there I've got the feedback from Māori about what the Māori Crown Relations portfolio should be based upon, And that last point, that there should be a clear focus on the Māori Crown relationship [AUDIO OUT] and that was needed to implement that last point. Cabinet agreed to create the Office of Māori Crown Relations, Te Arawhiti.

Te Arawhiti established 2019

And here we are. This is the slide that brings together those various bits of Whakapapa that I've mentioned throughout this address. It brings together this slide and the next slide, the short history of Te Arawhiti. We were formally established on the 1st of January, 2019.

We're made up of four Kahui, mentioned along the bottom there. Kahui Whakatau is-- actually, and Te Kahui Takutai Moana-- the former Office of Treaty Settlements Te Kahui Whakamana is their Post-settlement Commitments Unit, Te Kahui Hikina, Māori Crown Relations, comes from that Crown Māori Relations roopū.

Two ministers, two portfolios, Minister for Māori Crown Foreign Relations Te Arawhiti, honourable Kelvin Davis, and the Minister of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, honorable Andrew Little. Not up there on that screen but very important, are their two hāpai that support across Te Arawhiti. One of those is mine, Strategy, Policy, and Legal, and the other is our Organisational Services Group, so supporting the work of all four of those Kahui.

And here is, on a page, what we do and how we do it. Broadly, we're looking to restore, sustain, and build the Māori Crown relationship through those things listed there. Te Arawhiti means "the bridge." It's a bridge between Māori and the Crown, the past and the future, and the journey from grievance to partnership. And I guess the key purpose of Te Arawhiti is to support the Crown to be a better treaty partner. We're a guiding hand for the public service, and we can connect Māori into the Crown.

I think some of the key changes since 2017-- or the key changes recognised in the shift in 2017-- was that the government recognised an ongoing relationship with Māori, beyond historical grievance. There's still some way to go in treaty settlements, and I mentioned Ngāpuhi.

Some of the strands of my talk-- some of the echoes today-- come from those historical events. So remember the State Owned Enterprises Act and the solution out of that, or the Crown Forestry Assets Act from '88 and '89, that resumption power given to the Waitangi Tribunal is finally starting to be exercised with some uncertain outcomes.

Another thing that's changed is that governments have abandoned-- at least officially-- that we will complete historic treaty settlements by a certain date. That's been abandoned in favour of, let's make sure that we complete historical treaty settlements in a fair, equitable, and hopefully timely way.

There are some things about Te Arawhiti that are a continuation of the past-- settlements, obviously. That's under our resettle, restore, settle historical treaty claims. Organisationally, we're a departmental agency in association with the Ministry of Justice, so not quite an independent department. And that association with the Ministry of Justice has been long standing.

Other aspects of Te Arawhiti's work are new and evolving. So I think contemporary treaty policy is a fascinating area. And it's one I'm glad to be involved in. But if you think about some of the big issues that are on the political agenda today, Māori Crown Relations are central to a lot of the government's reform. So whether that's health-- thinking about the Māori Health Authority-- or children, I think about Oranga Tamariki. We're in resource management where the role of Māori is very much front and centre being considered. All of these things go to how New Zealand is governed today.

There's a big focus on the pursuit of equitable outcomes for Māori, across a range of social sectors, and it's a policy focus across government. So we are in the '70s and '80s, are suggesting the Treaty of Waitangi was entering the mainstream political consciousness. I think it's definitely arrived.

Other parts of our work are taking on new meaning-- engaged with Māori on Takutai Moana, under the "reset" pillar there-- just last weekend Minister Little announced a new Crown engagement strategy for engagement with applicants in the Takutai Moana. It's got three key stages-- initial engagement, research, and then determination and recognition. And this is recognising that if we weren't taking an everyone's in approach-- because that's what the new strategy is about, engaging with all applicants across 20 separate areas of coastline-- if we weren't doing that all at once, it was going to take between 30 and 80 years to complete all of those applications. And that was just unacceptable.

So a new strategy for engagement has been announced. Only last month there was a high court case called Edwards, which gave a first substantive decision-- or, not quite the first, but a first major decision under the Takutai Moana Act-- and some interesting interpretation of the legislation that brought tikanga into the legislation that determined the outcome, and recognising the customary rights and customary marine title along the East Coast.

These kinds of evolving changes-- contemporary treaty policy, court decisions-- I think it's all entirely appropriate for a relationship that's ongoing and enduring. And I'm proud to be part of an organisation that gets to be part of that discussion. So with that, I'll finish and leave time for any questions you might have. Kia ora.
[APPLAUSE]

Question 1

Kia ora tātou. Ko Ngāpuhi nui tonu e ngunguru nei. E te kaikōrero, e Warren, tēnā koe. My name is Hinerangi Himiona Tēnā koe, Claudia, I thought it was you sitting down there. Thank you for your talk. I was sitting up here torn between my Ngāpuhi-tonu-tanga and my job, which is a principal advisor Māori down here in Wellington, on a really important project to build a number of new facilities, one of them being the new Archives New Zealand building and the refurbishment of this building. I was also the principal advisor on the He Tohu project.
And so you can perhaps appreciate that, being a member of an iwi that's been deeply-- and a long time-- engaged with the Crown, and more recently OTS and Te Arawhiti, as well as being contracted to try and help from the inside out, can sometimes be incredibly uncomfortable and difficult. But I'm committed to that, like you are to your work, so kia ora.

Yeah, I don't think I have a question, other than an acknowledgment of the huge work that we all do. I do want to make a plead to keep investing in relationships, because it's within relationships that we're going to get movement forward. I know, personally and intellectually, the hard road that this has been and continues to be. My people are still dying-- and I actually mean dying-- from the hardness of our colonisation, and the long and hard road that we're being dragged through in this process and in this relationship, so kia kaha rā tātou.

Questions 2

I'm John. John McSorley. I was the legal officer in Te Tari Māori that had responsibility for the Treaty of Waitangi State Owned Enterprise Act which passed probably in '87, '88. But I just wanted to point out that there was the Treaty of Waitangi Policy Unit in Justice, but there was something that started in Te Tari Māori a year or so before that had a similar mandate. And then ultimately, it went to Justice. And there was-- what was my main question? Ah yes, the fiscal envelope-- I presume a billion dollars is a billion as it was in 1993. And in terms of your statistic, $2.6 billion, how does that relate to the actual amount of the fiscal envelope?

Warren Fraser: Forgive me, I don't know. But again, I commend the He Tohu Exhibition and that interactive display, because what it does do is total up the total value of treaty settlements to date and compares it with how much is spent annually by the government on a number of other things. And the point of that is to show that, actually, the treaty settlement process hasn't cost a heck of a lot.

And it's certainly not anywhere near the kind of compensation -- compensation is not a word that we will use. And treaty settlement-- when settlements come to Parliament, because they need to be enacted through Parliament-- at that final stage, MPs from all across the house will stand and acknowledge how much is given through a treaty settlement by each settling iwi, because the redress they receive can in no way compensate for the colonisation experience, or for what has been lost over the years. But nevertheless, there's a willingness to settle, which is an amazing thing.

And those-- if you ever get the chance to be at Parliament when there is a treaty settlement going through, it's a very moving event. There was another part of your question that I was going to comment on.

John McSorley: Oh well, the Te Tari [Māori] Policy Unit.

Warren Fraser: Oh, that's what I was going to say, sorry, yes. Barry Rigby had a chat to me not too long ago about-- as I was preparing for this presentation-- and talked about, wouldn't it be great if we did actually do a more detailed history. And I hope my disclaimer at the start, that I am not an historian and this is not a--

John McSorely: Well I do consider myself a historian. I must say, I'm very grateful, and thank you very much.

Warren Fraser: You're welcome. It certainly wasn't a deep dig into the Whakapapa of Te Arawhiti, but it is something that would be great to capture, because there are people still around. Roger Falloon at Te Arawhiti was a part of the Treaty of Waitangi Policy Unit. He's still there. Amelia Manson, whom I worked with, retired only last year. And she was a great source of-- well, stories and humour, amongst other things, that recalled that past. But yeah, if we don't document it, don't get that oral history down, then we may well lose it.

Questions 3

I'm wondering if you could comment on some of the issues raised by the very recent areas of national significance, and does that-- will the Te Arawhiti have to respond to that in some way?
Warren Fraser: Forgive me, the areas of national significance?

Participant: Significance, it's--
SNA, sorry.

Warren Fraser: Forgive me, I'm not well versed in that. I've seen it in the newspapers. And I understand the concerns coming from Māori in that space. Anything that impacts on Māori land, given the history of New Zealand and the history of land loss, is always going to be sensitive.
So in the same way, I think that there's lots of engagements with Māori, because Māori are concerned with an awful lot of the government's agenda. So at any particular point things like that will flare up. And they need to be worked through in a relationship way, to understand exactly what the concerns are, how they might be addressed, and how the government's objectives might be reconciled with things that Māori is saying.

Participant: [INAUDIBLE] directly about the SNAs as a result of the large hikoi in Kaikohe last Friday. So--

Warren Fraser: Thank you. I'm just following the microphone, sorry.

Question 4

Thank you for a very clear coverage of the Whakapapa-- really, of the Department, or the Independent Agency, I think is another way of putting it, but sort of associated with Justice still. So thank you, Warren. One key thing, when PSCU was established, the original thinking was that it would be a one-stop shop for both settled iwi and the Crown. The difference, of course now, I think, is that we have a greater emphasis on helping government to be more-- have greater capacity in dealing with settled iwi. But beyond that, your coverage perhaps might have emphasised that really, the Te Arawhiti is now dealing with all Māori, whereas about-- what, say, seven years ago-- you were really looking more at settled iwi. And so that’s quite a major change.

Warren Fraser: Yeah, I think it's an interesting thing. Remember that date 21 September, 1992, delineating between historic issues and contemporary issues? The way that the Māori Crown relationship is carried today, it's not carried by Te Arawhiti. It's carried by all portfolio agencies. And so our hope and expectation is to be able to build the capability of government departments to be able to partner well with Māori, to engage well with Māori, to understand Māori perspectives.

That's quite a huge undertaking, because we come from a reasonably low base in capability. But the Te Arawhiti is not here to do the Māori Crown relationship for the government. It does mean, though, that we need to be aware of how relationships develop across government. That's not an easy task.
And, as I say, because government departments are in daily engagement with iwi throughout the country, and often at the local level, local level arrangements can happen organically. Trying to impose a kind of a central will on all of that is quite difficult, and probably not the thing that you'd want to have happen anyway. But I think that's worth emphasising, that the portfolio responsibility is we would expect the Māori Crown relationship to be carried.

Question 5

Can I ask one final question, perhaps, is, where do you see it going in the future?

Warren Fraser: Well before this talk, we talked about 2040. That's obviously a really important date. Our mission statement is, towards true treaty partnership. But we've not defined what we think a true treaty partnership is. And I think the Māori Crown relationship is one of those things that will evolve.
There are-- again, we're talking before this talk-- there are a number of major reforms going on in New Zealand today, the Resource Management Act, Three Waters Reform, there's questions about Māori rights and interests in fresh water-- that's in the natural resources space-- a whole lot of other arrangements happening across portfolio agencies to get better outcomes for Māori are also part of the conversation of where the relationship goes.

And I think that's entirely appropriate for a relationship that's ongoing and enduring. So while we'll naturally have 2040 on the horizon, saying exactly what 2040 might look like and how we'll get there, that's a difficult task, and not one that we've endeavoured to put pen to paper on yet.

Question 6

Participant: Kia ora.

Warren Fraser: Kia ora.

Participant: So I'm intrigued by the discussions around engagement with Māori, when one of the key outcomes of the settlement process itself is creating a binary relationship with post-settlement iwi government authorities. So essentially, 90% of Māori cannot engage as a result of the settlement process. And that engagement is undertaken by the iwi authorities. And it's been-- I don't know. It's been quite controversial lately about the fairness or unfairness of those authorities. So I just wonder, what is your view on the-- I guess, how total and complete as this engagement process?

Warren Fraser: Kia ora. I think it's worthwhile noting that post-settlement governance entities are a creation of the treaty settlement process. They don't replace other more organic iwi authorities, but certainly post-settlement governance entities were a necessary part of the process. This is the entity that is created to receive the redress from the Crown, and then has the responsibility for managing that redress. So they are, now, an important part of the landscape.

I think the Crown does recognise, though, that to engage with Māori, PSGE's-- to use the lingo-- are only one part of the engagement that's necessary. So for Resource Management Act Reform-- I come back to that one because we're heavily engaged in it-- PSGE's will be a necessary part of the engagement required because they are the bodies responsible for arrangements like the Waikato River Authority that I mentioned earlier. But that PSGE won't speak for Waikato Tainui, or won't be able to give sufficient satisfaction that all Māori interests in resource management have been satisfied. So other mechanisms are also required.

And I think, when you think about urban Māori and the engagement needed on social issues, particularly with urban Māori authorities, that's another space, or, for national issues, the New Zealand Māori Council was the bringer of some of those cases, the Federation of Māori Authorities for covering landowners, there are a number of other entities and institutions for which the Crown needs to be mindful.

And our Te Arawhiti's engagement guidelines talk about a process to think about what's the nature of the issue, and where does it impact? Is it local, is it regional, is it national? And, to design your engagement strategy in accordance with that kind of thinking.

Participant: That's great, thank you. I guess what-- as a result of the treaty settlements, though, say, local government and other government agencies, the relationship created out of those settlements-- specifically with the PSGE's and other people-- but, I mean, I appreciate your explanation, and, you know, I agree.

Yeah. I guess, how do these other mechanisms fit into the settlement landscape, I guess is what I'm saying. There's no statutory requirement that I can see, like how-- it seems like the relationship between PSGE's and the government is legislative, whereas these other mechanisms, where do they sit in the legislative picture?

Warren Fraser: Well, I don't know if I can speak to the legislative picture, but if I'm picking up the tenor of your question correctly, the treaty settlement process is between the Crown and a mandated entity for a treaty settlement. That entity representing the group negotiating the settlement of historical claims needs to get its mandate from its people. And there's another check along the way on the process.

So, the people will mandate some negotiators to engage with the Crown. Once that negotiation takes place, once an agreement is reached, the agreement is then brought back to the people to be ratified. And without a satisfactory mandate conferred at the start, and sustained along the process, and without a satisfactory endorsement to the agreement that is reached, no settlement can be reached. So there are those kinds of checks and balances along the way.
Participant: Thank you.

Question 7

Tēnā koe Warren. Tēnā tatou katoa. I just wanted to touch a little bit on, in settlements-- and particularly in the historical account-- when there are competing interests from different parties around contentious sort of issues, particularly in customary rights and the like, and how the office works through those issues what those parties, particularly when, say, one iwi doesn't have a recognised mandate, or hasn't signed a settlement in principle, or the like, but another iwi may have.

Warren Fraser: Yeah, I mean those can be tricky issues. Neighbouring groups will often have different views about the history in a particular area. And that's why we employ a good cadre of historians, some of whom I had seen here but I think they've disappeared otherwise I'd have thrown to them to answer this question. But the historical account with a settling iwi is a negotiated historical account. It's about the relationship between the Crown and that particular group. It is a space where that group gets to say its view.

But it has to be-- there's a great deal of sensitivity to views that might be controversial in relation to other iwi groups, and that kind of teasing out is something that's part of the process of negotiating the historical account.
Participant: Yes, because I guess, in effect, the Crown could potentially create more grievances in that regard.

Warren Fraser: That's exactly right. And it is one of the-- I don't know if it's a principle-- but it's one of the guidelines for our work, that in settling historic grievances we shouldn't create new ones. So that kind of careful process is there. And it does mean sometimes, in the historical account process, that-- I mean, we're very careful to confine the historical account to the relationship between the Crown and the group.

Often groups will want to record a much wider history. And sometimes that leads to parallel projects that do that, which is great. But it's not part of the settlement that we are offering, because we are sensitive to those kinds of issues.

Question 8

And I just wanted to ask one last question, just about the relationship between Te Puni Kōkiri and Te Arawhiti, and particularly in regards to developing a declaration plan, and why Te Puni Kōkiri seems to be the lead agency in this regard, when Te Arawhiti's mandate is more about the relationship with iwi and hapū Māori, and just where that sort of crossover can come in, in the future, leading to 2040.

Warren Fraser: Fair enough question. The differentiation, I guess, between TPK [Te Puni Kōkiri] and Te Arawhiti, TPK is concerned with the social and economic outcomes for Māori. Te Arawhiti is concerned with making the Crown a better treaty partner in that relationship space. And I like to think that the two agencies are complementary, and that the Crown is not over-endowed with Māori Crown Relations capability, that there's not room for two agencies to be working in this kind of sector.

That's not unusual, either. I mean, there are a number of agencies working in the natural resources sector, for instance. And I think it's also fair to say that Te Arawhiti is a new agency. We've certainly inherited a Whakapapa that I've been describing. But in terms of the Māori Crown relationship, the field is wide and open. And in the contemporary treaty space, where we-- a colleague talks Te Puni Kōkiri working in the Article III space, the outcome space, and Te Arawhiti working in the Article I, Article II relationship space. So if that makes sense, that's one way of describing it.

As for why the UN Declaration sits with Te Puni Kōkiri, that's partly historical, in as much as TPK have had the international relations aspect of Indigenous relations that's been part of the portfolio. And I think minister Mahuta, at the time, commissioned the advisory group to be doing the work that has come to the fore more recently.

So maybe the-- one other thing I'll add in there too, is that sometimes a lot of these things happen a little bit by historical accident. So that references on the statute book-- for instance, I think in the Treaty of Waitangi to the minister of Māori affairs being responsible for the negotiation of settlements, it's something like that, or it's mandating, or I can't quite remember-- predated the creation of a portfolio of Treaty of Waitangi negotiations. So some of those things still hang around even if the practice has moved on. That's as good an explanation as I can give you, I think.

Participant: Kia ora!

Question 9

Kia ora, Hinerangi again. I just wanted to make a comment about the PSGE stuff that was being talked about, and that I'm kind of appreciative, as a Ngāpuhi person, that the evolved mandate process resulted in the [inaudible] mandate being unrecognised--set aside by the Crown, and that hapū tino rangatriatanga should be acknowledged. One of the things that I urge Te Arawhiti and encourage more-- and I think there are some great staff there that have got the heads around this, but I'm not sure if, from a organisational level, this is coming through clear enough-- that tikanga-based authorities are things that we're talking about now.

We've lost so much of how we used to do things, and how we can do things going forward, we're having those conversations amongst ourselves at the moment. But it's also really difficult to confidently have those conversations when we're not sure that the Crown partner can keep up, or isn't going to come back with, oh, that's not actually how we do things, the rule book says this. So I can't encourage you enough to move with us.

Warren Fraser: Kia ora and I take your point. In putting this together and thinking about the history of treaty settlements, and some of the changes that have been made-- which I've just said before, that the PSGE's are a creation of the settlement process-- I guess you do have to count the-- I'll call them the changes, I was going to say, the scars, along the way-- but I take-- thank you for the comment. Because Te Arawhiti, as an organisation, has to be conscious of some competing interests at times.

I mean, the way that the Ngāpuhi evolved mandate is evolving is appropriate for Ngāpuhi, but is different to the way that mandate discussions have happened across the momentum of a lot of those treaty settlements. And that principle of fairness across treaty settlements is an important one for the durability of those settlements. Somewhere in there, who knows, we might not get that right. I think it's quite entirely predictable that we won't get it right. And the story of the relationship will look at this and think, well, that was part of the history of the relationship.

And it might have been-- I'll say it was the thing of the time. I'm not even sure if it was appropriate for the time. But it was the way that things have been conducted. And as we move forward in the relationship, I think people will look back and wonder, why did we do it like that? We always get judged by history, I think.

Question 10

Just a quick note, my name is Clara, kia ora Warren, and thanks very much. It's been very interesting. I just would like to add, almost as an extension of thought to all this, that one of the things that I think would be great, if Te Arawhiti had the opportunity to do, is actually market more. Market why it exists, what it's doing, because there are a lot of people out there who, perhaps, don't even think about the fact that when the people who suffered at the behest of Allan Hubbard's white collar crime back in-- I don't know how many years ago-- there were several billion more dished out there to compensate for the people who lost out there than there are in treaty settlements.

And I remember thinking to myself, my god, how many people know that? And I think it was my husband who drew my attention to it. So I think there is still a lot of people out there who don't really appreciate why Te Arawhiti has to exist and the great work that it does. And hopefully education and schools that are teaching history, finally, and schools is going to go a long way to helping that. But maybe there's something that Te Arawhiti could be doing for itself a bit more there, too.

Warren Fraser: I appreciate the comment, as I judge carefully what I say next. In terms of our relationship with the Ministry of Justice, we're a departmental agency in association with the Ministry of Justice. So that number of the services-- back office services—in fact, I’m a Ministry of Justice employee because we take the human resources services from the Ministry.
Communications is one of those services. And I have to say, we've struggled, I think, to find the capacity to be able to tell our story. And I think talking with Claudia [Orange] earlier, that it is really important for transparency reasons, for bringing the public with us on this journey, that these kinds of presentations are made. So I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, National Library. Thank you, Tanja.

The other thing I guess I'd say is that the history of treaty settlements-- and I'm thinking about the fiscal envelope-- reading into that, part of the thinking behind the fiscal envelope was to appeal to a public that was not supportive of the treaty settlement process, to be able to say that it's only going to cost this much and we're going to finish it by this time and we can all leave it behind us.

And that change, I think, and that very public declaration, and that 2017 speech from the throne about how there's an ongoing relationship here and we want to look to the future, those kinds of things are why I wanted to highlight it. I think it's very important, yeah.