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Released in September 2012, the Port Nicholson Block Urgency Report is the outcome of an urgent inquiry into Crown actions during and after negotiations to settle the historical claims of Taranaki Whānui ki te Upoko o te Ika (Taranaki Whānui) in the Port Nicholson block.

Claim 2235 was lodged in December 2009 by the trustees of the Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust (PNBST), the post-settlement governance entity of Taranaki Whānui. In the course of negotiations, Taranaki Whānui agreed to release the Wellington Central Police Station from their proposed settlement package. This enabled the Crown to offer the police station to Ngāti Toa Rangatira (Ngāti Toa) as commercial redress. The claimants alleged that, in return for the release of the police station, the Crown ‘committed itself to recognise and uphold the mana whenua of Taranaki Whanui over the Port Nicholson Block by not offering any other property within the Block to Ngati Toa or any other iwi as commercial or cultural redress’.

The claimants further alleged that, in offering Ngāti Toa a number of items of commercial and cultural redress in the Port Nicholson block, the Crown had broken the undertakings that it gave to Taranaki Whānui to secure the release of the police station. They argued that this constituted a breach of Treaty principles that would become irreversible once the deed of settlement between the Crown and Ngāti Toa was finalised and redress enacted.

The Tribunal constituted to hear the claim comprised Judge Stephen Clark (presiding), the Honourable Sir Douglas Lorimer Kidd, Basil Morrison, and Sir Tamati Reedy. A hearing was held in June 2012 at the Tribunal’s offices in Wellington.

The Tribunal did not uphold the claim of Taranaki Whānui. However, it did find that the Crown, in exchange for the release of the Wellington Central Police Station, gave Taranaki Whānui undertakings not to offer Ngāti Toa any cultural redress and no further commercial redress within the Wellington CBD.

The Tribunal found that the Crown broke those undertakings. The Crown had offered Ngāti Toa a plaque at Parliament as cultural redress and a right of first refusal (RFR) over Crown properties and New Zealand Transport Agency administered properties in Wellington City, potentially including the Wellington CBD, as commercial redress. In so acting, the Crown breached the principles of the Treaty by failing to actively protect the interests of, and to act reasonably and with the utmost good faith towards, Taranaki Whānui.

In relation to the offer of cultural redress, the Tribunal stopped short of making a recommendation since Taranaki Whānui knew before signing their deed of settlement that there was an offer of cultural redress in the Wellington CBD to Ngāti Toa. The offer of a plaque at Parliament had also been withdrawn.

In relation to the offer of commercial redress, the Tribunal made a series of recommendations to the Crown to rectify the situation it had created, namely:

• That it review the offer of RFRs to Ngāti Toa over core Crown properties and New Zealand Transport Agency administered properties in Wellington City.
• That, if necessary, it amend the offer of RFRs to Ngāti Toa, to ensure that no commercial properties were made available via the RFR mechanism to Ngāti Toa within the Wellington CBD. The Tribunal was not concerned about properties located outside the CBD.
• If, as a result of implementing the above two recommendations, the commercial redress package on offer to Ngāti Toa was in any way diminished, the Crown should identify and offer alternative substitute commercial redress for Ngāti Toa.

The Tribunal also pointed to flaws in the Crown’s negotiation processes of the time, including the use of the ‘silo’ approach (whereby communication between different teams of Crown negotiators was minimal) and a lack of clarity in the language that Crown officials used. In the Tribunal’s view, both led to confusion and potentially created new grievances in the Port Nicholson block.