Move to talks on biggest Treaty deal with Ngapuhi

The Government has signed an agreement to start formal negotiations with Ngapuhi over what is likely to be the nation's biggest Treaty settlement.

But it is doing so before a Waitangi Tribunal report on a challenge to the mandate of Tuhoronuku Independent Mandated Authority from Ngati Hine-affiliated group Kotahitanga.

A start on the settlement, likely to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, has been held up by division over who the Crown should be negotiating with.

However, Northland MP Winston Peters said the Government was now "frog-marching" a settlement and it would not work.

Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson said he was confident the decision to recognise the mandate was correct.

"I look forward to the tribunal's report and will carefully consider its views, but in the meantime there is important work to be done."

Mr Finlayson said the north was one of the most economically deprived regions in New Zealand. "We know that more Ngapuhi live outside their rohe than within it because of the lack of opportunity there. We also know that Ngapuhi have already waited too long for redress."

Mr Peters said the north had been neglected for many decades and it could not be "fixed up" with a Treaty settlement limited to a group of beneficiaries of the settlement.

"Total central government neglect is what's holding the north back and is what's holding Gisborne back and Whanganui and every other province," he said.

Mr Peters, himself from the northern tribe of Ngati Wai, said he would be willing to help resolve the differences from the claimant groups and he still believed it could be resolved.

"I made it clear to Mr Finlayson that if he writes to me, I would like to play a positive role, but I'm not going to poke my nose in in circumstances and in a climate not of my making without a request to do so."

Mr Finlayson said he was making the announcement on the 20th anniversary of the signing of Tainui's Treaty settlement with the Crown - the first settlement.

"Tainui provides an excellent example of just what an iwi can achieve for its people post-settlement," he said.

But whatever recommendations the tribunal makes on the matter, they won't be binding.