How a British lawyer became a key player in the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process

Friday, 3 August 2018

Wellington lawyer Bob Roche says it's a privilege to be involved in the 'noble' Treaty settlement process.

Whe Bob Roche arrived in New Zealand in 1991, he'd never heard of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Three decades later he's helped draft some of the country's most significant settlements and in many ways, lives and breathes the Treaty.

It hasn't been bad for his back pocket either - his Wellington-based firm, Greenwood Roche, has received some of the largest sums paid to private law firms for settlement work - $5.3m since 2006-07.

'Taxpayers can be reassured that the Government goes through a pretty rigorous procurement process. We have an agreed hourly rate that we charge all our Government clients,' Roche says.

* The amount paid to Treaty negotiators and lawyers continues to climb

* Officials advised the Government to keep quiet about large Treaty payments, unless asked**

Roche studied at Cambridge University and worked in commercial property law in London before emigrating to New Zealand in his 20s, joining Chapman Tripp.

His first taste of Treaty matters came in 1994 when Chapman Tripp was called on to help with Waikato-Tainui negotiations.

Bob Roche, right, with partners David Chisnall, left and John Greenwood in 2005 when they set up their property law firm.

'Crown Law soon realised that what they were actually getting into was complex property deals - transferring land under the University of Waikato, Huntly power station, vast tracts of Ag Research - they realised this has to go to a commercial firm.'

The firm became trusted advisors and was called on for the next big settlement, Ngai Tahu, where Roche took the lead on the commercial property aspect.

In 2005, he set up his own firm 'and the work came with me'. Roche says Treaty work takes up about half his time and he has a team of about five.

'It's become a very large part of my life,' he says.

'As soon as I got exposed to Treaty issues it became a real interest in being involved in something that was right at the forefront of New Zealand politics and a really noble and interesting thing to be doing.

'It becomes all-consuming because you become one of the few experts and you've got to have an interest and a passion for it and the two sort of combine and you get a momentum behind it.'

From a legal perspective, Roche says, Treaty work involves a different way of thinking.

'You're not actually in an adversarial role, you are in a political arena where both parties in a way are aiming towards a shared solution.

'It's a combination of legal drafting, but also thinking of the political angle.'

One of the biggest challenges, he's found, is listening to and understanding an iwi's grievances and animosity towards Crown officials 'given what they have had to put up with for years,' and then moving towards a shared solution.

The work can be exhausting and emotional, the hours long.

'It can be months and months of working 10 to 12 hours a day and at weekends.

'One of the longest periods of uninterrupted work was just before we signed up the Waikato-Tainui river settlement … in a lock-in at Hopuhopu where we worked one day, one night, another day and well into the next night before the documents were ready for signing.'

Roche has been involved in many different settlements, including the Tamaki Makaurau collective redress, and there have been some groundbreaking legal moves, such as making iwi guardians of public land, giving iwi rights of first refusal on Crown land sales and vesting Auckland's volcanic cones into a collective entity.

He feels privileged to have been involved in a process that is unique in the world.

'Turning up at the settlement signing ceremonies and seeing the conflicting [emotions] - there's joy on both sides that settlement has been reached, but there's also this great sense of responsibility the current generation of the iwi has.

'It's being involved in an important part of this country's makeup.'