networkn: Well they calculated they spend 68 Million to 72 Million each day on education and healthcare and Cullen (Not that I trust his financial information at ALL, I actually consider him a complete scumbag), said that settlements would cost between 2-3 months, so I took x (I used 100 approx but realize now it was actually 80) days and multiplied it by 68 million.
Those comments by Cullen are off the cuff remarks and long after he retired. You would think a former finance minister and former minister for treaty negotiations would be fairly accurate about that even so. Your revised figure puts that about $5.5 billion. [Edit: I see you have revised that down again to around $3 billion]
Even so it is unclear what time period he is referring to. If it is since 1975 when the Waitangi Tribunal was established it is still a very low figure averaged over that period.
As I understand it - until 1985 the Tribunal could not hear any claim for anything that happened before 1975 and took a few years to issue any judgements after 1985 because of the workload. Still it is not clear to me what was settled between 85 and 92 if anything.
The $1 billion figure since 1992 is easy to find in several places.