Parata Hekia: Ngati Porou Claims Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
Parata Hekia: Ngati Porou Claims Settlement Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:678;Page:1544] 
Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Tena koe e te Mana Whakahaere otira tena tatou katoa e whakawhaiti nei. Ko Hikurangi te maunga ko Waiapu te awa ko Ngati Porou te iwi tena tatou tena tatou tena tatou katoa. 
[ 
Greetings to you Mr Speaker and indeed to all of us packed together here. Hikurangi is the mountain Waiapu is the river and Ngati Porou are the people so salutations acknowledgments and greetings to us all. 
] 
Can I say how proud I am to be standing in the House today in your company and in the company of all our tupuna whose presence I feel around us today. I am pleased that we were able to begin this final reading of the Ngati Porou Claims Settlement Bill with our Minister of Maori Affairs and as I rushed in from the airport listening to the speeches and the names on the roll-call of some of the Ngati Porou people who have been attendant upon this claim I was concerned that I would get here in time and be able to participate in the final passage of this bill. Katahi nei au ka hoki mai i Tuwharetoa me nga mihi a Ta Tumu me te whanau o Tuwharetoa ki a tatou mo tenei ra whakahirahira. 
[ 
I have just returned from Tuwharetoa with salutations from Sir Tumu and the Tuwharetoa family on this momentous day. 
] 
I would also like to join with the previous speakers in the House from all parties for the sentiments they have expressed for the ideas that they have canvassed for the acknowledgments that they have paid to Ngati Porou and for the recognition of the particular and unique and distinctive contribution that Ngati Porou has made to our nation of Aotearoa New Zealand. We indeed do come from a tribe with particular characteristics that are sometimes misunderstood by the rest of the world and that strengthen all of us no matter what pathway we walk in our lives and no matter what place we occupy at different stages of our lives. 
He tu whakaiti tenei ki mua i a koutou he tu whakahihi hoki na te mea he nui nga mahi kua mahia e koutou nga kanohi o ratou kua mene atu ki te po. Kei te mohio tatou ehara i te mea ko koutou anake e waha nei i tenei kaupapa engari ko nga whanau ko nga tangata ko nga kuia ko nga tipuna kua mene atu ki te po; kei konei tonu ratou a kei waenganui i a tatou. 
[ 
I rise in humility before you and proudly as well because much work has been done by you collectively as representatives of those who have gathered in the world of death. We are conscious that it is not just you alone who bear this matter but families people elderly men and womenfolk and ancestors who have assembled in the world of the dead; they are still here of course among you. 
] 
This has been a long journey. It has been a long journey and at different times different people have carried the responsibility of keeping the process going of keeping the momentum up. It has cost a lot of energy and emotion and time for all of you who have been involved with it. I want to acknowledge all of you who have at different times carried this kaupapa because it has relied not on one person but on everyone at different stages.  
Although it has been in the context of a Treaty settlement where injustices and breaches of relationships and trust have characterised this process it has nevertheless allowed Ngati Porou to retell our stories to ourselves to remind ourselves of the narratives that make us who we are to remind us of the people from whom we are descended and to remind us of the responsibility that we have to the future. So as other speakers have remarked this is indeed the end of a particular chapter but it is a chapter amongst many chapters yet to unfold in the Ngati Porou story not only of who we are as a people but of the continuing contribution that we can and must continue to make to our Aotearoa New Zealand.  
We all of us engaged in this process are nation builders. All iwi across the country have a particular and distinct contribution to make to who we are as a nation and I am mindful that there have been four other settlements passed in this House today. I think that in going forward the particular things that I am interested in are what we do with this settlement how we build the strength of Ngati Porou for the future how we continue to invest in the cultural richness of who Ngati Porou are and how we ensure that the dialectal richness of our language is imbued in our children and that we do not rely only on the education system to support that. It is not the education system’s language and it is not the Government’s language.  
If we want te reo o Ngati Porou to be transmitted and transformed and to be part of the language of our children and of our mokopuna then we have to speak it. It is not the Government that comes to our christenings or our twenty-firsts or our weddings or our tangihanga or our hura kohatu. It is us. It is us who stand on the sidelines and cheer on Ngati Porou East Coast rugby to ever-greater victory. It is us who speak to ourselves about ourselves in our most modest way! It is important that we are able to do that with the full range of the beautiful vocabulary that is part and parcel of who we are as Ngati Porou.  
So I would hope that we are going to invest our settlement in the growth of that cultural capital as well because it is through using our language that we carry the full beauty and breadth and depth of the stories of who we are. I would hope that we are going to invest our capital in the growth of our social well-being. Yes that does include employment. I believe as I have said that we do not actually have an unemployment problem; we have a skills-deficit problem.  
Ngati Porou through its his and her story has demonstrated its capacity to invest in education to understand the importance of developing the most potent the most powerful the most transformational resource we will ever have and that is the one between our two ears. It is how we think about ourselves it is how we process the world around us and it is how we take the knowledge from the past and create new knowledge in order to continue the unfolding story of who we are as Ngati Porou and how we contribute that back to Aotearoa New Zealand.  
 So I would hope—and I do not think it is coincidental that I have the honour to stand before you today as our Minister of Education—that we in Ngati Porou will take the opportunity to really invest in growing the educational achievement of Ngati Porou children wherever they are kei te kainga kei te whenua. It is important that our babies and toddlers go to early childhood education whether it is playcentre kindergarten puna reo or kohanga reo. The fact is that it is important that they go that they engage in the learning process they take advantage of Te Whariki—the architects of which are in the gallery today—and that they grow and become competent and go on to primary school.  
It is important that they are then received by teachers who care about their learning who want to see them progress and who understand that it is as much about language identity and culture as it is about academic achievement. It is important that they then transfer on into secondary school and achieve National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2. They will then have a meaningful qualification that allows them to have a self-determining life. It would be helpful if you could contribute to our target of 85 percent of all 18-year-olds achieving NCEA Level 2 by 2016. Of course it would be great if we could have a competition between iwi as to how many more Maori children we could have successful in our education system because then they will be self-directing and self-determining in terms of their life choices and their life chances.  
I would hope that with our settlement as others have said we invest in the physical assets that are the basis of our rohe that we grow that with the science and innovation that others have mentioned here and that we take advantage of the technological opportunities that ultra-fast broadband and the internet give us. I hope that we do all of that with the intelligence and the strategic outlook that others in this House have mentioned tonight and that we grow the social economic and cultural capital of Ngati Porou not just for Ngati Porou but for the ongoing contribution that has been part and parcel of the way Ngati Porou have participated in the growth of our nation. 
 As others have said when I come to the House every day and I pass that bust of Sir Apirana Ngata I feel motivated and inspired and I never feel alone ever in this place. The weight of expectation of all of you in the gallery and all whom you represent and reflect from home and from other parts of the country inspires all of us here—my brother Parekura who is obviously focused on what I am saying—in the House and we are motivated and committed to making a difference. Whether here on this marae or on our marae in Ngati Porou all of us are responsible for raising the quality of citizenship for not only paying the price of citizenship of which Sir Apirana Ngata spoke but for also receiving the gifts of citizenship that are the reciprocal obligation between the Crown and iwi in the honouring of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the compact between ourselves.  
So I am proud and humbled to be a participant in this chapter of the development of Ngati Porou and of our country. In so doing I would like to acknowledge the Ministers who have made it possible: my colleague the Hon Christopher Finlayson; previous Ministers of Treaty settlements; Dr Michael Cullen; and those Ministers back before them some of whom have been mentioned in the House today; and indeed everyone who has had a hand in this officials and negotiators and all of you who have been responsible for bringing to fruition this settlement today. I acknowledge you I thank you and I wish you well in turning this chapter into yet a greater saga of development by Ngati Porou for Ngati Porou and for Aotearoa New Zealand. Tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa. Kia ora. 
Bill read a third time. 
Waiata; karakia 
Waiata; karakia