Sharples Pita: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSharples Pita: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 20 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18127. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES (Māori Party—TāmakiMakaurau): It gives me great pleasure to take a call on this very important Budget and to celebrate some of the very significant gains that we have negotiated for the benefit ofwhānauhapū and iwi. Of course we believe that what is good for Māori is also good for this nation. Last Friday’sGisborne Herald headlines praised the 2014 annual accounts as providing all the evidence for the Māori Party “to position itself for another three years in Parliament as the roadrunner in stealth mode.” I think that everyone here knows that the roadrunner is the Warner Bros character that kept dodging the coyote no matter what the coyote threw in front of him as he was running away. So in many ways that is a good metaphor because we have had to keep to the straight and not go left or right too much as we work towards getting some benefits for Māori. Last Thursday’s Budget was ample proof that that race the roadrunner race was worth it.We have concentrated on building resilientwhānau. We are really proud that as a result of our involvement on the various committees including the poverty committee $90 million is to be invested over 4 years to provide free doctors visits and medicine for children aged under 13. That is huge for us. A healthy child is a healthywhānau. If we can make it easier for health care to be accessible and affordable then we are talking about real things that do make a difference on the ground.We have always been passionate about fighting for a living wage. Although we did not succeed in that we nevertheless got some key determinants for well-being. Big things include boosting the paid parental leave scheme by 4 weeks and most important of all focusing on the eligibility. The eligibility was a big thing for Māori and Pasifika women because they are often overrepresented in the jobs or employment arrangements that tend to render them ineligible for paid parental leave. So we are really pleased that this loophole is being looked at.We are also proud of the boost to increase the parental tax credit to $220 a week and to increase the entitlement to up to 10 weeks. Again it is another strong incentive to support low-income parents in the most important role of their lives which is being fabulous parents. Of course there was $33 million allocated to help vulnerable children and particularly to fight the increased incidence of rheumatic fever.But I want to talk about one thing that I am really happy about and that is an education programme that was supported called Reading Together. Four years ago we hunted for a programme that would help the literacy of young Māori and Pacific Islanders who were behind in their reading in the early years or first years of primary school. We discovered the Reading Together programme that was here and there in some schools and found it to be really good in terms of involving the parents to come to school learn how to teach their children to read—and in some cases learn to read—work with other parents and so on. It just blossomed. So we had it set up in all decile 1 2 and 3 schools for 3 years. With this Budget we have now extended that programme into decile 4 and 5 schools. That is a big one for us because if you can get that readingage up then the children can go right through the system parallel with other children and not always lag behind.Another thing was pointed out by theTuia Group adviserTokoKāpea. He graded the Budget eight out of 10 for Māori. There really were some things in there for Māori and we are really pleased. They included support for Māori radio stations. This is really important for Māori and for us. The iwi Māori radio stations carry Te Reo Māori meōna tikanga and what is happening amongst the community so that Māori can be in touch with each other. So it is very much part of families in Māori houses and so on. So $13.7 million was funded by TeMāngaiPāho to service the running costs of 21 Māori radio stations and also create the possibility of looking to establish new radio stations. We are really pleased about that.On the other side I have had the good fortune to lead five trips to Asia on Māori trade and economics. We have watched as our people have grown in terms of negotiating producing the product producing the quantity to go through and so on. I am really pleased that $8 million has been provided for a Māori innovation and investment readiness fund to go alongside the $6 million for Māori tourism. The Māori tourism unit has been really supportive of Māori going overseas and mixing and meeting with Ministers in different Asian countries establishing relationships and then ultimately trading and so on.I think a really key win for us was to resurrect thepūtea or the money for a centre of research excellence. We heard thatNgāPae o teMāramatanga—the Māori research unit—had not been funded again and was finally going to disappear.NgāPae o teMāramatanga was so important as a research centre—Hon Maryan Street: It certainly was.Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES: It was was it not? It was a great thing to have. Way back in my day there were only five of us who had a PhD and now there are 500 Māori with PhDs. A lot of them had the research support fromNgāPae o teMāramatanga. So after support came in from the community a hundred letters came from overseas urging the Government to reconsider the funding and we joined in with thattono and ended up with a fund of $5 million a year to establish a new research centre. So it is kind of good having a new one.Hon Maryan Street: What was wrong with the old one?Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES: It was partly because Māori were looking at it as a way of perhaps adapting it better to suit what they had. We worked through this withNgāPae o teMāramatanga and it is keen too that there should be a brand new one.Hon Maryan Street: Competing for the same money.Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES: Well then they are not competing against each other you see. The second area of development was moving the nation. This is a possibility of sports getting somepūtea so that we can sponsor Māori sportspeople and Māori sports such as ki-o-rahi and wakaama and the other sports that they are very active in like netball and sevens and things like that so all that is good.It has been a really good Budget for us. Whānau Ora again succeeds with $16 million to help gettingkaiārahi appointed so that they can take the programme out amongst the community. So just to wind up I was impressed by the analysis by KPMG partner AdrianWimmers who said that regardless of the election outcome the Māori Party’s Whānau Ora approach is now an accepted part of how the Government interfaces with iwi. That is one of the reasons why we are here—to bring other options to whoever is in Government based on Māori tikanga and culture and values so that it can be part of the delivery of services from this Government or any Government and so on. AdrianWimmers said: “What I see in this Budget is a sea of change in the Government’s thinking and a move towards a more devolved set of arrangements asiwi’s capability to contract to deliver and manage social outcome provision increases.” To me that is what it is all about. Thank you for the chance to have a short brief on this. Thank you.