Tirikatene Rino: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 29 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:410. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga):Ā tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Tēnā koutou e ngā mema huri rauna i tēnei Whare. Tēnā koutou i tēnei Pāremata e rima tekau mā tahi o Aotearoa Niu Tīreni. Tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[Greetings to you Mr Speaker and to you members collectively throughout this House. Greetings to you in this 51stParliament of New Zealand. Acknowledgments and accolades to you and to us all collectively.]It is a pleasure. This is my first opportunity to speak in this 51st Parliament and as is the tradition I wish to congratulate all the officers of Parliament—the Rt Hon David Carter Speaker; the Hon Chester Borrows Deputy Speaker; and Lindsay Tisch Assistant Speaker. I do want to give special acknowledgment to you Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard. We cover the same territory albeit yours is the northern portion of my vast electorate of Te Tai Tonga.There is a saying in Māoridom that this august House is called “Te Ana Raiona”—“The Den of Lions”. I guess there are a lot of lions and lionesses from all different parties in this House and some have been here for some time while others are new. We welcome them all. Mr Assistant Speaker you have been elevated as has been mentioned previously to gamekeeper and I look forward to working under you as we settle down to the business of this 51st Parliament.I am delighted to be here representing the largest electorate in the country. It is larger than Mr Damien O’Connor’s although his is spectacular and we do cover the same patch—West Coast - Tasman—and there are 20 other electorates that comprise Te Tai Tonga. I do want to acknowledge the wonderful whānau whanaunga right throughout the South Island Te Wai Pounamu from Te Tau Ihu o Te Waka right the way through ngā pae maunga o Te Wai Pounamu all the way down to Murihiku—the entirety of Te-Waka-a-Māui. It also includes the outlying islands all the way out to the Chatham Islands and here in Te Upoko o Te Ika Te Whanga-nui-a-Tara. I acknowledge them all for their endorsement. It is a vast electorate but it is one that I am very very proud to represent and I would like to acknowledge all of the Labour whānau who have supported me and brought me back here with a double majority and mandate to represent the people of Te Tai Tonga.I am very proud to stand in this House yet again and I do want to acknowledge my new colleagues my fellow MPs in Labour in particular Jenny Salesa Peeni Henare and Adrian Rurawhe—our three wonderful wonderful new additions to our Labour team. I acknowledge as well returning members and indeed all of the new members in this House. There are some faces that obviously have not returned. I gaze over to that seat next to the Ayes lobby and I vividly remember the barrages from the Hon Tau Henare. We may have lost one son of the north but we have gained many more. We have gained Peeni Henare from Ngāti Hine up in the north and Te Tai Tokerau. We have gained Kelvin Davis back in Te Tai Tokerau. He did what was perceived to be the impossible and knocked off Hone Harawira up there in Te Tai Tokerau. Those are great achievements.I do welcome back Pita Paraone from the north. I do have an affinity to the north because although I represent the south on my mother’s side my whakapapa is to Ngāti Hine in the north. I guess we are in a way almost overrepresented through membership in the House. I do welcome to the House the new Shane Mr Reti from the north who gave a splendid maiden statement today. As we welcome the new Shane to the House I do recall some very sage advice that I received from the former Shane of Te Tai Tokerau Mr Shane Jones. It was—and this is sage advice to all new members—“Do as I say not as I do.” I believe that if we follow that for all new members they should do very well—very well—in their careers in this House. This is a den of lions. There are wild powerful and ferocious moments that we have.But as we settle down to business—the people of New Zealand have spoken. They have given a mandate to the National Government and we on this side of the House accept that. We are loyal members of Her Majesty’s Opposition and our role is to hold this Government to account—to challenge and to probe and to make sure that we stand up for our constituency that has put us here and to make sure that New Zealand gets on the right path.We saw the spectacle with the Māori Party. I do want to refer to that party because it was an unedifying spectacle yet again. For three successive elections the people have spoken and the Māori Party members have run up to the ninth floor of the Beehive. They cannot wait to give supply and confidence to the National Government and jump in their chauffeur-driven limousines. That is a disgrace to Māoridom because if you look at the results in the Māori electorate seats that was one silver lining of the Labour Party’s results this past election. Ko ngā turu Māori te mana o Reipa—six of the seven Māori seats have returned to Labour. That is a very strong message to the Māori Party that we have their number. The people have spoken and they have wholeheartedly endorsed Labour in the Māori seats. So it is very sad. It was a very sad spectacle to see them scurrying up to do their supply and confidence deals. We know that it is not going to be benefiting Māori over this term.Already in this first week in the House we have seen wholesale attacks and onslaughts yet again by this Government on workers’ rights. Today we have seen shameful reports on poverty levels in this country not improving in over 6 years of this Government. All the while I do recall from Ms Fox’s maiden statement that she is committed to this Government. By that party’s commitment to this Government it is committing to the erosion of workers’ rights and all those other atrocious and odious policies that this National Government is inflicting on Māori. It is definitely not raising the aspirations and the well-being of Māori. What will be their answer to that? What will be their answer to the wholesale sell-off of thousands and billions of dollars of State housing? What is their answer? It is Whānau Ora. What is the Māori Party’s answer to the growing poverty in this country? It is some half-baked policy around Te Reo which is again a disgrace. It is a disgrace that this Māori Party has been holding up this National Government.I do want to acknowledge my whanaunga on my southern side Tutehounuku—Nuk—Korako a member for National. Nuk mentioned in his maiden statement that he wants more “brown blue”. He wants to grow the “brown blue” vote. He need not look too far because he needs look only to the Māori Party. That is the “brown blue” of the National Party. We know that brown and red go together. Our Māori people have spoken. They know where their home is. In fact they are ahead of the game. They are ahead of the game because our Māori and Pasifika people have voted very strongly for Labour. They are ahead of the game. It is an opportunity for us to reconnect with our wider constituency. We will be back because we need to have a change of Government.I hope that our fellow colleagues on the other side and Auckland’s new golden boy over there from Epsom make the most of this opportunity. Rest assured batten down the hatches because we will be coming after you with everything that we have got. We want to be challenging you every step of the way so pleasantries aside we are coming. Kia ora tātou. Kia ora tātou katoa.