Tirikatene Rino: Māori Language (Te Reo Māori) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Māori Language (Te Reo Māori) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19542. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga):Ā tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e ngā rangatira i roto i tēnei Whare. E hari ana ahau ki te tū ki te kōrero mō tēnei pire. Mihi atu ki a koe e te Minita e te rangatira me ō mahi awhi mō tātou te iwi Māori. Huri rauna i Te Whare tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[Thank you Mr Speaker and greetings to esteemed ones in this House. I am pleased to rise and address this bill. A tribute to you Minister esteemed one in respect of your supportive actions for us the Māori people. Acknowledgments to you collectively throughout the House and to us all.]I too am joining our colleagues on this side in the Labour Party to offer our support for this Māori Language (Te Reo Māori) bill at its first reading. But in saying that we do have many concerns and reservations around certain aspects of the bill. First and foremost I do want to commend the Minister for his mahi in supporting and promoting this bill and the intent behind the bill. Affirming Māori as the kaitiaki of Te Reo Māori is a great achievement. I believe the intent is well made. I believe though that the execution within this bill fails to meet that goal that lofty aspiration.I am one of those Māori—and there are quite a few of us—who did not grow up with the reo in our home. I was around it a lot particularly in church and at other ceremonial occasions but I was of that generation that just missed out before the kōhanga reo took off. Various attempts have been made and I am one of those ones who can sort of get by and get a basic conversation going and hold my own in certain settings but you know I really want to take it upon myself to improve the quality of my reo and I definitely will be working on that. So I get a real joy when I am at my children’s sports games—netball games basketball—and I see the kura kaupapa teams that are playing and the parents who are supporting them. When you see these little tamariki all speaking the reo and cheering themselves along it is really heart-warming and I like to go over and get beside them and have a little bit of a kōrero myself. I think that that is what we want to see.I do acknowledge my colleague Kelvin Davis and his dreams and aspirations. We all share those dreams and aspirations that te reo can be a transactional language that can be just used naturally in or interchanges in everyday life in Aotearoa. We do want to achieve those lofty goals and this bill is a step in that direction. I would like to see though some improvements which can be made.As with any conversation there are two parties and the best way I believe to really up your reo is to converse with somebody in Te Reo. Likewise with this bill there are two parties. There are Māori and the Crown and that is the basis of the foundation of our country—Te Tiriti o Waitangi. So there are two parties to the transactions—two parties to a conversation.My concern regarding this bill is that the Crown is abrogating its responsibilities to protect and uphold the reo. That duty which is a legal and a Treaty responsibility was hard fought for by those great rangatira Huirangi Waikerepuru and the like—those great kaumātua who fought those cases to get the reo recognised. But what we have through this bill is that the Crown is basically reducing its commitment to the reo under the guise of saying: “But we are installing Māori as a kaitiaki.” I will give an example. It is great to say that the reo is a taonga—yes it is—but the Crown needs to put in black and white its commitment and its responsibilities to Te Reo and that should be spelt out within this bill.The bill talks about this Act binding the Crown which is the law but then what does it bind the Crown to? It does not bind the Crown to much. If we just look at some of the opening provisions in the bill where it talks about the principles those principles that will apply to Government departments are meaningless in effect because it just says “as far as practicable”—when it suits or when they are able to do it. There are no firm hard and fast responsibilities that the Crown is owning up to in its role as the Treaty partner to protect and promote Te Reo Māori. So that is a major concern that I have about this bill and I definitely believe that the Crown’s responsibilities need to be clearly articulated as to what it will do.It is all very well and good to create a new governance body for Māori but if it is not backed up and if all the Crown is becoming is a contracting partner through Te Puni Kōkiri to Te Mātāwai bodies and the entities that will sit underneath them then that really is a huge reduction in what the Crown’s responsibilities are.Let us remember that the renaissance in Te Reo Māori and the recognition through the 1987 Act are really only recent enactments. I am talking about the past 30 years but we are talking about a Crown-Māori relationship that goes back for over 170 years. For a long period of that time the Crown showed no commitment. In fact for over 100 years it was not really too fussed about what happened to the reo. So I believe that the Crown needs to be more specific in terms of what its responsibilities to Te Reo will be.Briefly I just want to go on to some other issues that I have. Although there is this 12-member body of Te Mātāwai seven of whom will be drawn from all the iwi around the country—and that seems to be the model these days; they have it in fisheries and in other settings; we have these big electoral colleges—I do query how effective those bodies are. They are there to appoint a person but there is really nothing spelt out in the bill in terms of the quality or the mixture or the gender balance or the skills and experience that will be the outcome of all of these separate elections that will form this Te Mātāwai body. So it is all well and good to put representatives of 11 14 or 15 iwi into one room and get them to decide on one person but how will that translate into a really effective strong and highly skilled governance body which is what we really need? We have seen examples of poor governance. I need only refer to Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust and Te Pātaka Ōhanga its subsidiary and the issues around there. The fact is too that we remember that the Minister of Education tried to sort of say: “Oh there’s no responsibility because it’s a contracted party. We can’t really look behind there.”Those are the sorts of issues that you will get when you create these bodies that have no clear accountabilities but are ultimately funded through the public purse. So I think greater thought needs to be given in terms of making sure we get the best most highly qualified and experienced individuals that will come up through these election processes and ultimately be the governance body on Te Mātāwai.There are many regional examples of grassroots iwi initiatives that have produced outstanding results. I need only to look to my relations up in Taranaki and Te Reo o Taranaki and what they have done up there to really strengthen their reo and hold on to their mita. I think those sorts of examples need to be embodied into Te Mātāwai and those revitalisation—