Tuiono TeanauTEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'd just like to thank my colleague Angela Roberts for sharing her whakaaro and this hard work that the select committee did on this bill. They could see that the intentions on this bill were really really strong but I was just reminded of a whakataukī which goes: Mate atu he tētē kura ara mai rā he tētē kura."—when one fern frond perishes another rises to take its place. So I was buoyed to hear that there will be a national languages strategy policy coming from that corner of the House. So all of the submissions that were made during the select committee process will hopefully—should right?—feed into what this language strategy should look like. I think that's something that we should be looking forward to.This Education (Strengthening Second Language Learning in Primary and Intermediate Schools) Amendment Bill we supported to the select committee because we felt that these ideas needed to be talked about they needed to be teased out. But in order to actually carry the intentions from one place to another the waka needs to be waterproof. The waka needs to be able to float on the water to actually get from one part of the river to the other. I think the select committee were correct in terms of the majority recommendations in the report that this waka unfortunately had some holes in it. So that national languages policy strategy would be really great once it gets up and going to sort of kick that around the select committee room around the halls here as well to see where that will go.One of the major holes was actually being able to properly acknowledge the place of te reo Māori—being able to properly acknowledge the place of te reo Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand. We've got the Māori Language Act. I was fortunate to just come from the theatrette where Rāwiri Paratene is doing a performance in there and in that theatre is actually a lot of these Māori language advocates. A lot of these Māori language advocates who came to the steps of Parliament to lay down the take and lay down the wero about making sure that we recognise the indigenous language of Aotearoa New Zealand te reo Māori. Because the thing about te reo Māori is that it was my parents—my mother was in the generation that when she was at school they'd just get whacked. They'd just get whacked for speaking te reo Māori. Because on the balance colonisation was not good for te reo Māori. On the balance colonisation was not good for indigenous peoples at all. On the balance it is really important that when we talk about second language acquisition and language acquisition as well that we properly place all of that within the context of the indigenous languages of the place that we're in Aotearoa New Zealand. So for me having a list of priority languages is one thing but you also must also ground that within the official languages of the country of the whenua so that's te reo Māori that's sign language and of course the language that we generally speak in this House English.There are a couple of other things. I'm going to keep going on about the national languages strategies because I know that a lot of people working trying to support the heritage languages of our Pasifika languages would like to see some of that support going to some of our early childhood education (ECE) units our Pasifika ECE learning places. Just to reflect on the state of the Pasifika Realm languages so I'm talking about Cook Islands Māori we're talking about a Vagahau Niue I'm talking about Tokelauan and then also the significant numbers of people from Samoa and Tonga as well and the long history that Aotearoa has with between Samoa and Tonga and also around the Pacific Realm as well.Because it's more than just the language. Language is also about identity as well. It's about helping young people and children to ground themselves in terms of their cultural identity what that means for them in their communities what that means in terms of the connection that they build with their communities and also within other communities as well. That helps with a whole lot of things. That helps with child wellbeing helps with whānau wellbeing but also helps with community wellbeing as well. So when the national languages policy comes out I would like to see a really strong emphasis on making sure that those things are there for our Pasifika languages our Pacific Realm languages and also stepping out for Samoan and Tongan as well.I think there also needs to be the other focus on the maintenance of heritage languages as well. Because when people come here they come here with their languages. So it's not like some nice extra thing where they roll in to school and so on and so forth and they pick it off a shelf and go "You know what that's nice." Actually for a lot of our migrant kids these are the languages that helps to keep them grounded within their communities as well. So having that included into a national language policy is really important.Probably my final reflection is just for us to be aware of the linguistic context that we are here in New Zealand. New Zealand is a very monolingual country and I don't think monolingual people really realise how different that is compared to a lot of the other places around the world. You go to Europe and you'll listen to five languages on the street. I've got heaps of friends that can speak multiple languages. You go to Asia and Africa and it's the same thing as well. So being fixated just on secondary languages when actually what we could be focusing on is tertiary languages and multilingualism as well. Because what we know is once you've learnt your second language then the third one becomes a lot easier because you can code switch between those first two languages and on to the other languages as well.So just to end the intentions of this bill continue and I look forward to working constructively across the House to make sure that those intentions grow fruitful. Nō reira tēnā koutou katoa."