Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): E ngā mana e ngā reo e ngā iwi e rau rangatira mā tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa. [To those of authority to the voices to the tribes to the hundreds of leaders acknowledgments to each and every one of you.]Can I begin by acknowledging those we acknowledge and apologise to today: the Moriori people who will share this moment with us. Can I acknowledge that today in this Parliament we are reclaiming your rightful place in the history of New Zealand and the history of Rēkohu the Chatham Islands. Today we acknowledge the Moriori as the tangata whenua of the Chatham Islands and we apologise on behalf of the Crown for the failure to address the deeply felt and longstanding grievances of your people. We acknowledge that those failures were both actions and inactions. Acts of omission are sometimes as powerful as acts in themselves.In this bill we do several things. One of them is that we provide cultural redress; another is providing commercial redress including an $18 million settlement. But what I want to focus on in this contribution today is the apology and the historical account which this bill puts into our statute book for ever more so that every New Zealander may know the true history of the Moriori people and acknowledge the Crown's role over our past years. In doing so I want to first acknowledge the Hon Chris Finlayson who restarted the negotiation with the Moriori people as the Minister for Waitangi settlements. I want to acknowledge former Prime Minister John Key who signed an agreement in principle in 2017. And I want to acknowledge Minister Andrew Little who took that agreement in principle to the bill that we have today.When we talk about the historical account of what happened with the Moriori people I think it is important that we acknowledge the role of false histories of the stories we tell about each other. As other speakers have mentioned both the 1916 and 1946 School Journal incorrectly stated that Moriori were the original inhabitants of New Zealand before being driven to the Chatham Islands. The inference in these School Journals was that the Moriori were somehow a racially inferior people. That history was both false and hurtful and undermined the Moriori people. Its significance is such that I remember myself as a school student believing that history of the Moriori people because it had been handed down from generation to generation as the true history. It wasn't actually until I read Michael King's history of New Zealand that I realised quite how false and wrong that was. Well today in this bill we set out in writing that not only was that wrong but we put in writing the correct history of the Moriori people which is that the Moriori karāpuna were the waina-pona—the original inhabitants—of the Chatham Islands; of Rēkohu Rangihaute Hokorereoro and other islands. You arrived between 1000 and 1400 CE. You were descendants of Rongomaiwhenua. You had an egalitarian society and you outlawed violence.It's here that I want to talk about a history of honour that we also acknowledge today and we put in our statute book because what is particular and special to the Moriori people is a history of non-violence: Nunuku's Law. In 1835 when 900 Māori were sailed on British ships to the Chatham Islands the Moriori people welcomed them and fed them in accordance with custom. Now when people began to be killed and when violence began there were many Moriori people who wanted to resist but the elders Torea and Tapata urged the people to obey Nunuku's law of peace. There is a history of honour here because that is what happened here: that law of peace was honoured though many hundreds were killed and enslavement followed. I think we should acknowledge this history of honour because living in this peaceful way is something that we all across this Parliament aspire to today and that I think many New Zealanders believe in.But then we have a history of a Crown that failed the Moriori people. It's here that I want to focus particularly on what I would call acts of omission"—the failure to act. In 1842 New Zealand annexed the Chatham Islands and yet the Crown took no action to alleviate the conditions of Moriori enslavement that it was very well aware of. Letters were written to the Crown appealing for it to exercise its Treaty of Waitangi obligation to offer protection to its subjects and those letters fell on deaf ears. But the Moriori people continued and in 1862 put a petition forward asking for those protections and it was in 1863 that a resident magistrate was in fact put on the Chatham Islands.But I want to read to you from the apology that the Crown offers today because it puts it very clearly what the omission here was: "The Crown profoundly regrets that it failed for many years to take action to end Moriori enslavement and that your karāpuna continued to suffer greatly in oppressive conditions which caused many more to die including some who died of an illness known to Moriori as 'kongenge' a deep despair of the spirit." I want to acknowledge that deep despair of the spirit because what we know happened with the Moriori people was through this history of oppression and the inaction that occurred there was a loss of language and there was a loss of mana and there was a loss of authority and that was passed on through the generations. In 1870 when the Native Land Court heard the claim to the Chatham Islands it ruled that 97 percent of that land was the rightful ownership of Māori iwi precedent and not of Moriori and that was a deep deep blow to your people.So as I acknowledge that I want to positively acknowledge the perseverance shown by the Moriori people in spite of this. At the turn of the century the population of the Chatham Islands of Moriori people was only 31 people and yet here we are today signing into law an apology an acknowledgment and a package of redress that has been made possible by those ancestors and those that followed them making sure determinedly to do right by their ancestors and by their people and for future generations. That is despite extraordinary odds despite the loss of language despite oppression despite land being dispossessed. Yet the Moriori people have persevered and today we find ourselves here.I want to acknowledge also the compounding pain that took place over 100 years which was the collection of the skeletal remains of your ancestors in complete violation of tapu and of tikanga as we would express in te reo. But that that was not only done to you by others but that it was done to you by the Crown in the form of the Colonial Museum. We know that that both undermined your authority but was also deeply hurtful.So since the 1970s we have seen a determination by the Moriori people to rebuild your identity and culture. Today with this bill you are reclaiming your rightful place in the history of New Zealand. We acknowledge the Moriori. We acknowledge the Crown's failure to address the deeply felt and longstanding grievances. We acknowledge the Crown's acts of failure and its acts of omission. We offer cultural redress. We offer commercial redress. We apologise. But most importantly we put the history right and we put it in the statute book for all to read so that all New Zealand children growing up in this country won't read the School Journal version but will read the real version and will know of the perseverance and determination of the Moriori people. Kia ora."