Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. Can I begin by acknowledging those who have come from Whakatōhea today to be here for this first reading. Your presence here shows great honour for this House. Might I also say that I don't have sufficient command of te reo Māori to say anything in that beautiful language that might be in any way coherent so I apologise for that; it's something that I need to work a little bit more on.I might as a third point just let you know that while I've been in this House for a long time and I think there is only one Treaty settlement that I haven't been in the Parliament for there has never been a time when my party has seen the monetary side of the settlements or the cultural side of the settlements as being in any way a gift to those who have generously chosen to accept the settlement; they are simply expressions of a desire to recognise the wrongs of the past and to set forward on a better journey in the future. I want to acknowledge the generosity of Whakatōhea in getting to this point today. I know that there are perhaps some who don't agree with it but that's going to be the way life tends to be. I think having known some of the early leaders working on this claim their intentions will ultimately come through and I'm sure there will be a very bright future as a result of this acceptance and the rest of the country can be I think very much delighted to see that progress.Might I also say that the only reason I got to speak today is because it's my duty session in the House and someone else didn't turn up. So I don't have a prepared speech as such and only have a short call but I do want to echo some of the thoughts that have been expressed by speakers who have gone before me. It's not often—or it certainly hasn't been the case very much in the past if ever and probably won't be in the future—that I would show any degree of generosity to anything that Willie Jackson has to say. However I do very much appreciate the commentary that he offered in his speech today as with Peeni as well. I think those who have called for more of this country to understand its own history and those who perhaps even rail against that need to read what's in this short commentary prepared as a sort of a highlight or a bit of a helping hand towards the bill to understand just what it was for people to go through; essentially the Crown turning on them back in that 1865-odd period. It's interesting for me to note that on both sides of my family my predecessors were arriving in New Zealand or had arrived not long before that. It makes you think for a minute—more than a minute actually—about the extraordinary willingness of tangata whenua to accept those who were coming in from somewhere different trying to build something better.These failings essentially are pretty hard to look at to read and even harder to begin to understand how the intergenerational hurt has been so much kept alive by the people who are here today who are listening today and who are going to benefit from this settlement in the many years to come.So can I just conclude my very short time this afternoon by reiterating my thanks on behalf of the people that I represent to those who have generously accepted this settlement and express the desire that this is the start of new things of great things for Whakatōhea and the rest of this country.