Korako Nuk: Te Pire mō Te Reo Māori / Māori Language Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKorako Nuk: Te Pire mō Te Reo Māori / Māori Language Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 07 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10354. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]NUK KORAKO (National):): Kia ora e Te Kaiwhakahaere e mihi atu ki a koutou ngā mema huri noa i Te Whare nei. Tēnā kōrua ngā Minita o Te Kāwanataka tuatahi tuarua. Nō reira e koutou rā tēnā koutou tēnā koutou mihi atu ki a koutou katoa. Tēnei te mihi ki ngā rakatira o Te Komiti Whiriwhiri Take Māori nō reira e mihi atu.[Thank you Mr Chairman and acknowledgments to all you members throughout this Committee. Greetings to you two Government Ministers one and two. And so salutations acknowledgments to you collectively I commend you all. I salute the esteemed members of the Māori Affairs Committee and thank them.]I want to acknowledge the Māori Affairs Committee as the chair and I particularly want to acknowledge the work that has gone on not just with our committee but also with the Māori Affairs Committee of the 50th Parliament. I want to just acknowledge all that work that has gone on particularly that instigated by Tā Pita Sharples in the 50th Parliament and then transitioned across to the 51st Parliament when it was picked up by our present Minister for Māori Development. But it is also about the work of the Māori Affairs Committee and that work is based on the fact that when we first started with the committee last year in the 51st Parliament we acknowledged and said to each other: “Let’s park our political affiliations at the door and let’s get on to what’s best for our people.”I want to pick up on one point that the Hon Nanaia Mahuta made about the fact that—and I acknowledge those members of the Māori Affairs Committee the Hon Nanaia Mahuta and Marama Davidson for putting forward those Supplementary Order Papers—it was not about division. This was about something that we all agreed on. As we said we want to work for our people. We are all comfortable in each other’s space and the fact is that if you have the ability on that whakaaro you can put forward Supplementary Order Papers and then it is here actually that we can kōrero—we can discuss them and debate them. But it was never ever the intention that it be divisive. I make that clear particularly as some of the feedback coming from outside was that this bill was going to be divisive. That is the first thing that I want to make quite clear because this committee has worked very hard across parties to actually try to address a situation by which our language is on a life-support system and we really are the kaitiaki. We need to put in place what we are trying to do now to try to put life back into Te Reo Māori. This is what this bill is about and the situation here particularly with those Supplementary Order Papers is really important.I think too that it is really important to acknowledge the Minister and Supplementary Order Paper 164 which he put forward. If that Supplementary Order Paper is able to go through it will bring in clause 5A and that clause is in some ways like the Treaty settlement bills. It is an acknowledgment clause and when we look at this I want to pick up on what matua Pita Paraone said particularly about Sir Apirana Ngata. The fact is that there are members here who come from marae from areas where corporal punishment was used to actually forbid them and stop them from speaking Te Reo Māori. There are others who actually in some ways possibly came under the influence of Sir Apirana Ngata. But down in Te Wai Pounamu it was not about that; it was actually that you needed to learn English because that was going to be the way of the world. It was going to be a tool that would see our children—us—and the children before us have a legacy in an ever-changing world.