Hayes JoanneJOANNE HAYES (National): I stand to take a short call on the Oaths and Declarations (Endorsing the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi) Amendment Bill. It is quite interesting I can put my hand on my heart and say that the Treaty was not signed where I was brought up—I did not live there; I lived in a little place called Rangiwāhia—and at that time we did not know a lot about the Treaty. But let us take a little bit of a look at the history of how the Treaty got here. It was Queen Victoria that great-grandmother over there in England who actually brought that Treaty through her representative Hobson. When we start to look at what the member Marama Fox is trying to do here in getting people to swear the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi we need to start looking at what those principles are and how they play out with every individual person. Let us start with the members in this House because what partnership means to me is very different to some of my colleagues. It means very different things to different people and how do we judge that? How do you judge that when somebody swears in their oath to that particular principle? Who judges it? Who will critique that? How will we know that we have done this in the duties that we are swearing to? I believe that we already do that. We do not need to swear that. That goes with the principle of protection and the principle of participation because we do that. Look at the number of Treaty bills that have been signed through this Government: 54 since 2009; a total of 80 Treaty bills that have gone through here. As my colleague Nuk Korako so eloquently put it in his speech there is nothing in our bills that we do not consider in relation to the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles. When we start to look at all of these things around How do we know that? How do we judge it?" it does put a lot of people into a precarious situation and then there starts to be some competition about who does it better than others because it will happen. If this particular bill is going to go forward you need to have a lot more discussion around how it is going to be applied and what kinds of standards are going to be put in place because they will come out regardless of what people say. You can stand in this House today and say no it will never happen—but it will happen and every single one of us will be judged by it should this bill be passed. It is interesting that many people on the opposite side have a lot to say about it—a lot to say—and yet have they thought about the future consequences of what that may mean for other MPs other representatives across various organisations who take various oaths what that means within their duties in doing whatever it is that they are doing? I believe that there needs to be a lot more thinking going on around this and I can see that when we start looking everybody is saying: "Oh National doesn't care. It has no good affinities with Māori." That is rubbish. It is a lot of rubbish. We look at the principles that we have within our side of the House as recognition of property rights and economic independence. That is what those Treaty bills are all about. That is what most of the bills that involve Māori are all about. Strong capable families and whānau—that is what this side of the House does with working with Māori and delivering the various bills and policies that we have. If we start looking at cultural diversity once we start looking across the House—yes New Zealand has that. We have a broad church of a number of cultures here in New Zealand and every single one of those ethnicities actually acknowledges that Māori are the mana whenua. That is what they acknowledge—and they do they uphold the Treaty within their own ways. We do not need legislation around this. We do not need an oath to actually say that we support things like this because we do it. It is the doing not the saying. It is the doing that counts and that is exactly what this side of the House does. We do it. Let us start talking about going down the alleyway of the foreshore and seabed. It was not this side; it was the other side. We actually model what we do with Māori on this side and I cannot support this particular bill tonight."