Jackson WillieHon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development): Tēnā koe tuahine mō tō kōrero mō tō tautoko ki tēnei pire i tēnei wā. Koutou Ngāti Maniapoto tae mai nei i tēnei wā i whakarangatira i a mātou ngā mihi ki a koutou. Kei te tino waimarie mātou i te mea kei konei koutou ki te whakahōnore ki te tautoko i tēnei pire. Ki a koutou ngā rangatira Tom Uncle Tiwha mihi ana ki a kōrua i ārahi i te kaupapa mai i te tīmata. Nō reira koutou katoa i tae mai nei i tēnei wā tēnā koutou ā tēnā anō tātou katoa.[I acknowledge you my friend for what you have said and for supporting this bill at this time. Ngāti Maniapoto we are honoured to have your presence here at this time we acknowledge you. We are very lucky that you are here to honour and to support this bill. To the leaders Tom Uncle Tiwha who have lead this matter from the beginning I acknowledge you. To all that are present at this time I extend my greetings to you all.]Just acknowledging that kōrero from our previous speaker Harete Hipango. Very important some of that kōrero particularly in terms of tautoko I think for our chief negotiator who I'm sitting by—Minister Mahuta—who shepherded this kaupapa all the way through right from the start. It was a terrific job that she did through the different processes and I want to mihi to her first of all in terms of some of the women who have championed this. It's not an easy world in Te Ao Māori for some of our women who are leading some of the kaupapa and they're coming to the fore so I mihi to her.I mihi to Bella Takiari-Brame too for her mahi. She's one of our people who we are investing in. We've got her on some of the boards now. We have her on the ACC board and we need more and more Māori women coming through. So I just wanted to acknowledge some of them today.I also want to acknowledge one of my kuia who died in our whānau. She was the last of the Batley whānau my Auntie Kath—Kathleen Te Whare. She was 98 and she was the last of the Batley siblings of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Tama heritage. You know Tom she wasn't kāore ia he matatau i te reo. Engari he nui tana mahi i runga i te marae [she was not proficient in the Māori language. However she did a lot of work on the marae]. She was the backbone and helped at Maniaroa Marae. She was part of a whānau of 15 who were key in the building of Maniaroa and we laid her to rest about a month ago. She was proudly Maniapoto and was one of those unsung kuia who were always there and we remember Auntie Kath well. So I want to mihi to our women who have been such a big part of things. To yourself Tom Roa Uncle Tiwha Bell—we wouldn't be where we are today without your mahi.Can I say today I was listening to our chair Tāmati Coffey and it is a reminder of the problems we have as Māori MPs—the process that we have to go through. It doesn't matter what side you're on as we traverse this process where we have friends and whānau who will come up and oppose us and like our people in the audience I'm sure they have been approached. I've been approached by different whanaunga and friends and some are all there and some are a bit crackpot—Hon Members: Ha ha!Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —well we know this eh; it's just a fact—and you think Oh God we've just got to get on with the mahi. We've just got to do the business." I know how hard it is on the Māori Affairs Committee having been one of the chairs of the Māori Affairs Committee many years ago. I was thinking about it and on first look you look at the people who oppose it and you think "Oh there's all these people against—against—us." but that's just the nature of the beast. We also know there's a huge amount of people who tautoko but they don't necessarily come up at select committee. But I want to mihi to our chairman Tāmati Coffey. He's been doing a terrific job because he has. If you don't know this process you don't know how difficult it is. I was thinking about it when he was chairing the Ngāti Rangitihi process and the biggest opposition he got in the process in terms of the bill was from my wife who absolutely opposes the settlement. It made it a little bit tricky for myself of course—made it a little bit tricky for myself. My wife and her sister I think were the biggest opposition—weren't they Tāmati?Tāmati Coffey: My auntie.Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yes—poor old Tāmati. He'd come up for some tautoko; I made sure I wasn't around the place. But these are the difficulties we have. I'm not going to tell my wife who was a Treaty lecturer for 15 years the history and the background of the bill. She could give you every reason and if you read her you'd just about support her but I couldn't go down that track. These are the things that—this is not an easy process and what I ask today is if there's another one please tell me because what we have is what we have. So sometimes you have to say "Yes we hear you. But no we're getting on with the job." and that's what we're doing here with this particular process.Look let's not kid ourselves—let's not kid ourselves. There are some good reasons that come from people who oppose the bill. This is not perfect; you know the settlement process has never been perfect. It was designed by National and supported by Labour but until we get a better one—until we get a perfect one—we have to deal with the cards that we've been dealt. That's why I mihi to our select committee for being reasonable for showing our people respect and for always saying to our people that "Even though kāore koutou e whakaae [you don't agree] and we acknowledge you and we acknowledge your mana there's a bigger purpose here." The bigger purpose is that our people have had so little that we have to grab what's in front of us sometimes and that's the reality in terms of the process. If we wait for the perfect process Māori people will be waiting for ever and a day—we'll be waiting for for ever and a day. So we work very collegially with our mates on the other side because before we came to Parliament many of us had worked in Te Ao Māori together so we know that we have to find a way forward so that our people can see the benefits and feel the benefits and get the opportunities they deserve. Even though it's on a pūtea that is probably worth 2 percent of what the settlement was worth—right?—we all know about the economic benefits. We all know that our people could have put up 10 times—we all acknowledge they could have put up 10 times what the final settlements are. We have to do a deal for the benefit of everyone. That's why I congratulate our chair our committee and all members of the committee on both sides—Government and National—for understanding what the final goal is and the final goal has to be opportunity for our people. So well done to the select committee.I don't want to say too much else today. I want to say we'll have a really good kōrero in the third reading—I think we will have a celebration. But I just want to mihi to our committee all our members who have contributed and our whanaunga who have come here today to support a really important process. E mihi ana ki a koutou. Tēnā anō tātou katoa."