Henare Tau: Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara Claims Settlement Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHenare Tau: Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara Claims Settlement Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 05 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10824. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TAU HENARE (National): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Te mea tuatahi anei taku mihi ki a koutou katoa. E aku rangatira e aku kaumātua e ōku kuia nō te hau kāinga nō Ngāti Whātua tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa.[Hello Mr Assistant Speaker. First and foremost here is my tribute to you all. To my leaders elders and elderly womenfolk from back home and from Ngāti Whātua acknowledgments compliments and regards to you all.]I have been told to keep my comments brief because we are running out of time—not that an extra 160 years would not go amiss. Can I say thank you to Ngāti Whātua for putting up with my family—or putting my family up—in your rohe for the last 30 years. Thank you for allowing me to swim at Parakai. Thank you for allowing me to fish your waters. I will not tell you where but suffice it to say that it was in Ngāti Whātua territory.It really is funny when you look at history and you look at as my colleague Nanaia Mahuta said the changing face of Auckland. One constant is Ngāti Whātua. One thing that remains the same is Ngāti Whātua whether it is through the simple ownership of land or whether it is our looking at Ngāti Whātua and I suppose taking our hats off every time we go through the area of Ngāti Whātua. I love history and one of the things that bugs me about New Zealand is that we have not embraced our history. We have not—Māoris do. They love to sit around and talk about who did what to whom whether it is good or whether it is bad but the nation does not spend time dealing with its history.One of the sad things in Ngāti Whātua is I suppose the nation’s forgetfulness about the people who perished in a bus accident when the Queen was out here in the 1960s. As a kid I read the story and I was fascinated that these people were from just up the road. They lived up the road from me. Who else in New Zealand knows that other than Ngāti Whātua and students of New Zealand history? It has not been emblazoned on our psyche and it should be because we should never forget you know the whole story behind where those people were travelling to and where they were coming from—it was actually Waitangi. Those are the stories that create our history and a history to be proud of—the prowess. Like my colleague Rino says where did the Māori seats come from? I used to be a Māori seat holder until they decided they wanted somebody else. I will not hold that against them. They were from Ngāti Whātua but I will not hold that against you fullas.In my last Treaty settlement speech I mentioned the horrific cartoons that we saw last week from theMarlborough Express and the ChristchurchPress. Seven days ago there was an interview on TV3 with my colleague Hekia Parata. You can have your views on the National Party and the Labour Party and the Green Party and whomever else but one of the questions asked of her—of her—by the interviewer was: “How Māori are you?”. I find that the most insulting most verging-on-racist question I have ever heard a reporter ask of someone—not just of an MP but of someone in this country. Can you imagine a bill like this and a question being raised in the bill of how Māori Ngāti Whātua are or how Māori Ngāpuhi are? How Māori are you? How Māori are you? It beggars belief.When we are dealing with this sort of bill—and let me be blunt—we get off lightly. The Crown gets off lightly for what it did. When Ngāti Whātua jumped up doing the haka we pulled their land out. We are apologising for that with a few morsels—with a few pieces of silver. It is what we do and we accept that that is what we have to do but let no one forget that we are not the enemy—well actually Ngāti Whātua are not the enemy. They allowed New Zealanders to live in their area. I know that over time the other side got quite bigger numbers and things did not turn out in the way that Paora Tūhaere and our tūpuna thought they would but their wish was to invite these people in these newcomers. We are giving these people a pittance as far as I am concerned. I am not arguing the quantum Minister Finlayson.But I want to leave you with this question: what have Māori done to deserve cartoons like that? What have Māori done to deserve being asked: “How Māori are you? Are you a real Māori?” What the hell does that mean in this day and age? I do laud the fact that New Zealand is a leader in its treatment of indigenous people but hell we have got along way to go. I am glad that I work in an environment where we all work daily to move closer to reconciliation—to true reconciliation. So I doff my cap to Ngāti Whātua and thank them once again for allowing me to live in their area. Kia ora.