Fox MaramaMARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): E Te Mana Whakawā e taukotohia ngā mihi kua mihia ki a koe i roto i tō tūrunga i a koe e whakahaere nei i ngā mahi o Te Whare ā tēnei kua tata ki te wā mutunga mōu. Nā reira kai te pīrangi mātou o Te Pāti Māori ki te mihi atu ki a koe i roto i ō mahi tēnā koe Chester Borrows kia ora. [Mr Deputy Speaker I endorse the tributes accorded to you in your role as you administer the affairs of the House and as this nears the end of the time for you we of the Māori Party therefore wish to pay a tribute to you in your responsibilities. Well done Chester Burrows and thank you.]Well I am going to dismiss with all the mihi but suffice to say I tautoko everybody and everything that everyone has said because I have done some figures. In the bill it says: The Bill comprehensively settles the historical Treaty claims of Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki resulting from acts of omissions by the Crown before 21 September 1992." So I added up all the little bits of land just you know on the back of my Post-it that this bill acknowledges that you have lost. I have come to a figure of about 152560 acres of land from Tāmaki-makau-rau—round about. I checked it with the Minister and he said I was in about the right area.So then I thought: "OK how much does it cost to buy a house in Tāmaki-makau-rau nowadays?". Apparently by the news it costs about $1 million on average and if we think that might be on a quarter acre section you know it is not. You know it is on a sliver of land squashed up between two other houses. But let us be generous—let us be generous and pretend it is on a quarter acre section. If we extrapolate—that is a flash new word I have learnt from being in Parliament by the way—that out if we multiply that out over the 152000 acres that you have lost my figure comes to $610 billion—billion dollars—in today's terms.Let us not even add in the loss of earnings throughout the last 175 years. Let us not go there. Let us not be so harsh as to add in the loss of waterways or let us not even go so far as to talk about the decimation of your people and your language and your cultural archives through oral traditions. If I read this properly what has happened is that not only did you lose the land but your people were scattered across the four corners of the area. In the last census I think it was something like 400 people—am I right—claimed to be of Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki. Did I read that right—498. So about 500 members. Who knows whether they are from Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki if your people have been decimated and left landless?I know that in Wairarapa when we lost our language we lost our history—completely. We had because of the good grace of our tūpuna recorded our history in 120 volumes of manuscript that we could not read because we had no Reo. The people who came to Wairarapa from Ngāti Porou from Tūhoe and from Ngāpuhi who were married into the area and who came to settle in Wairarapa and who taught in our own kōhanga reo—they did not know our stories. We loved them because they brought Reo back to us so that we could find our stories.But when we grew up in our rohe we did not know whether we were Rangitāne or Kahungunu for so long and in fact thought we were pretty much just Kahungunu—just going to say that right now since they are all in the Whare. But my uncle tells me I cannot split myself in half. I have a leg in each waka—that sounded not quite the way it was intended. But here is the point. We had no idea about our ancestors.It was not until I went to kōhanga reo having had the most amazing Pakehā education that people would pay good money for—just by accident I ended up in Christchurch Girls' High School. People would move into that area to get that education. But not until I went to kōhanga reo and learnt Te Reo Māori did I find out that I did not come from "Te Wit". I came from Te Whiti and that did not mean I was from Taranaki. It was Te Whiti o Tutawake. And who was that? He was a man who crossed the river to save his sister Tauraharakeke and bring her back to good mental health—because she had taken herself off to kill herself in the bush—and to keep her safe. Instead of him he whakatū tāne nō Tūtewake he toa—[be a man of Tūtewake stature a warrior.]—the making of a man. If you want to be the man you need to be like Tutawake the warrior who knew how to look after his family. I did not know about that until I was well into my 30s—last year.But I can imagine—I can imagine—what it is like for the 500 people who have found themselves and connected their whakapapa back to their whānau Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki. I can imagine exactly what that feels like to have your language and your culture and your whenua ripped away and to come to this point and settle for $12.7 million when you should have got $610 billion—can we just put that on the record. I mihi to you because again we see another iwi come to this House and accept a pittance—accept a pittance—for the decimation of their people.You know never mind the land—we lost the land. But without land without whenua—Meka Whaitiri says to me all the time that we cannot have tangata whenua without whenua. That is in regard to another thing we argue about but anyway. A pittance.We turn around from being the people of protest and we become the people of progress. We put it behind us and we stand up in front of all the naysayers who look at our people and see us as a deficit and we turn around and say: "We rise we thrive we strive and we're still here." And you are still here.Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki—man it must be tough. I drive up there through that city all the time now. I had never been to Tāmaki-makau-rau so often except in the last 3 years. I drive past those flash houses. One of my nannies was with me one time and she goes: "Is this what they call rich people's State housing where they all have a flash house and live on top of each other and the houses all look the same?".I congratulate you on coming to this point and for taking the courage to say that well enough is enough but we have to move on. We document our history for our tamariki mokopuna so that they will never be lost as we were lost so that they will never have to search as we have had to search and so that they will have their future which they can lay out for their babies and make the decisions now that will affect our grandchildren's grandchildren. We do not do this for ourselves; we do this for them.Lastly I want to acknowledge all of your ancestors who have passed on some of whom may never have known that they were from Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki because with the decimation of culture and whenua comes the loss of language and the decimation of that is the loss of whakapapa. If we do not know it how can we claim it?In the story that I told about Tutawake there is another little whakatauki that says—do not correct my Reo after this—ka taea te wāwāhi i te taura harakeke engari te taura whakapapa te taura tangata ka tū mō ake tonu atu [the flax cord can be taken apart but the genealogical the mankind cord the kinship link remain forever and ever].The taura tangata is the whakapapa that binds us no matter what and when we search out our ancestors we are connected for all time and all eternity. We are bound to our whenua and we are bound to each other and we are bound to make decisions together collectively for the betterment of all our people. So I mihi to you. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou kia ora mai tātou katoa."