Fox MaramaMARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Ā tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā otirā ki a koutou kua hui nei i tēnei wā kua haere ā-kanohi mai kua rāngona ā-taringa kua kite ā-karu kia rongo ā-wairua hoki ki te kupu e whārikihia nei e ēnei o ngā hoa mahi rangatira hoki o Te Whare Mīere.[So thank you Mr Assistant Speaker but at the same time to you collectively who have gathered here face to face at this point in time to listen to see visibly and to hear spiritually as well the message being set down here by this one of these work colleagues and esteemed ones of the Beehive too.]Well sometimes I wish I could just pass my speaking spot to someone else—any of you in the gallery—who knows this better than me who knows your history better than I do who could stand here and tell of the battles both historic and today's. We hear you. Someone who could come down here—and Mr Assistant Speaker if that was something we could do I would gladly give up my place for any one of these rangatira to come down here and tell us from their lips the stories of their people. But I will make some sort of attempt today to get on to the record of this House the parts of your history that have inspired me. It is a historic day for you and it is a historic day for Māori.As you look around here and see that our seats are just about empty as the business of the House continues in other rooms around the place—you know sometimes I mourn at that. I think there can be nothing more important than being here for this. There can be nothing more important than rectifying the grievances of the past—and is it a rectification I am not sure? That is a flash word. Is it one? Does this make it right? Obviously it never does. It is an opportunity to take stock and then look forward. All right we know what has happened but it is time to look forward and your people have been doing that for a long time.I remember at Awanuiārangi's tangi talking about building up the puna so that when one dies it does not matter because there are many to take their place. So that is what has happened. You are all here ready to take up your place. But as I looked over the history and I looked at the Battle of Gate Pā I found this account and I thought you might be interested. Some of you may have read it; some maybe not. This comes from Captain Mair's Graphic Account of the Memorable Battle". It says: "No satisfactory explanation has yet been given how it happened that nearly two thousand men of Her Majesty's forces the finest troops known amply provided with the best artillery and arms of precision in the world were singly defeated by less than two hundred and fifty … warriors whose only weapons consisted of old flint tower muskets"—and I do not even know what this word is—"Brummagem double and single barrelled shot guns and long-handled tomahawks."—but they were. Then I had a look down at how the people did this and I found this little paragraph which I think you might love: "During the interval from their first occupation of the Gate Pa the rebels energetically assisted by their women folk"—just saying—"in the heaviest work"—because women do the heaviest work; just saying again—"and being entirely unmolested had converted a harmless looking grassy knoll into a work that was to test the calibre of British troops to the utmost. Probably there never was an instance in modern warfare where more deliberate and carefully conceived plans had been devised for securing a crushing defeat of the enemy." Then what did they do? They saw that and then they rolled in with cannon fire day after day after day. When they finally entered into the pā having destroyed all of the palisades that had been erected what did they find? It was empty apart from the few fallen warriors who were there. But the people through their trenches and through their tunnels in the middle of the night through the gaps in the army's regiments had snuck off to fight another day. And yet we do not even know about this. We do not remember. This country does not acknowledge our Land Wars. We have a date now. We have a date now to do that and that is because of your whānau who came to the steps of this place and others from across the country including the girls from Ōtorohanga who came and demanded that we recognise the Land Wars in this country where more Kiwis both Māori and non-Māori were killed than in both World Wars. You know you go to Gallipoli and it is this sacred spot where those wars were raged. You go to places around the world and they are sacred spots—you know tapu—and then you come to the places of war in Aotearoa and there is a road going straight through it and cows grazing on top of it. One of the old people said to me: "Marama you know when it's Māori land. The roads are straight. You know if it's Māori land. The roads are straight because they drove them straight through. And you know when it's not Māori land where people had already occupied it because it goes around the farms." Here in the most sacred places which should be remembered and hallowed and respected and put aside for all of Aotearoa to remember the road goes straight through. So I thought that was quite a lot of fun reading that account from the eyes of the British who were despairing and saying: "How could we have lost? How could we have been defeated—the finest infantry that we had?". You know your tupuna—and I had better get this right—Te Kou o Rehua signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi at Maungatapu in April of 1840 and when he did that he anticipated that the Crown would protect his people's rights and privileges which had been repeatedly spoken of and written in the words. We all know that by the mid-1850s Ngāti Pūkenga started to go "Hold on. What's going here? We thought we were in this together." nevertheless Ngāti Pūkenga never gave up. They always stood up and always battled against the injustices that were being meted out time after time after time. We know that because you are still here and you still battle and despite the pittance that is delivered by the Crown which is supposed to make up for the injustices of the past you still accept it and move on. But we never forget and you do that in the example of our ancestors who always did it. From the 1880s Ngāti Pūkenga can be seen in the records of this nation protesting about the injustices that had been meted out time and time again.We come to this point when finally we can accept that we inevitably need to move on. As you have heard from others they are very envious. Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa is yet to come to this House to hear their first reading and you have come to your third. Ngāti Hine and Ngāpuhi have yet to get it together—Peeni Henare: No just Ngāpuhi. MARAMA FOX: Oh right—sorry. There is only one side that needs to get it together apparently and the other side is all good. I am not sure which side he is talking about. But you know we sit and we have turned on each other to get to this point when we should have been focusing our attention on our common enemy and that is not each other. We stand in kotahitanga and sometimes elections are like that. They pit us against each other even though we here are all Māori in this House. We need to come together if we are going to ever realise tino rangatiratanga on our land. Your people fought for kotahitanga. Your people stood united. Your people have continued to stand and thrive and looking forward despite what happens in a couple of months or a month—40-something days—we will continue to stand and we will continue to thrive. And it does not matter who is sitting in these seats down here; it matters who is sitting in those seats up there. And here is the next generation ready to take up the mantle of the example that you leave for them. So I am proud to stand here and support the third reading of your bill in your time for your history and for your future. Tēnā tātou katoa."