Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare huri noa ki ōku hoa kaimahi o Te Whare Pāremata tēnā tātau katoa nau mai nau mai ngā tanata ngā uri o Wīremu Pere me te whakanuia! Me whakanuia e mātou koutou o Te Kaitiaki Wī Pere nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou kia ora mai tātau katoa. [Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and turning to my fellow work colleagues of Parliament acknowledgments to us all. Welcome come hither to the people and relatives of Wīremu Pere whom we honour. We must celebrate you the Wī Pere Trust so well done congratulations to you collectively and my appreciation to us all.]It is a pleasure and an honour to stand for Te Pāti Kākāriki to support the Māori Purposes Bill which is allowing and supporting the Wī Pere Trust to have a more modern approach for its workings with its whānau and its uri to oversee and bear the fruit of the visions of the tupuna Wīremu Pere to hold and acquire general lands for investment purposes and to improve and have a bit of a sweep-up and a clean-up of governance practices. Particularly because the bill is consistent with the Green Party principle of giving Māori organisations greater autonomy and removing unnecessary Crown and ministerial involvement in the affairs of Māori the Green Party absolutely must support this bill. I want to congratulate Minister Te Ururoa Flavell firstly but mainly the Wī Pere Trust on all the hard mahi and the conversations and the long waiting as we have gone through this process to arrive at what you want and on having the legislation arrive here for the third reading of this bill.The history is important and I do want to add the Green Party's acknowledgment and recognition of the tupuna Wīremu Pere. The Wī Pere Trust was set up in 1899 so this has a legacy—a long legacy—to administer the estate of Wīremu Pere for the whānau and for the uri. He was of course an MP for Eastern Maori in the late 1800s and I want to add our acknowledgment of that whakapapa and of the uri and whānau since then.I want to take a pause to think about the inspiration that the Wī Pere Trust and this legislation are providing as iwi and hapū and whānau around the country are wrestling with and working through the ways of finding our own autonomy and affirming our tino rangatiratanga over our own affairs and this is not a simple process. We have existed and survived through colonisation and we are now turning to trying to figure out what is the Māori way and what is the way that we come through the commercial and corporate legacy that was put upon us which was often in direct hostility to our own tikanga and kaupapa and Māori world view. That was foisted upon us and it is the reality that we live in. The Wī Pere Trust is making an incredible effort to find a way through all of that and arrive at something that is quite specifically Māori.I have the confidence—I do want to address and acknowledge as well the concerns that were raised by the some of the whānau of the trust of the uri. I think my colleague Meka Whaitiri put it well: how do we ensure that it is all of the descendants who are able to participate in both the decision-making processes and the fruits of trying to work through a different approach of the workings of the trust—upholding the visions of Wīremu Pere which of course would have always been for the benefit of all uri and whānau? For that reason I acknowledge the whānau concerns that were raised in submissions.I acknowledge that there was some concern over the instance of the trustees being rolled immediately over to the new organisation as opposed to having an immediate election. I acknowledge that concern. We talked about it heavily at the Māori Affairs Committee and I have confidence and hope in the fact that that new organisation will still have the ongoing election processes and we can take comfort that there is still that level of accountability if not right at the immediate establishment of the new organisation. I acknowledge that whānau had concerns about the level of communication. It is certainly not a new instance that comes before the Māori Affairs Committee for any consultation process as identities and iwi settlements around the country try to work through a process that often is not even ours. I acknowledge those concerns. I acknowledge that there were some concerns with the High Court jurisdiction and the threshold to the High Court being too high or too low. Again we talked about all of these issues in the select committee and tried to find the best way through. I acknowledge that there were concerns raised about conflicts of interest and it was something that I particularly advocated for at the Māori Affairs Committee—that there be a register for people to acknowledge conflicts of interest. I also acknowledge the concern with the status and transfer of freehold lands and how that would impact on corpus lands.With all of these concerns we at the Māori Affairs Committee and those working with the Minister tried to make the best out of this process of Crown legislation and arrive at something that we can all support and sleep comfortably with at night. I feel that that is what we have done. I take hope that the whānau can continue to raise their concerns. This is never going to be perfect from the start and I take hope and say to all whānau and everybody in the trust: we are here—your representatives in Parliament are here to support the raruraru and difficulties and to celebrate the hua that will come from establishing this new organisation.I end with again acknowledging the hard work of the trust in trying to get something that was driven by it envisioned by it and that brought us here today by working with the Minister. I acknowledge the work of the Māori Affairs Committee. It is an absolute pleasure to be able to genuinely sit down and truly want the best for our people and to collaborate in that hope. I can stand here with hand on heart and say that we absolutely did want to uphold the visions of the Wī Pere Trust and the visions of its tūpuna. It is difficult to be able to say that in this role as a member of Parliament.I will end by referring back to one of my original points: the inspiration that trusts like Wī Pere and organisations and processes like the one the Wī Pere Trust has just gone through are part of a nationwide Aotearoa-wide narrative of Māori organisations large and small wrestling our way through generations of colonial impact on our own systems structures and ways of working and relating to each other and to our planet and to our legacy—both our tūpuna and our mokopuna who are not quite in Te Ao Mārama. I acknowledge that we are in that place and we are trying our best to work through it. I hope that we can continue to work as representatives of the Crown to support Māori to acknowledge the difficulties and to validate them to acknowledge that a corporate commercial agenda has not always necessarily fitted with a tikanga Māori world view. I hope we can trust in our own people and arrive at the best way forward for Te Ao Māori to maintain and uphold its own tino rangatiratanga. Kia ora.