Salesa JennyHon JENNY SALESA (Minister for Ethnic Communities): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd like to acknowledge the honourable Minister for Pacific Peoples the Hon Aupatu William Sio. I agree with what he had to say. In terms of what Jo Hayes the speaker that has just taken her seat said one of the legacies of the previous National Government is the fact that so many of our Māori families so many of our Māori whānau now are homeless. They don't even have a roof over their heads. It is actually something that the previous National Government should be ashamed of. The fact that we have the highest rate of homelessness in the OECD today and so many of our Māori whānau do not have a roof over their heads is definitely not something that I would be proud of but that happened under the last National Government over the last nine years. I am speaking today on behalf of the ethnic communities. The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) in terms of its annual review—when you look at the report at page 276 it states that one of the responsibilities of DIA is informing resourcing and advising communities including working to ensure that ethnic communities develop and maintain a positive sense of belonging to New Zealand;". It is essential that we support our ethnic communities to develop a sense of belonging a sense of inclusion and social cohesion and that we help to empower and to ensure that they actively and fully participate in our New Zealand society. One of the ways that the Office of Ethnic Communities does this is by supporting a wide range of parliamentary and community events that promote inclusion and social cohesion. But just looking overall at Aotearoa New Zealand a couple of the questions I have are these. Do we live in an inclusive society? Is our society as inclusive as it should be? Let me give you a couple of examples and I take this from Manukau East from Papatoetoe. One of the things I asked the MP that I replaced Ross Robertson when he was still the MP for Manukau East—when he first came in he was representing Papatoetoe. I wanted to see what the population of Papatoetoe looked like and what he told me was that 27 years prior—because he was an MP for 27 years—80 percent of Papatoetoe were Pākehā and 20 percent were ethnic minority but within less than 30 years that had flipped. Now 80 percent of Papatoetoe are ethnic minority and 20 percent are Pākehā. I'll give you another example of this question: do we live in an inclusive society? When we look at our schools some of our schools in South Auckland are 90 percent to 100 percent Māori Pacific and ethnic minorities but when you look across the other side of Auckland over at North Shore there are schools over there that are the other way round—90 to 100 percent Pākehā. So then the question is: do we live in a society where we live next door to each other and where different ethnicities are inclusive in how we live and do our children all attend the same schools regardless of our ethnicities regardless of our socio-economic status and regardless of the area that we live in? I think that the answer to that is unfortunately in the negative. One of the things that the Office of Ethnic Communities does—and it is covered in page 280 of the report—is it builds stronger more resilient communities and one of the ways it does this is via the Ethnic Communities Development Fund that the Office of Ethnic Communities administers via the DIA. I'll give you a few examples of how this fund is utilised. Over in Canterbury with the Canterbury Community Trust they have a cultural radio for Sri Lankan for Vietnamese and for Persian communities in Canterbury and they do this because they would like to increase social cohesion. Another example of how this fund is utilised is the Tangata Tiriti - Treaty People Project in Auckland where members of the ethnic communities applied to DIA and they were funded because they wanted ethnic communities to understand the Treaty better. They wanted to promote and celebrate the Treaty of Waitangi. They wanted to have a more inclusive way of looking at the Treaty. Last but not the least they also focus on leadership development for ethnic communities. Thank you so much for this opportunity to talk about the work of the ethnic communities department. Thanks."