SpeechTĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) (remote): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o tēnei Whare. Ngā mihi nui ki a koe me te Minita hoki mō tēnei pire te Hōnore Kiritapu Allan i whakaarohia ōna whakaaro mō tēnei pire Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o te Kāhui o Matariki/Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill.[Warm greetings to you and the Minister responsible for this bill as well the Hon Kiritapu Allan who has shared her thoughts about this bill Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o te Kāhui o Matariki/Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill.]This is the public holiday of Matariki that we're talking about and I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the Minister Kiritapu Allan for her commitment to this bill her commitment to te reo Māori as well because that was a stellar effort to my colleague and the ears of our mātua tūpuna [ancestors] will be listening down on you e te Minita i tēnei wā [Minister at this time].I also want to take a moment just to acknowledge the previous contribution from the Hon Paul Goldsmith who decided that he'd support it after telling us all of this great stuff about exactly when the date is going to be landed. He understood about the maramataka Māori. He understood that it had to be taken on a certain date over our Matariki period. That there in its essence is part of the evolution of this public holiday: getting our people all around Aotearoa that don't know about the maramataka that don't know how the traditional Māori new year was celebrated—to be able to actually dig into our roots here in Aotearoa and realise that we've got mātauranga Māori that should be uplifted. I commend him on his knowledge and I encourage him to keep learning.This is a learning journey for everybody not least for us as the Māori Affairs Committee and I was proud to help shepherd it through our committee process. The submission period opened for six weeks and we got 212 submissions through of which we listened to 12 oral submissions. We heard from our advisers who were appointed from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and I want to thank them for their work that they've done alongside the committee as well. We also decided to appoint a specialist adviser on this journey to help guide us in this mātauranga. It's a new world and as I said before we're all learning as we go. So thank you to Professor Rangi Matamua for the work that he did on the committee as our specialist adviser. We acknowledge you your mātauranga that you've shared with us and also your aspiration to make sure that this works to make sure this is a public holiday that actually all of us as people of the land of tangata Tiriti tangata whenua that we can both enjoy this public holiday together.Some of the feedback was very varied. We had some people that were incredibly supportive of the bill. We had some people that were very dubious about the bill too. One of the concerns was as the previous speaker mentioned around the cost of what an extra public holiday would mean for certain demographics for certain businesses. It was very hard to be able to land on exactly what that cost was going to be such a wide range actually. The kind of range that was landed on through our advisers was anything between a benefit for the country of $25.7 million to a cost to the country of up to $133 million and somewhere in the middle. You see it's really hard to try and put a dollar figure on the benefits of a public holiday because when you're talking about it like that it sounds very financial. Actually one of our submitters said that trying to identify it through a financial lens actually takes a very Pākehā perspective on this whole public holiday. What he said as one of our submitters was that he wondered whether or not other perspectives Māori perspectives might better incorporate the wellbeing of workers when considering the financial implications. So on that as I say it was very hard as a committee to try and understand what exactly the cost-benefit analysis was because there is so much to consider in that space.We had a big discussion about whether or not we use the name Matariki". Matariki is celebrated by some but not by everybody. There are regional variations around Matariki and I want to go on record right here right now to say that Matariki is one word for a constellation of stars that we celebrate differently in different parts of New Zealand. Puanga—in different parts that's another term for Matariki and there were many more. But what we decided was that for clarity and simplicity we would actually go with this. That was encouraged also by our specialist adviser by Professor Rangi Matamua acknowledging that there are regional variations but actually deciding that we'll stick with one for now and in the bill we'll make sure that we let everybody know that there are variations that happen across Aotearoa too.There was some concern that we may be heading down a Christmas tree Easter bunny kind of route with this public holiday too that we were going to commercialise the sheesh out of this. I want to just speak to that for a moment. It is a concern. People that want Matariki to be acknowledged want the depth of the public holiday to be recognised but also don't want to show up at their local mall and see it plastered all over the windows of their favourite shops trying to sell off cheap goods fast clothes that kind of thing. I want to acknowledge that because it's something that I share as well. I don't want to see the complete commercialisation of Matariki but I acknowledge that through the learning journey there may be some opportunities in there too. Whether it be a Matariki calendar with the Māori New Year listed on it if it's T-shirts to help publicise the event—if it's things like that then we don't mind.But what we landed on as a committee was that we can't control any of that. Once we put this on the map we can set it forth with best intentions and we can monitor it over time but actually it will be up to the people to decide which way it goes. But I really hope that our Māori communities all around Aotearoa help to educate our local non-Māori communities about the significance of this and hoping to keep it away from that kind of tacky commercialisation that many of us cringe at as well.I want to acknowledge our deaf community who came forward and said they wanted to go on record and say that if we're going to be having festivals we should make sure that if they're big festivals we've got sign language interpreters as well because they were very concerned that at some of our public holiday events and some of our big major events our deaf community are left out of that conversation because they don't have access to interpreters. So we discussed that as a committee we talked about how we could be more inclusive in it and we heard about the fact that Te Arawhiti is indeed accommodating for that as they plan for the new holiday as well.There were some concerns around resourcing and making sure that as it rolls out in our education system we're saying good things but that there's actually resources for our teachers to be able to share this mātauranga as well. We were also assured by the Ministry of Education that that was absolutely part of their considerations; there was a budget allocation last year to be able to help with that. I also note that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment have also put out some funding for Matariki events around the country to bring communities together to help celebrate what Matariki looks like in your part of Aotearoa. So that fund is currently open and I encourage people as they're listening to this to think about putting in for some of that funding to be able to celebrate Matariki when it comes around—not just this year but for the next 30 years that we've got to look forward to.There is a lot to say about this bill but I just wanted to finish by thanking all of the officials that have helped us through the submissions process: our clerks of the committee obviously all of those submitters—all 212 of them—as well as the 12 that submitted to us orally. We thank everybody for their thoughts but this is something that I think in years to come we'll look over our shoulder and we'll be incredibly proud of being part of the team that actually helped usher through this bit of mātauranga Māori into our normal vocabulary so that people like Paul Goldsmith can actually help to educate all of those Paul Goldsmiths around him about the significance of this event Matariki. It's an incredibly special event. Actually I feel at a loss that when I was growing up as a primary school student I knew nothing about this. The mātauranga was out there but we're only just discovering it and that's just the start. There's lots more coming in this space and I look forward to seeing the progress of this through the House but also the aspiration of what else we can use to help address that kind of bi-cultural relationship in our country.For that reason I support this bill and I commend it to this House."