SpeechTĀMATI COFFEY (Labour):Whakataka te hau ki te uruWhakataka te hau ki te tonga Kia mākinakina ki utaKia mātaratara ki taiE hī ake ana te atakuraHe tio he huka he hauhūTihei mauri ora!Ka hoki ngā mahara ki a rātou mā kua wehe atu ki te pō ngā mate kei waenga i a koutou ngā mate kāore i konei mō tēnei rā whakahirahira nō reira ngā mate haere haere haere atu rā. Rātou ki a rātou tātou ki a tātou. Ngāti Maniapoto tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa. Tainui waka Tainui tangata he uri tēnei o Te Arawa e mihi atu nei ki a koutou i tēnei wā tonu nei. He tino hoa tātou i a tātou mai i te hoenga mai o Tainui waka o Te Arawa waka i Hawaiki. Nō reira e aku whanaunga tēnā rawa atu koutou.[Cease oh winds of the west and of the southLet the bracing breezes flow over the land and the seaLet the red-tipped dawn come with a sharpened edge a touch of frost a promise of a glorious day!The breath of life!We remember those who have passed the bereavements among you those who have passed and cannot be here for this auspicious day therefore rest in peace. Let those who have passed be together and return to those who are here. Ngāti Maniapoto greetings to you all. Tainui waka the people of Tainui as a descendant of Te Arawa I acknowledge you at this time. We have been great friends since the paddling here of the Tainui and Te Arawa waka from Hawaiki. Therefore my kinsmen I greet you.]From the very days that we left Hawaiki Te Arawa and Tainui have had a very special relationship and we carry that today. On your very significant day we stand by you—yes physically—because back home we're neighbours but today on your significant day it's appropriate that we mihi to you and this your special settlement. We acknowledge those that are not here our kuia and our koroua who have passed on and who are unable to be here to witness this very very special occasion. As chair of the Māori Affairs Committee it's never an easy task to listen to the submissions and I want to thank everybody who made submissions to our committee. They tuned in online—it was at a time where we couldn't be together—and we heard submissions from all around the country actually because as we heard this morning in the pōwhiri over 90 percent of Ngāti Maniapoto don't live in the rohe of Ngāti Maniapoto. So we had submissions coming in from all over the place and that was very special—some people that were very supportive of this settlement; some people that didn't want a bar of it—but we have to make a decision and we have to go with it. We have to consider the best interests of the majority of the people and that's the place that we've arrived at today. To those people listening at home I'm a history graduate so this is a masterclass actually in how the Crown in days gone by sought to completely annihilate a tribe to take away everything that they had going for them and to test them—to test them in every way possible. Throughout the course of the submission hearings in getting a real deep understanding of the plight of Ngāti Maniapoto it's been a history that I hope that all children around New Zealand get to understand especially the children within the rohe of Ngāti Maniapoto. I am pleased that we as a Government have made it so that we will be teaching our New Zealand history in schools and Treaty settlements are a huge part of that. There's so much to learn and the Crown has a big role to play in that learning. The Crown through this settlement acknowledges all of the wrongs that it has done. We the people that occupy these seats at this point in time look back in horror at the kinds of things that happened to the people of Ngāti Maniapoto over time. It is lived history; it is traumatic history and the people that are sitting here in this gallery and all of those people of Ngāti Maniapoto that are watching from Pipitea Marae that are listening at home on the radio and that may be watching Parliament TV are the uri of that trauma. They carry that on their shoulders and it's nothing to be overlooked or to diminish. This is a very significant thing.In the Crown acknowledgments of the settlement bill—how do you take down a tribe? Well first of all you take away their language. As with many iwi around the country who have had to endure and many iwi that have come to this House to settle their historical Treaty claims many say that they lost their language and actually the loss of language is a huge thing. It's one way to strip a culture of everything that makes them unique. The Crown at the time sought to open up the main trunk line and I note the appropriateness that for many of our whānau who have travelled here today they came on the train—the train that has been a gift and a curse in both respects. It was a gift because it opened up opportunities for New Zealand and it was Ngāti Maniapoto that put that up. It was Ngāti Maniapoto land that the main trunk line went through and the Crown didn't really uphold its bargain in returning that same value of economic benefit back to the people of Ngāti Maniapoto and for that the Crown apologises.Before 1840 Ngāti Maniapoto were the sole kaitiaki of Te Nehenehenui and over time the Crown ignored its responsibilities according to the Treaty—the Te Tiriti partnership—to be able to look after Te Nehenehenui. Again take away the language and take away the environment and you're doing a really good job of stripping a people of everything that they find special. For far too long the Crown has ignored the inadequate housing the inadequate education and the inadequate healthcare of the people and the inadequate employment opportunities of the people. I was shocked to find that in the first four decades of the 20th century there were lower pensions for the people of Ngāti Maniapoto than there were for the rest of New Zealand. I was also shocked to find out that actually when it came to conscription—the forced enrolment of people to go to war when we had the First World War—Ngāti Maniapoto were conscripted from the Waikato-Maniapoto district. Despite the fact that the Crown knew that Ngāti Maniapoto were coming forward voluntarily to participate in the First World War they still conscripted men and there were men that went away and there were men that died and they are the grandparents and the koroua of some of the people that are here honouring this very significant day. The Crown also acknowledged that it further acquired Ngāti Maniapoto land through compulsory takings for what they called scenery preservation. It acquired 3000 acres of Ngāti Maniapoto land when it knew that all it needed was a few hundred acres for the purpose at the time. It was unjust and it was wrong. It's a big burden to carry all of that. It's packed on to their shoulders and it makes this an incredibly humbling experience to be somebody who stands here on behalf of the Crown as a Māori and as Te Arawa to acknowledge everything that the Crown did and to hope that in the future by acknowledging everything that went wrong—the warts and all—by acknowledging the bloodshed that happened and by acknowledging the role that the Crown had to play in this here the hope is that we can move forward. For that you have to give kudos to Ngāti Maniapoto for even being here: for going through this process for being humble enough to sit at the table and for being humble enough to have brought a gift with them this morning—their maungārongo—to actually acknowledge the reconciliation that they want and to understand the role that the Crown has played the wrong that the Crown has played in their historical journey. So to you Ngāti Maniapoto we stand by you today on this your incredibly significant day. As our Minister Andrew Little said we'll come to your rohe and we will stand there on the marae shoulder to shoulder as the Crown representatives. We will stand by our Prime Minister as she reads that apology to you and we will be there to grieve with you. Our tears will flow our noses will run but actually it's something that we need to complete this healing process. I acknowledge you all for having gone through this. It's not easy—it's not easy for you; it's not easy for us—but it's necessary for you as a people to be able to move forward for the benefit of your tamariki mokopuna who will inherit hopefully the good stuff and acknowledge the other stuff that happened. Nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou mauri ora ki a tātou katoa.