Davis KelvinHon KELVIN DAVIS (Associate Minister of Education (Māori Education)): E te Whare hei tīmatanga kōrero māku e mihi kau ana ki a koutou o ngā wānanga e toru o Raukawa o Awanuiārangi o Aotearoa. E mihi kau ana ki a koutou ō koutou moemoeā ō koutou tūpuna me ngā iwi kei muri i ēnei o ngā wānanga. Nā reira tēnā rā tātou katoa. Nau mai haere mai whakatau mai ki tēnei Whare.[To the House for my opening comments let me greet you of the three wānanga Raukawa Awanuiārangi Aotearoa. I acknowledge you all your aspirations your ancestors and the iwi that are behind these wānanga. So I greet all of you. Welcome welcome welcome to this House.]This is personal for me. People may think that the first reading of the bill was the start of the journey for me. I alluded to in the committee stages that myself and the Minister of Education at the time about five years ago the Hon Chris Hipkins went up to Ōtaki to meet with Raukawa about their aspirations. They'd sent a letter to us that—I guess the real guts of it was this disparity or the belief that kāwanatanga should override rangatiratanga. I looked at the letter that they'd sent to me and I said look the issues that they raised I thought naively being a new Minister that they could all be sort of addressed in a couple of months. Well how wrong was I because five six years later we're getting to the conclusion of that part of this journey.But even then that wasn't the start of this journey for me. I remember in the 1970s I was still at primary school and I'd barely travelled south of Auckland at that time but for some strange reason my father his older brother my uncle Rome his daughter—my first cousin Alice-Rose—and my older brother Greg were off on this adventure driving down to the bottom of the North Island to this place that sounded so exciting—it had traffic lights; it sounded like a real adventure.They were going to be away for a week and I wanted to go and my father said No you stay at home." and I remember having little tangi as I did that I couldn't go off on this adventure because I'd never been to Ōtaki before. That was at the time when Raukawa were talking about their future aspirations for education.But even then this story doesn't start there. Again I alluded to it: in a perfect world 183 years ago we would've had stuff happening because 183 years ago in February of 1840 my tupuna Whētoi Pōmare signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I mentioned him in my maiden speech and said I believe that at the time he was signing Te Tiriti for a better world for his uri—his descendants—but barely had the ink dried on his signature there and we know that Te Tiriti was not being honoured. There were three parts to Te Tiriti: kāwanatanga which we have; rangatiratanga was guaranteed—and this goes back to the very essence of that first hui myself and Chris Hipkins had at the time in Ōtaki. I've always said that when kāwanatanga and rangatiratanga work together that's where we'll see magic happen and we'll see the article 3 promises of equity being realised.But we know that rangatiratanga has been suppressed by kāwanatanga for 183 years and this bill is starting to turn that around where rangatiratanga have their say where they can make the wānanga through rangatiratanga can assert their rangatiratanga and make their decisions for their people and anyone else who wants to enrol and go to a wānanga. If we just would've allowed that 183 years ago we would've seen more equitable outcomes throughout Aotearoa in education.But it probably doesn't even start there this journey for me because I want to go full circle: my tupuna Whētoi Pōmare who signed Te Tiriti in February of 1840 his wife was Te Rangingangana. Te Rangingangana was a daughter of Te Whatanui from Ōtaki the chief of Raukawa. So I've never forgotten that. That's the reason that my father his brother my brother and my cousin went down to Ōtaki in the mid-1970s to engage in those discussions around education for the descendants of Ngāti Raukawa.So it is personal. It is very personal but it's also more personal for us as Māori because we and our cousins our nephews our nieces—they're the ones that haven't achieved those equitable outcomes in education that were promised under Te Tiriti o Waitangi. So what we are doing today 183 years late is just sort of trying to right the balance and close off that part of this journey because this isn't the end; this is just part of the ongoing journey and the wānanga have a huge role to play in the ongoing success of our people.Education is the pathway forward. I was an educator and so was the Minister of Education. I was a teacher and principal for 20 years and I grew up on a street with 14 families; 95 children in those 14 families not counting the whāngai and all the mokopunas—that was just the children of the people who owned the homes. Close to 100 of us but only three went on to university—only three. If we'd had the wānanga established back then—or you know back 183 years ago—we may have seen more of those 95 kids on that street end up with higher qualifications.And I have to acknowledge—so only three people on that street went on to university and got a degree: my older brother the one that happened to go to Ōtaki on that adventure in the 1970s; my younger sister; and a girl across the road who also became a teacher. That was until about three years ago when I was invited to speak at the graduation of Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi and would you believe just totally coincidentally two people—my next-door neighbours in that street in Kawakawa—the same age as me so in their 50s graduated with a degree that day and I was able to present it to them. So of those 95 kids five now have degrees. In one day at that graduation we almost doubled the educational achievement of the 95 Māoris who lived on Leonard Street in Kawakawa.So that's what this is about. And yeah it's not a perfect world. I'd really love to see the Opposition support a Māori education Act.Hon Member: Never gonna happen.Hon KELVIN DAVIS: That'll never happen will it? You know in a perfect world it all would've happened you know as Penny Simmonds says but it's not a perfect world. But we worked alongside the wānanga to get to this stage and it's the kiko of the bill that's the most important and we're going to achieve that.I just want to acknowledge all of those people in the wānanga who set about on this path in all of the wānanga—all those intense meetings. You know we were basically working to a time frame where if one thing went wrong we wouldn't have met the stay; it could've been booted out until after the election then who knows what might happen. So we had to—we had to—make it happen. And yes thank you for the concessions to all of the wānanga but I also want to acknowledge all the ministry officials who slogged away and for them—we were talking last night—they're so excited because we are achieving this against the odds and we did it together: the officials and the wānanga working together. Kāwanatanga rangatiratanga working together and the magic has happened. And it's going to be at the end of these—there's nine more speeches. At the end of those nine speeches it's done and it is just a great moment for all of us to celebrate everybody in this room.So I'd just like to take those final minutes to acknowledge everybody: the officials the people of the wānanga those who just have had the patience to wait for this moment and we're just continuing to see those aspirations that were started in the 1970s that my tupuna Whētoi Pōmare had when he signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi back in 1840. Those aspirations are finally being realised and I just want to acknowledge everyone for the parts that they have played in making that so. Kia ora."