Paraone Pita: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParaone Pita: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10695. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PITA PARAONE (NZ First): It is my pleasure to participate in this debate on behalf of New Zealand First and to talk about the Ministry of Māori Development. Can I say that I must be living in a different world in Whangarei and in Tai Tokerau because as Māori we feature highest on the social indices. Unemployment is the highest in terms of Māori. Economic development although it is making some headway still has got a long way to go. The other most important social thing is housing.I can recall an era when the Department of Māori Affairs used to provide 200 homes where families actually moved in and owned the home. What are the figures that are available in terms of homeownership for Māori today? Can I say that it is not very high. Look if we are wanting to look at the social plight of Māori all we need to do is walk up Lambton Quay and see the number of people begging. I am quite ashamed to say this: many of them are Māori. In the north although we have not got to the stage of begging because those of my relatives who live at home are able to live off the land at the end of the day many of them do not have access to the proper house services they do not have access to good housing they do not have access to employment—and so it all goes on.Can I suggest that one of the reasons for this is that Te Puni Kōkiri is not doing its job. Last year it underspent its allocation by $1.7 million and that just follows a number of years when it has underspent. I think that it is criminal that a public department like Te Puni Kōkiri should underspend its allocation when the needs of the people whom it is supposed to be serving are still as strong as if it was the last century.One of the other things that we heard during the select committee review was that there was a restructuring that over a lengthy period it had 30 vacancies and that as a result of the restructuring it now has 11 vacancies. It is quite easy: if you just remove positions then of course you can reduce the number of vacancies that you have. The other thing is that we have heard the discussion about the amount of money that was used for consultants. Can I suggest to you that many of those consultants became consultants as a result of restructuring not only in the last financial year but in previous years and all those ex-staff members are laughing all the way to the bank. I think it is a poor commentary that the annual vote for Te Puni Kōkiri should be remitted to consultants rather than on the work that it is supposed to be doing.I can recall that in the days of the former Ministry of Māori Affairs the staff without exception lived in and were much closer to the community they served. Although I congratulate Te Puni Kōkiri on the academic level of achievement of the present staff I would suggest to you that many of them do not have the life experiences that former staff used to have. I would suggest that that is part of the reason. If we look at Whānau Ora they talked about how successful it is and yet they still need another year before they can quite accurately comment on how successful Whānau Ora is.Another issue for me is the issue of Māori wardens. We know that the Māori wardens are one of the few groups that actually work out amongst our community and are aware of the challenges facing our people yet the allocation that was made to that particular programme has been underspent. [Bell rung] Mr Chairman.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am happy to give the member another call but can I just remind the member and your party that you have only two calls left in the balance of the debate. If you take another call now you will have only one call left so I just bring that to your attention.PITA PARAONE: Thank you. I will forgo it.