Fox Marama; Tisch LindsayMARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Ā tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā ka huri ake au ki a koutou e hui nei i tēnei wā me te mihi atu ki a koutou nau mai haere mai ki tēnei Whare ō tātou. Ki a koe e te rangatira e Chē i roto i tō tūranga e āwhina e arahi nei e tautoko nei i te hunga kei tō taha kei te mihi atu ki a koe! Otirā kei te mihi atu ki ō tātau ngā tini mate kei runga i ā tātau i tēnei wā tātou te hunga ora tātou te hunga i tutuki i ā rātou nā wawata. Nō reira nau mai haere mai. [And so thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I turn now to you collectively assembled here at this point in time. Welcome come forth to this House of ours and to you Che esteemed one in your role in terms of assisting guiding and supporting those seated there beside you my acknowledgments to you. But at the same time I pay a tribute to the many deaths that are upon us right now and to us the ones alive as well who fulfilled the aspirations of those who have passed on. So welcome; come hither.]Talofa lava. Malo e lelei. Ni sa bula vinaka. Faakalofa lahi atu. Kia orana. Namaste. Taloha ni. Halo olaketa. Nau mai. It is a great honour to be here and to address you today and we are grateful that we have a reciprocal relationship in the Pacific. Reciprocity means that it is give and take—it is learning from one another.Although I have heard much said about how New Zealand should be a leader in the debate on climate change given that the Pacific Islands are the most affected by climate change and given that they contribute the least to climate change I actually believe it is the members of the Pacific Island community who should lead the debate on climate change given that you are the ones who will find yourselves in the near future if we do not do something about it now to halt the march of the conditions that contribute to climate change—you will be the ones who will be looking for other whenua. I cannot understand or even contemplate what that means to a people—to have lost their whenua completely. Yes we know a little bit about that in Aotearoa where Māori have been dispossessed of their whenua in numerous ways. But we still live here. We still have feet on the land and no matter who owns it I still believe it is mine. So I understand a little bit about that but to be dispossessed of your whenua through rising sea levels—I cannot image what it might be like for a people and a country to be left landless to be left without a sovereign State to call your own and to be at the whim of other nations that may or may not welcome you with open arms.So I say to our House to the Parliament of Aotearoa that we must indeed allow the Pacific Island nations to lead the conversation on climate change and we must listen. We need to hear you. Before we seek to be understood we must first understand. So welcome to you all.Earlier in France we all agreed that we would do our level best to not contribute any more to the conditions that exacerbate climate change—that we would do our best to eliminate the use of fossil fuels. And while I say that here in the waters of Aotearoa we have just welcomed one of the biggest exploration boats the world has to look for more fossil fuels. If we are going to commit to the things that we sign up to on the world stage—Su'a William Sio: It's your Government. You sort them out.MARAMA FOX: That is why we are here—we sort them out. If we are going to commit to the world stage and to the things that we sign up to then surely we must put into place—surely we must put into place—a strategic plan to take us there. If we say that we are going to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in 50 years then surely we should stop digging for them and invest our funds in the development of sustainable energy. I know that there is a big long debate about that but given that that boat is about to do seismic testing after the earthquakes we have had along the Hikurangi Trench which links us to the Islands of the Pacific and which is the greatest migration route of our fish species our whale species and our tuna—our eels—then surely surely we must commit with action to the things we sign up to with words.So welcome. I think it is time that we give greater voice to our neighbours and our whānau in the Pacific nations. We know something about that in the Māori Party—we do. We talk about te rangatiratanga. We talk about the opportunity to have self-determination—to be able to let the Government and the people in public office know that we have the solutions for ourselves that we can tell them how we would like to have our services offered to us and that we will show them the way in which we connect with our most vulnerable communities. We can tell the Government that actually we are the ones who have the relationship with our people—let us take the funding and we will show you how to do it. We call that Whānau Ora.In fact in New Zealand the Māori Party not only advocates for Māori as a value-add to the nation but also advocates for Pasifika. So we have Pasifika Futures which is an arm of Whānau Ora. Let me tell you a little bit about that. The Māori Party ensured that there was a place for our Pacific whānau when our former co-leader Tariana Turia established three Whānau Ora commissioning agencies: Te Pou Matakana Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu and Pasifika Futures. Pasifika Futures works with provides for and partners with Pasifika families to achieve their aspirations—what they would like to see for themselves in the areas of health housing education training and economic development. And yes that is exactly why we are a support partner to the Government—because this Government had the foresight and the good sense to recognise that that was a good plan.The Pasifika Futures whānau has to date engaged with over 30000 of our Pasifika whānau: 130 families have become smoke-free; 230 families have enrolled their children in early childhood education for the first time because of that engagement; 620 families are learning their own Pasifika language; 125 have saved for a deposit for their first home—their first home in a place where we are told we cannot afford a home and yet this is what Pasifika Futures has done—218 people are in trade training and 65 of those have now gone on to full-time employment and that is called the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative which is another one of the Māori Party's policies; 113 families have learnt about financial literacy and as a result have reduced their debt; and eight families have set up businesses that in turn have created 44 jobs for their family members. That is Whānau Ora in the hands of Pasifika where we give you the voice and allow you to be the determinants of your own future to fulfil your aspirations.It is time that as a nation New Zealand listened to our Pasifika cousins because actually you are our tūakana. We are here because we descend from you and we have to learn from our old people so that we can put the future in the hands of the Millennials—yes that is a new term we have all learnt about following Donald Trump's election as President of the United States. Those Millennials who are out there protesting because they do not like the choice that everybody else had voted on well here is the thing: they are the ones who inherit the whenua they are ones who inherit the oceans and they are the ones who inherit the outcomes of the decisions that we make. We need to listen to them also.The last thing I would like to say is about our women. Yes I am a co-leader of our party. We have shared responsibility—male and female roles recognising that they go hand in hand together. There is a woman here called Ans Westra who is a photographer who took a picture of a young Māori girl standing on an open oven which was deemed to be culturally inappropriate. But when she spoke to that young woman later on when she was a fully grown mother the woman said: I knew what I was doing was wrong. I knew that that was not my culture but I was stronger than the culture." Sometimes our religious practices and our cultural beliefs inhibit the advancement of women. We must at every opportunity push the boundaries of those limitations so that we can see our value-add to our nation as women as parliamentarians as Pasifika peoples and as people of the world. Tēnā koutou. Kia ora mai tātou katoa.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Mark Mitchell—5 minutes."