Kerekere ElizabethDr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): E mihi ana me te ngākau whakaiti ki a koutou katoa o Rangitāne me Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua.Hau tōtō hau tōtōKo Tū hekea ana ko rongo hekea ana Ki te ngahau o TūUtaina taku kawa nei He kawa tua-maungaKa wiwini ka wawana Tara pata tū ki te rangiAuē kiWhano whanaHaramai te tokiHaumi e hui e taiki e. [With a humble heart I acknowledge all of you from Rangitāne me Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua.]That waiata Hau Tōtō was composed to send the Horouta waka from Hawaiki to Aotearoa safely and speedily. I learnt this and the several other that come with it from Derek Lardelli at Toihoukura the Māori art school in Gisborne where we studied every day for three years with waiata karakia and mōteatea.In thinking about this Te Rohe o Rongokako Joint Redress Bill I was reminded of one of the main things that I learnt during that time which was to attribute where you learnt and who you learnt your information from because it's not my knowledge. Even the knowledge of my whakapapa is not just mine—I don't own it I express it and I'm just the next in line to pass it on. So that attribution actually protects us from other people who will come to us and say Oh they learnt it differently" or often "I'm doing it wrong" because they learnt something else.And mātauranga Maōri is like this. It's not just one truth it's not absolute it's about multiple threads of knowledges of whakapapa woven together so that we can respect each other's learnings and have conversations about where we agree and where we disagree but more importantly how we came by that knowledge. And whakapapa is a good example of this. In a best case scenario we learn that whakapapa since we're young growing up on our whenua. The reality is through colonisation that most of us do not have that—it's a privilege. Mihi to those ahikā the ones who keep those home fires burning and keep passing on that information for those who grow up and there and those who come home when they can.So we defend that mātauranga we defend that whakapapa including in places like the Māori Land Court minutes. During the hearings we were given glimpses of things that tūpuna had said to justify the claims that we make now. Of course we know that just like today even our tūpuna were arguing back and forth and when I read the ones from home that was certainly true.Now in earlier times differences in opinion about that mātauranga and about whakapapa often resulted in issues around boundaries—for our iwi and for our hapū. They might have been resolved through little skirmishes at the border through negotiations and sometimes gaining peace through marriage. In our time the deeply deeply flawed process that is Treaty settlement often undermines that mātauranga and that whakapapa. By its use of large natural groupings it pits iwi and hapū against each other mostly making hapū invisible in this process. And it's never good. It is not the Crown's job and it is not our job in Parliament to tell any other iwi what their whakapapa is and worse to maybe put a mistake into law.The redress in this bill as my colleagues have said—there's some land that's been jointly vested Mākiriri gravel reserve the Mataikona property and the bed of the Lake Wairarapa which forms part of the wider Wairarapa Moana a wetland of international significance. Just incredible work that the whānau have done to restore something which was pristine and has been damaged over many years. In the overlay classification—I've just learnt what one of those is—it enables Rangitāne and Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua to identify protection principles and make their value statements about how that will work.Now I acknowledge the chair of our Māori Affairs Committee Tāmati Coffey: thank you for your mahi and my colleagues—it is not my normal subcommittee so thank you for having me to do this bill and its companion bill. I would say our role though on our select committees is less about just being unified and automatically accepting the bill that the Government has presented to us and more about gaining consensus across the House on what's best for the people involved. And the hearings as my other colleagues have said were really special because they were held at Papawai Marae a beautiful and really significant whare. And can I say ngā mihi aroha ki ngā ringa wera [acknowledgements to the cooks]. We were fed really really well. The whare was warm and the kai was yummy. However it was the kai o te rangatira—the kōrero—that we were there to hear. And so that's when we heard—and there's nothing better than being in the whare; I wish there were mattresses but we were at chairs and tables—about that whakapapa. Hearing that mātauranga from the place where it comes from is much better than reading pieces of paper in this House here.But as my other colleagues have said—our deputy chair Arena Williams—there was also mamae expressed in that that it's a tough arduous process that people go on when they try to settle their claims. And there's not always the support that's needed to mediate all the things that need to be discussed because 180 years of injustice—it's a lot to come back from. It's a lot to have calm conversations when that hurt continues to affect people to this day.But we also heard from some who didn't feel they'd been heard at all through this current process and they wanted to make sure that their views were on record.We heard how the Crown's breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi have left the Kahungunu hapū whānau of the Wairarapa and Tāmaki nui-a-Rua virtually landless. That's why the return of land is so critical in this and every other bill. In particular we heard that Wairarapa Moana is a living entity treasured by their tūpuna for its supply of abundant food and I'm quoting "And other customary resources traditionally harvested and traded to benefit people from near and afar" that it was a gift from the atua and an immense source of tribal mana. At the very very least what we need to do is to restore that mana back to its people.So of the kind of three main issues that whānau raised when we were there one of them was to do with Mākirikiri and the tupuna called Te Rangiwhakaewa. So there were discussions about how that should be pronounced and whether a hyphen should be used or not. One thing that they were in agreement with though was that that original tupuna despite all the intermarriage that might have happened afterwards was Rangitāne. So that's part of that mamae that says "Yes we're going to do this thing. You're going to set up a 50:50 share for this particular property but the tupuna that it comes from was Rangitāne." And we went and apologised to Rangitāne. We missed the part—not being regularly on that committee—where we did want to put into the report that we did think that and we did try to change it inside the bill. And I think the use of a hyphen is such a tiny—literally tiny—thing to denote mana of a particular tupuna.Quickly just acknowledging Ngāi Tūmapūhia-a-Rangi and their wishing to be withdrawn from the bill related to Ngāumu Forest. I think that and also Wairarapa Moana Inc. and their mahi around Pouākani—just saying that we hope to resolve those or we will definitely address those in the bill which will be heard next week for Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua Claims Settlement Bill.So in conclusion we uphold the mana of all the negotiators who were involved in this but especially we remember those who we've lost throughout this process. We hope that when this is done it can go back to the iwi who can use their tikanga without Government interference to resolve the remaining issues and work out those final details. In that spirit I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora."