Marcroft JennyJENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It is an honour for me to rise and to speak on behalf of New Zealand First in support of this bill the Heretaunga Tamatea Claims Settlement Bill. E ngā mana e ngā reo e ngā karangaranga maha; tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa. E mihi ana ahau ki ngā uri whakaheke o ngā tīpuna o Heretaunga o Tamatea. He mihi aroha he mihi maioha ki a koutou. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[To each representative entity to each spokesperson and delegate greetings to one and all indeed greetings to everyone assembled here.May I acknowledge the descendants of Heretaunga of Tamatea. I bid you a warm and sincere welcome. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.]I would like to start off by acknowledging Heretaunga Tamatea and those who are not here in this House today that should be here with you by your side: the claimants who have walked this path who are no longer here because they have passed away because it took just too long to get here today to this final reading. I acknowledge those people and the commitment and the contribution that they have made on this Treaty settlement journey on your behalf. To all of those here today from all of the hapū that my fellow colleague Rino Tirikatene mentioned in number thank you for being in the House today. It is a very significant day for you and I would like to acknowledge you. To He Toa Takatini the mandated body who negotiated your settlement—and I just really like your whakataukī which says our strength is in our unity. Also I'd like to acknowledge the two Ministers: the current Minister the Hon Andrew Little as well as the Hon Chris Finlayson for the words that they have already said in this House today. Minister Little discussed the negotiators who negotiated with integrity and grace and the principles of cooperation and trust that were undertaken throughout the course of this negotiation. The Minister also outlined the historical time line of your grievances and how you become landless and marginalised and impoverished. I acknowledge the Hon Christopher Finlayson for the work he did at the beginning of this Treaty settlement path on your behalf. He said the Crown had seriously breached the Treaty with the loss of a large tract of land in Heretaunga and spoke of the great courage and the commitment from your negotiators and I acknowledge the sincere tribute he made to them. You know it's an honour for me. I'm a first-time member of Parliament and a brand new member of the Māori Affairs Committee. So for me this is my very first Treaty settlement final reading that I have made and I am honoured to be here today. It is a privilege for me. It was also a real privilege for me to travel to Hawke's Bay to meet with you and to hear you with your hearings of evidence. There were 40 submissions on this bill and 33 of them were oral. We heard them in Hawke's Bay as well as in Wellington and I was really impressed with your manaakitanga that you showed—how you enveloped us with your stories and how you immersed us with your waiata your stories and the photos you brought of your tīpuna and how you laid out your whakapapa in front of us. I would like to thank you for that. I'm enriched because of this. You painted us a history of your story. It was a history that I was not aware of until that time and you laid out your mamae for us to see it and for us to feel it as well and so I thank you for that. I'd just like to note a couple of the historical grievances. They are written in this bill but it's also to hear them—to hear them said out loud. There is power in words when we hear them out loud so I'd like to acknowledge that by 1900 approximately 1.2 million acres of your land out of the 1.4 million acres of Heretaunga Tamatea land had passed from Māori ownership through to Crown ownership. In the early 20th century the Crown continued to purchase Māori-owned land in Heretaunga Tamatea so that by 1930 approximately only 6 percent remained. By 1930 the whānau and hapū of Heretaunga Tamatea were virtually landless. There is an apology that goes with this settlement bill and I'd just like to read a small part of it: The Crown unreservedly apologises for its repeated breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi and for the 'ngā mamae me ngā tūkino' "—the pain and the damage. The Crown regrets what it did how it contributed to the whānau and hapū of Heretaunga Tamatea being left virtually landless. In the 1850s the Crown used secret transactions and other divisive tactics to purchase huge areas of Heretaunga Tamatea land. The Crown is deeply sorry for its purchasing tactics that created tensions among your people that culminated in war injury and ultimately death. At the end of our hearings day in Havelock I went back to stay in Napier for the evening. I decided it was a good opportunity to spend time in your rohe but it was almost like walking through sliding doors of a parallel reality because it was the Art Deco weekend in Napier. I had been spending time with you hearing your stories hearing about your past and your grievances and then I went to Napier and there was this celebration of the 1930s. Fox furs and boaters ostrich feathers vintage cars and The Great Gatsby swagger were in full swing in Napier and I couldn't rectify within myself the feeling of stepping from one world into another. So contrasting was it that I was not able to look upon that Art Deco Festival and feel anything of pride about it because it was at that same time that you lost your land and became landless. Just briefly mentioning the deed of settlement being signed at Te Aute College and I won't go into great detail about that because it has been mentioned by other speakers already. But I do note that that $5 million will ensure the long-term sustainability of the school and that is something to celebrate. But now is a time and an opportunity to look forward—to look to the future. We acknowledge our past and we can learn from it. Ki te kāhore he whakakitetanga ka ngaro te iwi. [Without foresight or vision the people will be lost.]I'd just like to talk a little bit about my whānau connection to Hakikino. A few years ago it was the Kershaw whānau reunion. My sister is now married into the Winiana whānau and they were having the reunion at the Waimārama marae. Now at Hakikino they have developed a really great little tourist venture. It's called the Walk with the Ancestors Tour and I think this is a fantastic opportunity to keep holding on to your stories. One of the things I heard in the hearings was that when you lose your land you lose your stories. But it is time to reclaim your stories back. So my whānau—my brother-in-law Michael was there with his son who's named Tamatea because he is from there. They went up to the caves—the burial caves—and with their kuia who was their guide they went wandering around the caves. My young nephew at the time—a little bit like those large eels in the stream at Hakikino he was a bit of a slippery young character. He managed to wriggle around through those tomo and he managed to get lost. But he popped out through a tunnel that they had never known had existed before. He managed to find that passageway that had been undiscovered. It is time to discover new futures and with that a new beginning. It is a new day as Minister Little has mentioned. It is a time for a new relationship of equals. Heretaunga haukū nui Heretaunga ararau Heretaunga haaro o te kaahu Heretaunga takotoa noa.[Heretaunga of life-giving dew Heretaunga of Arcadian pathways Heretaunga—beauty of which can only be seen by the hawk Heretaunga that has been left to us the humble servants.]I commend this bill to the House."