Jones Shane: Melanesian Trusts (Income Tax Exemption) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Third Reading 
Jones Shane: Melanesian Trusts (Income Tax Exemption) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Third Reading 
[Volume:646;Page:15311] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Building and Construction) 
: 
 A kia ora ano tatou. E te Pika tena koe i a tatou e noho nei i roto i to tatou Whare i tenei po. Taku mihi tuatahi me huri atu ahau ki te kura mai i St Margaret’s College no Otautahi. 
As I said in Maori greetings Madam Assistant Speaker. This evening I would like to acknowledge the presence of the students from St Margaret’s College in Otautahi Te Wai Pounamu and welcome them to our legislature. I welcome the students from the deep south. No doubt they are sporting the colours—if not on their blouses then somewhere else—of the Crusaders. I welcome them to this House. I am not entirely sure whether St Margaret’s refers to Saint Margaret of Antioch or to other far-flung elements where St Margaret was mentioned in church history given that these students are here this evening witnessing a brief set of speeches pertaining to the Melanesian Mission Trust Board. 
I follow my fellow Maori colleague Te Ururoa Flavell who in far-flung days was known as “Jimbo Flavell” and I cannot help but refer to him as “Jimbo”. However he sports the name Te Ururoa which belongs to my Ngapuhi people from Whangaroa. Hongi Hika who wandered through the country—and who I must say was responsible for settling the Anglican Church in Aotearoa—had as his key whainga or strategist Te Ururoa from the village of Pupuke in the upper reaches of the Whangaroa Harbour. It is a pleasure to support Te Ururoa Flavell and to follow him because we too both attended St Stephen’s Maori boys school which existed as a consequence of the Anglican Church. I am not entirely sure that it was the Melanesian Mission Trust Board but organisations such as that one enabled us to get the fine education that Tau Henare stares at in very admiring ways at each opportunity he has. Unfortunately that admiring quality of his did not stretch to the Ngati Porou speaker today otherwise known as Parekura Horomia. 
The Melanesian Trusts (Income Tax Exemption) Amendment Bill which has been brought by my senior colleague Mr Goff to this House deserves our support. The trust board does unstinting good work in areas of the Pacific that we in Aotearoa should have a particularly keen interest in not the least of which is Vanuatu. I myself have a strong interest in Vanuatu having looked after some of its mokopuna and put them through school in Tai Tokerau. They lived with me and my children but they also attended the boarding school that we went to. We should be mindful of the fact that Vanuatu has a great birth rate and hopefully it is benefiting from our regional employment scheme that causes us to draw people from the Pacific. 
A little bit of history would not go astray. The Melanesian Mission Trust Board has many of its property assets located around Kohimarama. Kohimarama as my tuakana Tau Henare possibly knows—or taina depending on whether the cock is crowing or the morepork is calling—is an area where the Maori chiefs met in the 1860s to determine whether they would uphold the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Kohimarama is not a word that derives from the Maori language; it was actually transported here as a consequence of the Melanesian Mission Trust Board and in respect of its roots it is a Melanesian expression. 
The work that the trust does derives from the income and the skilful utilisation of the capital assets scattered around that area of Auckland. It is good that the bill clarifies the trust board’s tax status because after all we do make large contributions to that part of the Pacific. If we are able to support an organisation or an institution such as the trust that will enable the trust to continue to allocate income to meet the needs of those families in places such as the Solomons and Vanuatu which was formerly known as the New Hebrides. 
Of course I have a small claim to fame in relation to Melanesia. It was my tupuna Reverend Renata Tangata from the iwi of Ngati Kahu who for reasons best known to himself was encouraged by the Anglican Church to go there as a missionary. He went through Melanesia as a missionary—tangata tuturu no te ao Maori as one would say the original full-blooded Maori—before the Dalmatians discovered the Ninety Mile Beach and the Maori princesses of my iwi Te Aupouri. He went there to spread the gospel and there are some delightful accounts in my iwi Ngati Kahu about the efforts of Renata Tangata who went through Melanesia spreading the gospel on behalf of the Anglican Church. So there is a small connection there that makes me feel that I should not suffer a sliver of doubt that the Melanesian Mission Trust Board does a great job that all New Zealanders ought to be proud of. If that board was not doing that job perish the thought that further burden should fall on our tax base. 
We ought to celebrate those organisations that are dedicating their capital and the income derived from the skilful stewardship of such capital assets to enhancing the lives of others. If there is anything in New Zealand popular culture that has slipped from public gaze it is the status that we should accord those organisations that work because of a mission that is not accurately captured in terms of its value by fiscal numbers or a financial abacus. These people deserve our support. These people are part of only a small organisation that is driving the development of our whanaunga—and I say that in that Maori sense from Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. 
I remind the House that Vanuatu which is a great recipient of this assistance has one of the highest birth rates throughout the Pacific. It has a large population that is highly youthful and we have a responsibility in terms of ensuring that we are good neighbours but that we provide an opportunity for those people. We are providing that opportunity not only through supporting this bill but also through enabling them to come to such places as Otago Bay of Plenty Hawke’s Bay Motueka Blenheim and other such far-flung places whose residents no doubt wake up in the morning and get a shock when they see 20 horticultural workers from Vanuatu wandering around the main street of whatever town it is in Otago. It is not quite what your average Pakeha would wake up in spring autumn or winter and expect to see. However such is the changing nature of our life in Aotearoa that we are bringing such people here. 
It is with some disappointment that I note that when they came here they did not play rugby; they played soccer. I did my best to enrol the Vanuatu mokopuna who stayed with me in the far north in rugby. Unfortunately the iwi of the north taught them only to smoke and not to play rugby but that is another matter. 
So without a sliver of doubt or a modicum of hesitation I stand to support the earlier speakers—in particular Te Ururoa Flavell who no doubt suffered from a paucity of content and who consequently had to use both languages but we will overlook that. Tena koutou. Kia ora tatou katoa. 
Bill read a second time and a third time.