Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It is a pleasure to speak to the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill for the Māori and cultural sector. The annual review was wide ranging and it covered quite a lot of service areas under the umbrella of the Ministry of Māori Development. I want to start with the big picture from the annual review and look at the agency's impact for Māori and then hone in on a few specific points.Firstly under this Government the life expectancy for Māori has improved. The gap in life expectancy between Māori and non-Māori is decreasing. Between 2005 and 2007 a non-Māori was expected to live 8 years longer than a Māori person. Well that has reduced. It has reduced down to 7 years. We know life expectancy at birth is 77 years for Māori females and 73 years for Māori males. In comparison non-Māori females are expected to live 84 years and non-Māori males 80 years. Basically life expectancy has improved with what we have been doing.One of the reasons for that is our attention to rheumatic fever which we know significantly influences Māori children generally—teenagers and younger—more than others. This is a strange immune condition that basically attacks the heart valves. I recall seeing young children who might have been short of breath. You have always got to have in the back of your mind—yes it could be asthma or they might be unfit but what if they have got rheumatic fever and in fact they are getting congestive heart failure? I know I have seen in the past that when a child unexpectedly died they were thought to be just unfit. In fact they had rheumatic fever and they were building up fluid on the lungs and they died. We have really applied ourselves to rheumatic fever and what we are finding here is a significant reduction. We have dropped from 97 cases in 2012 to 43 cases in 2016. That is a 56 percent reduction.One of the explanations through the review for why Māori life expectancy has improved is our attention to rheumatic fever. If we talk about life expectancy and give it a number of years that is just a number. That does not actually talk about the quality of life. We know that quality of life is related and correlated to incomes. We know that the higher an education a person has generally the better their quality of life. So education is a key enabler—it was mentioned by my colleague recently—for Māori and this was discussed through the annual review as well. We can talk to some of the high points in that through the whole education spectrum.More Māori pre-schoolers are participating in early childhood education up from 88 percent in 2008 to 94 percent in the 2016 review. Again NCEA level 2 for 18-year-olds is better for Māori and this came through the review also. It has improved from 62 percent to 72 percent. The Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative has also done very well. In 2015 there were 1800 participants. In 2016 there were 2500. In my area I actually went to the launch of the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative in 2014. I was a candidate at the time. McKay Electrical a wonderful Whangarei firm led by Lindsay Faithfull its managing director was the first firm to take on a Māori and Pasifika trade apprentice. I actually caught up with Lindsay this afternoon and asked him how that had gone. He said it had gone exceptionally well. The apprentice graduated last year the firm was pleased and he is now out in the workforce. It is really a testimony to success certainly in Whangarei as well.So the quality of life is important. Education is an enabler. What is also an enabler is settlements. We have been given leeway to just briefly talk under the Office of Treaty Settlements—of course settlements are important. They are a really key enabler and a key enabler for Māori. I need to highlight that the Crown has signed 82 deeds of settlement with iwi and this represents claims covering 70 percent of New Zealand's land interests. I mean the figures go on—89 percent of all iwi groups are recognised by mandate. We have signed 56 deeds of settlement. So this is a good story.I want to just talk to my colleague here because he brought into account the cultural part to this sector as well—the cultural arts sector. I just want to briefly talk to Hundertwasser which is progressing very nicely. We have been working very hard on that over the past year and we have ongoing meetings over the next few weeks. But what I want to comment on is that its full name is actually the Hundertwasser Wairau Māori Arts Centre—hundertwasser being 100 waters and wairau also being 100 waters. I just want to indicate that this is going to be a really important economic driver for Te Tai Tokerau for Northland and we are making good progress and are expecting big things. Thank you.