Tirikatene Rino: Te Pire mō Te Reo Māori / Māori Language Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Te Pire mō Te Reo Māori / Māori Language Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 07 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10355. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Kia ora Mr Chair and tenā koe e Te Heamana. Tēnā koutou ngā rangatira o Te Komiti. He hōnore nui tēnei e taki tū ana ki te tautoko i tēnei pire. Tēnā koe e Te Minita.[Greetings esteemed members of the Committee. This is a great honour as I rise to endorse this bill.Well done Minister.]I am pleased to take my first call and I certainly hope that we do not bring closure to this very important Committee stage when it is such a very important bill and there is so much more that I am sure I and my colleagues around the Chamber would like to share. In particular I acknowledge my whanaunga Tutehounuku Korako for his story. If I may continue on that kōrero it was a very different situation down in the south in terms of the history of Te Reo Māori. It was very very sparsely spoken by virtue of just the way that the south was settled and the fact that we were intermarried with settlers quite a long time pre-Treaty. So it is very important that we acknowledge all the different histories and I thank all the members for sharing their particular stories around their different whānau. I would love to go on and tell some more stories from my own particular point of view or my own whānau but time does not permit.I do stand to endorse and support this bill. However I want to cut to the chase. In terms of speaking in support of Supplementary Order Paper 164 yes the Minister has put through an acknowledgment. Granted that this bill was introduced way back in July 2014 and we have had numerous reviews in other committees that have shaped the bill to what it is now and now at this eleventh hour we have got a Supplementary Order Paper that has come in and it puts a belated Crown acknowledgment of the poor treatment towards Te Reo Māori. I do regret that because this was canvassed at the Māori Affairs Committee—or at the times when I sat in on the committee. This has been a longstanding issue. Certainly in anything to do with any Māori Treaty issue there is the importance of acknowledging the past but also receiving an apology. I feel we have gone only halfway. We have gone only halfway when really if we are ushering in a new era for Te Reo Māori—this is a new way forward as the Minister says—then this is an opportunity for us to get things straight right now.We have got Supplementary Order Paper 165 on the Table here from Nanaia Mahuta. Why not have that apology? I know that the Minister for Māori Development and Minister Finlayson have said: “Oh no. It is only just for specific iwi. We will save the apologies for them.” Well no because this bill is for all Māori and throughout the bill it specifically refers to iwi and Māori. It is all-inclusive. That is not to demean the specific historical Treaty settlements of particular iwi or hapū but this is for all Māori. I do hope that we might be able as a Committee to endorse and add the apology so we can make the bill complete and so that we can all move forward under this new bill to a new era of support and revitalisation for our Reo Māori.Can I also just make one reference to the fact that this bill incorporates two strategies: a Crown strategy and a Te Mātāwai - driven strategy. We can have all of the most elaborately appointed groups from all the different sectors of Māori society and they can all come together and have a big hui and a big talkfest every so often. We can pour money into that particular entity and we can talk until the cows come home about different strategies. But what I am really concerned about is how we operationalise these strategies and what difference these strategies will actually make what actions will flow from these strategies and what measurable outcomes we expect from these strategies so that we can actually see a tangible difference on the ground amongst the whānau and amongst the hapū who are on the marae puta noa right throughout the country so that we can see the impact that this piece of legislation does have.So yes legislation as the Minister said is just a piece of paper but there is legislative clout here that we are getting in creating these bodies. But I am very much interested in the impact that this bill will have. A lot of that comes down to the resourcing that the Minister can get to support our Reo and to support these structures and to support the programmes and the implementation and the operationalisation—