Tirikatene Rino: Māori Television Service (Te Aratuku Whakaata Irirangi Māori) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Māori Television Service (Te Aratuku Whakaata Irirangi Māori) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14930. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I am pleased to take a call in this second reading of the Māori Television Service (Te Aratuku Whakaata Irirangi Māori) Amendment Bill. I support this bill. Can I at the outset acknowledge our matua our late chief the Hon Parekura Horomia who championed the establishment of Māori Television when he was Minister of Māori Affairs. Māori Television definitely is a lasting legacy that he has left.I know that all of us and all of Aotearoa in fact are very proud of Māori Television. It is by default our New Zealand State broadcaster. You know when we watch shows likeNative AffairsTe KāeaCodeTōku Reo andHōmai Te Pakipaki those shows have been added to the lexicon of—Hon Tau Henare:Kai Time on the Road.RINO TIRIKATENE:Kai Time on the Road. There are so many great shows that this humble small Māori Television station produces. You know talk about what it can produce relative to the relatively meagre resources it has to work with compared with its very large commercial counterparts. I think it does an exceptional job. Along with acknowledging Parekura I do acknowledge the current and previous management and staff of Māori Television for the exceptional job that they did and they do and also in terms of the programming they create and that we get to enjoy when they broadcast over the network.I support this bill. I am very proud to be a member of the Māori Affairs Committee and I do acknowledge the member Nicky Wagner from Christchurch Central my colleague over there on the other side of the House because we are like a whānau. There was another special moment—two moments actually—that occurred this morning in our committee in terms of the opening. I will not share them—oh I might share it with the House actually because believe it or not we open with a karakia which is great. That is our custom. That is our tikanga. So we do open with a karakia and we usually share the job around. This time our dear tuahine over there volunteered to open for us. We are multi-denominational multiparty Māori Pākehā—you name it. That is us. We are all there for the kaupapa of the Māori Affairs Committee. We held hands when we had our karakia this morning to start and to conclude.Hon Tau Henare: What?RINO TIRIKATENE: Absolutely—Nanaia Mahuta was linked with Tau Henare. We had that circle we had that bond—the band of brothers and sisters—as we kicked off our Māori Affairs Committee and the important mahi that we do. In all seriousness it is special and important mahi that we do. I am pleased with the work we did at the committee level with the contribution from my colleague Clare Curran but also with the contributions from everybody because this is an important piece of legislation. It has been a long time in the making.The independent review that was programmed into the 2003 Act was started 5 years ago. We are nearly at the 10th anniversary of Māori Television and we are just now implementing in legislation the recommendations of that review. So it definitely has taken a while but we are nearly there. We have to get there. We are under urgency atthe moment and we need to get this legislation passed because of the digital switch-over that is happening in about a week’s time. So we have got to get all the ducks in a row for Māori Television.Not all of the recommendations of the independent review were picked up in the bill itself but a fair amount of them have been. I specifically refer to the amendments in the substituted section 8 in clause 7 which further refine the language of the function of the Māori Television Service. The main amendments in the bill are concerned with the management rights to the spectrum which are now vested in Te Pūtahi Pāoho. That is a very interesting development because I would have thought that those management rights could just be conferred on the Māori Television Service. I think that Television New Zealand can manage all of its part of the spectrum and make all of its decisions. I do not know; maybe they think they are giving too much power to the Māoris by giving those rights to Māori Television. Instead the responsibility for the management of the digital spectrum—4G the new flash high-definition multi-platform digital channels and other things that are yet to be developed—rests with Te Pūtahi Pāoho.It is true that we have raised concerns around the composition of that body. I think that too often we get pieces of legislation where we like to prescribe a hell of a—excuse me—where we prescribe—Iain Lees-Galloway: An awful lot.RINO TIRIKATENE: —an awful lot of rules and processes particularly when it comes to Māori bodies and Māori entities. This bill is a classic example because schedule 1 of the Act lists the organisations that make up Te Pūtahi Pāoho and through our inquiries as a select committee it was clear that some of those organisations were not operating. They were defunct. Some were deregistered from the incorporated societies register. So it needed to be cleaned up because there is statutory recognition of those organisations they have huge responsibility to appoint members and those members of the Te Pūtahi Pāoho body have very important statutory roles to play. They are the partners to the Crown in terms of Māori broadcasting and the relationship around Māori Television. So it was I think worthwhile that we made those inquiries. I guess initially the concern was that that is not part of the bill but Te Pūtahi Pāoho is a fundamental part of the Act and the bill so I think we really had to make those inquiries to make sure that we got to the bottom of the composition and that it was tidied up.To conclude we do support this bill. We are looking forward to going through the remaining stages. It has been a long time in the making in the running but I guess we are all looking forward to this new phase for Māori Television.Before I conclude I would just like to make some remarks about the chief executive or lack of for Māori Television. All I would say is that we like to talk about a waka but you cannot have a waka without a kaihautū. You have got to have that chief standing up against the wind directing his paddlers which way to go. This is an important new chapter for Māori Television and it is really important that it has its kaihautū in place to navigate it through these waters at this time. That is all I would say. I hope we can get the chief executive in place as soon as possible. I am looking forward to celebrating 10 years of Māori Television next year and many more to come thereafter. I support this bill. Kia ora tātou.