Halbert ShananSHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. Ki a koutou katoa i roto i tēnei Whare ka mihi atu rā ki a koutou. Pai ki te kite i a koutou i tēnei wā ā-kanohi arā ka mihi atu ki a koutou anō. Arā ka mihi au ki ngā tāngata o Tāmaki-makau-rau i tēnei wā ngā kaiārahi o tēnei mate arā ka mihi atu ki a koutou. Ka hoki au ki ngā tāngata Moriori o tēnei kaupapa. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[Madam Speaker greetings. To everyone in this House greetings to you all. It is good to see you in person so I can greet you once again. I also want to acknowledge the leaders in Auckland during these troubled times. I now return to the subject under discussion the Moriori people. Greetings one and all.]Madam Speaker thank you for the opportunity to speak this afternoon. On reflection over this year I've had the opportunity to follow my own whānau in the Mōkai Pātea claim. It's not until you come so close to home and a claim and you follow it through and you become informed and more informed about your own history that you understand the nawe—the hurt—of the past but particularly the sadness of loss of your story your reo and your culture and the hurt that that's created amongst your people.I want to acknowledge this afternoon Maui Solomon. I remember very vividly the whānau when they sat up here in the first reading. I remember vividly the pōwhiri when our Minister Andrew Little welcomed the whānau. They shared their stories and they validated their existence and corrected the past. Maui said Moriori are not Māori. We have similarities to Māori but we're the indigenous people of Rēkohu with our own language our own customs our own traditions and most importantly we have a 600-year history of peacemaking peacekeeping that is probably unparalleled anywhere in the world." That speaks largely to the Moriori people. Today is an acknowledgment of them and I acknowledge them at home and watching hopefully on Parliament TV a very very special day and no doubt they would otherwise be here with us. Today does validate their existence and it's a very important day to acknowledge them as the indigenous people of the Chathams and the waina pono. I speak out loud this afternoon on their behalf to acknowledge their grievance. Their main grievance is here with our Crown. The failure to intervene to end the enslavement of Moriori—failure to protect Moriori from becoming virtually landless following an 1870 Native Land Court decision to award less than 3 percent of the land on Rēkohu to the Moriori. Failure to protect their language—ta rē Moriori—the grievance and the role in the collection and trade of kōimi karāpuna the Moriori ancestral bones or remains that were completely ignored. The role in promoting myth that stigmatised Moriori as racially inferior people that became extinct. I like others and as we acknowledge here in the House grew up to understand that the Moriori people did not exist and that's a sad sad outcome for the culture and identity of particularly the young people the tamariki the rangatahi that grow up wanting to know their identity.Can I acknowledge our Minister Andrew Little for the work that him and his team have done on this particular bill the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. It's been my privilege actually to sit alongside my Māori Affairs Committee—Joseph Mooney across the House Todd Muller Teanau Tuiono and my own colleagues the chair of our committee Tāmati Coffey. Can I also acknowledge our tuahine who has been part of this journey to reviewing this bill Arena Williams who is still with our whānau in Tāmaki-makau-rau. I wasn't able to join our select committee to head over to the Chathams when they visited to hear these particular submissions. That was disappointing because they all spoke highly of the hospitality and manaakitanga of these particular people. They all came back with a couple of notches on their belts to make way for the beautiful kai that they had over on the islands at that particular time. But I also understand that they got to get their steps up as they went and saw the historic sites the meaningful sites to the Moriori people over on the Chathams.It was remiss of me to not acknowledge our MP for Rongotai. It's a little bit of a hoot this afternoon that we called him "Paul Little". He's no little man but he's got a big heart for our Chathams and the people over there. He's been instrumental in helping us as a select committee to both understand the needs of the Moriori people but also the stories of Ngāti Mutunga and the debate that has happened over there. Indeed it's important to resolve those particular issues. But today is an opportunity for us to resolve the grievance that is Moriori the Moriori people alone. I look back to one of the submissions that I did hear online a well-known old boy of a good Māori Catholic boarding school in the Northcote area named Patrick Nicholas a very good man who resides in Tauranga Moana but has whakapapa I understand over to the Moriori people. He too shared his stories and the importance of this particular claim going through that we recognised both the history the language the culture but also enabled Moriori to rebuild themselves for a very prosperous future. He asked us to consider in particular and recommended that the Government initiatives on wider education of the Moriori history and culture is recognised invested in and that we continue to work hard to give them the best hand up to revitalise their language and culture for them. I too acknowledge the work that we have done with the curriculum development of New Zealand histories being taught in our school. But I also acknowledge that there's a lot more work to do to ensure that Moriori stories are encompassed in the curriculum that our young people learn. They are part of our history and we want to ensure that we include that. Patrick also recommended that we support cultural revitalisations and we acknowledge the very taonga in the historic cave that is very important to the Moriori people. And there's plenty of work to do that. Of course our Labour Party in our manifesto acknowledges that we would like to settle historical Treaty claims with the Crown. We're committed to that piece of work and it's been my honour as part of the Māori Affairs Committee to hear both this bill but also some of the others like Ngāti Rangitihi. It's an interesting story and as we look to Part 1 Part 2 and Part 3 of this particular bill we acknowledge the grievance the hurt but more importantly in the second reading that we take another step forward to enhancing the future for the Moriori people for their mokopuna and most of all for the future of their stories their language and their culture. Nō reira e mihi ana ki a koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[Therefore greetings to you. Greetings one and all.]"