Abel SteveGENERAL DEBATESTEVE ABEL (Green): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business.Thank you Mr Speaker. We have the extraordinary privilege just recently—in fact on Sunday and Monday—to drive down to the Waikato from Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland. A group of us from the Greens were going down there for the koroneihana. On the way we visited Waikeria Prison. As you drive through the landscape of our nation with some idea of the blanket of history across that nation you cannot help but get a sense of each turn of each hill of each river and of each place name as having some sort of reference to or echo of the history of this nation: Redoubt Road Ōrākau the Great South Road Cameron Road. These places down as you enter the Waikato when you know something of the history of the land confiscation there can't help but make us think of what went on and the means by which we ended up in this country.I as a Pākehā New Zealander have a great sense of being blessed to have been born in this country. And that blessing stems not from the benefits and the privilege I enjoy in our society which are real. There is a sense that those benefits are achieved by two means in this country either by the means of the founding agreement on which our country was built Te Tiriti o Waitangi or by the means of that other thing that also happened here which was the raupatu the confiscation. By hook or by crook or by deceit by the bayonet and by the musket that land was taken from those who currently resided there at the time tangata whenua Māori.My journey to recognising the great value and privilege I enjoy to have been born in this country and the appreciation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi comes from knowing that every time we lean into Te Tiriti we actually assert a principle of nationhood that is based on legitimacy. And every time we choose to not lean into that Treaty we choose a version of nationhood that is based on the spoils of war in a sense.When we do not know the history of our own country it is a terrible barrier to being a New Zealander in the deepest sense. It is not only a fault of any of us but it is kind of a responsibility of us as parliamentarians to make sure we correct that failing. But ignorance of our history is a threat to us not repeating the errors of that history the era of taking from of diminishing of fearing of denying and of undermining Māori.I want to say that right now we have a poignant conversation going on and that conversation rests on the idea that somehow those people who my ancestors first encountered in 1769—or earlier if you were of Dutch ancestry—that somehow the sovereignty of those people who were here was ceded. It is somewhat nonsensical to consider that that is a possibility. And many who have considered this at length recognise that those words in that founding document that uphold tino rangatiratanga the highest chieftainship of the hapū of Māori at the point at which it is clear that the understanding of the 500 rangatira who signed our founding agreement were certainly not giving up their sovereignty. When we lean into that idea of Māori self-determination it gives us as tangata Tiriti those who are the true beneficiaries of the Treaty a sense of nationhood and a sense that we can potentially lie contentedly in our bed in the land we call home.I want to end with the great words of Moana Jackson: I actually have a sense that there are enough Pākehā people in this country … who see in the Treaty the aspiration for something better than one party perpetually dominating another that promises made in a document signed by their ancestors must have been somewhat credible and that credibility must rely in a sense of what I call rightness. The Treaty to me has never been about Treaty rights; it's always been about the rightness that comes from people accepting their obligations to each other. And that [is] a profound and visionary base upon which to build a country." Toitū Te Tiriti."