Tirikatene Rino: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5611. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Kia ora Mr Chair. I am pleased to speak in this estimates debate. I would like to stick with the Māori development sector which is spearheaded by Te Puni Kōkiri. Te Puni Kōkiri as we know means in Māori “a group of people moving forward”. If you could think of Te Matatini—think of our kapa haka teams—and the precision and the power with which they move that is really what we should envisage from Te Puni Kōkiri.Alas it is very much not that. Te Puni Kōkiri in 2015 is in a shambles. It is in disarray because there is a lack of leadership from the Minister over his ministry. It is evidenced because we had the chief executive and her senior team come to the Māori Affairs Committee earlier in the year. There has been a never-ending restructure happening within Te Puni Kōkiri during the current chief executive officer’s tenure. When we asked the question as to when this restructuring will be completed and when it will have its executive team in place the chief executive said: “Oh by the end of this year.” By the end of this year to get an executive team in place? Prior to that the restructuring had taken 2 years already.What we have is really inept leadership. It goes further than that because we know we understand that there is a breakdown in the relationship between this Minister and the chief executive. It is widely known around town that there is a dysfunctional relationship there so much so that this Minister is now going directly to staff and interfering. He has gone rogue in terms of trying to get his projects done.We have very real concerns about Te Puni Kōkiri. There is no great group moving forward. This is a shambles. It is evidenced by asking what the Minister has actually produced. We have rising unemployment in this country. We have plummeting dairy prices. There is a great deal of concern out there. Families are on the cusp of poverty. This is a very real concern. So what has this Minister and his ministry come up with? Well the first piece of legislation that we have waited for which has come through to this House is a Māori Purposes Bill that updates a private whānau trust in the Gisborne area from last century. It updates it for the 1993 Te Ture Whenua Maori Act which is going to be amended next year. That is the priority that this Minister has set in terms of his legislative programme. That is absolutely appalling.We have also seen the debacle around the Māori Language (Te Reo Māori) Bill. Mr Chair I will not bring you into this debate but members of our select committee are well aware that we have been very charitable I would say to this Minister. We know that there were deep problems with the bill that was sent to us at the Māori Affairs Committee. We have been very accommodating of this Minister to give him every opportunity to try to resurrect the bill and address some of the deep flaws that are contained therein. We are not through the woods yet. It rests on our select committee to complete the job and hopefully we can get there and come up with a workable piece of legislation. But as it stands again it is a failure by this Minister and a lack of leadership. He should just have scrapped it and started again right from the start which is what all of Māoridom was talking about and telling him to do.Can I go on to Whānau Ora. The Minister who just resumed her seat the Hon Paula Bennett said that Whānau Ora is working. Well I would hope that Whānau Ora is working because in the first 4 years of Whānau Ora there was $137.6 million spent on it a third of which over $40 million was spent on administration and research and evaluation—$40 million. So I would really hope that Whānau Ora is working because that is an incredible amount of money which the Auditor-General actually pointed out should have been going directly to whānau in need which is what the kaupapa of Whānau Ora is all about.I could go on to Treaty settlements. I am looking forward to progressing the first readings of some settlement legislation that is coming through the House tomorrow. That is a positive piece of work that we are doing as a select committee. We are not all negative. We do actually work cohesively together to progress that very important work. Thank you.