Flavell Te UruroaHon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker ka mihi ki a koe i te tīmatanga mai o tēnei tau hōu otirā ki a tātau e hui nei i tēnei rā ngā mihi o te tau hou ki a tātou katoa.I a au e tū nei hei whaiwhai haere i te āhuatanga o ngā tikanga o te marae ka mihi ki ngā mate huhua kua pā mai ki a tātau he pērā anō te āhuatanga ki a au e hia kē nei ngā mate kua pā mai ki a au ki taku rohe i ngā wiki tata kua hipa ake. Ka tangi ake ki a rātau ko tāku ko te kī haere koutou ki te pō uriuri ki te pō tangotango ki reira moe ai okioki ai koutou ki te pō.Te hunga ora e hui nei i tēnei ahiahi tēnā koutou tēnā koutou kia ora tātau katoa.[Thank you Mr Speaker I acknowledge you at the start of this new year but at the same time my compliments of the New Year to us all gathered here today.As I stand here and in terms of following marae customs I pay a tribute to the many deaths that have affected us. I experienced that situation as well where many deaths occurred in my electorate in weeks just past. I mourn and say to them: go forth to the deep dark night; sleep and rest there in the void.To us the living assembled here this afternoon I acknowledge and salute you collectively and commend us all.]Kia ora Mr Speaker and a happy New Year. As I said before I pay respects to those who have passed on and there have been many in the last couple of weeks or so that have affected me. Unfortunately I have had to travel to about eight tangi since the start of the year. So I think about those people as we think about a new year. Let them rest. I come back to the noise and shenanigans of Parliament day one 2017. I wish us all well for the future of this year despite our political affiliations.I want also at the time when we reflect on Waitangi to acknowledge the statement from the Rt Hon Bill English as the new Prime Minister. I have not had too much of an opportunity to congratulate him on his office taking up the reins and also importantly on offering the Māori Party the opportunity to stand as a partner with them by invitation as it happens to improve the lives of Aotearoa New Zealand the Māori people of this country as we should do as we came away from Waitangi just yesterday.I want also to acknowledge the people of Tūwharetoa and Ngāti Manunui in particular. The day before Waitangi I was at Ngati Tūwharetoa at Pūkawa the founding place of the Kīngitanga Movement. It was a wonderful occasion with Māori and Pākehā all together by the lake at a beautiful concert. Also yesterday there were the people of Ngāi Tahu Kāti Māmoe and Waitaha at Tamatea Wharenui Ōtākou Marae in Dunedin. Some of my colleagues were there yesterday from both sides of the House. It was a wonderful occasion with 200-plus people there celebrating the Treaty and what it should mean for us.The day as everybody has said has offered us an opportunity to reflect on the promise of the Treaty. It was an opportunity for us to reflect on what has happened to us as a nation to question whether we have lived up to all the expectations of our tupuna on both sides of the Treaty and what they fought for and I suppose to think about the whole notion of the Treaty which is about rights and obligations which we continually work towards in the Treaty settlement process and in this House.In that respect I support the statements from the Prime Minister in respect of the progress being made by the Hon Chris Finlayson and moving forward settlements at that pace has certainly brought a new invigoration to Māoridom allowing them to become economic giants in this country. We as the Māori Party absolutely support that.It is a future that in the Māori Party is expressed by way of our kaupapa tuku iho. Since the founding fathers and mothers of the Māori Party namely Dame Tariana Turia and Sir Pita Sharples we have always talked about the founding kaupapa of our party as being hugely important.But I want to divert just for a minute in respect of Waitangi Day. I sat here rather intrigued at some of the statements from some people about the Treaty of Waitangi and what it means or did not mean for them. It seems a huge contradiction to me that people will go to Waitangi talk up Waitangi talk about what it is all about but not support Treaty legislation at all—in fact attempt to get rid of Treaty legislation. I mean come on! You are either going to do it or you are not. So do not talk up the Treaty do not talk about rights and obligations etc. when on the other hand what you do is actively vote against legislation about the Treaty. One party in particular does that time and time and time again.I also find it a little bit contradictory that people will go to marae like Rātana make all grand statements of plans about what they are going to do for Māoridom and talk about their ability to understand tikanga but go there and say: Oh I'll send you the koha down the line." Well come on! That is not how tikanga works. Do not say that you are going to give the credit card over and that you will transfer it by credit card. That is not how tikanga goes. So I find it hugely contradictory that some people can come into this House and talk up their Māoriness talk up what it means for them to be Māori and yet violate tikanga on a regular basis.As I said on a number of occasions last year that is where the country has got to wake up to the agenda by at least one party that is almost Trump-like. What they do is they roll out—and it is starting to happen already—the anti-Māori flavour the anti-Māori gun. That is what they pull out. Immigration—anybody who is not a Kiwi oh you are up for it. So look out Māoridom; the person is still here their party is still here and they have still got the same policies that they have been going on about. It is going to come around the corner. This campaign is going to be huge on anti-Māori. That is what it is going to be about. That is a disappointment. Having just one day yesterday—being at a place where everybody celebrates the Treaty as Treaty partners should do with an element of respect and integrity is what we hope we will stick by throughout the election campaign.I want to say—and I want to express this today—that the Māori Party feels passionate hugely passionate about whānau and pleased that our new Prime Minister has spoken up about Whānau Ora and our key policy. Why? Because whānau is about tamariki. It is about our mokopuna. It is about the descendants who are coming. That is why we picked it up from the very start. That is what it was all about—for us to focus policy on our families on our tamariki and on our mokopuna. Ko ngā tamariki he taonga nō te ao. [It is the children indeed who are the treasures of the world.] That is how it should be.So as the Māori Party in terms of Whānau Ora our reality is that 11500 whānau every year have benefited from Whānau Ora. I was really pleased to hear the statement from the Prime Minister up at Ōrākei when he said apparently: "actually any whanau has some spark of hope which we can support which we can grow because that is who in the end fixes the whanau. It is not the department of social welfare it is not the Ministry of Health. Much as we have good intentions"—he says—"the truth is we have not realised the promise of our tamariki yet of protection from violence safe community a good education and some type of support that encourages aspiration and not dependency. For many we have but not for everyone. And for the ones where we haven't met it they were not just a cost to the system. They represent a failure and in my time"—the Rt Hon Bill English says—"30 years of public policy whānau ora represents the next or the best the truest the most honest approach to dealing with those supporting those who we haven't dealt with."That is an important statement. And although Mr Peters reflected on Whānau Ora and help to our whānau actually he should talk to his sister about Whānau Ora because she would probably be one of the greatest advocates of Whānau Ora in the Tai Tokerau. So he should talk to his elder sister and show respect to her—that is what he should do. Those are the sorts of things that we are on about. We are on about support for whānau. We are talking about safe communities. We want our whānau to be protected from violence and that is why our focus is going to be on a few things going into this year.We are proud of the achievements we have been able to move forward during 2016—things like helping Māori land owners regardless of whether they have large or small shares to develop their land through the Whenua Māori Fund to establish the Māori Land Service to support iwi to lead the revitalisation of Te Reo Māori and to commemorate our history the New Zealand Land Wars for instance and to date we have secured a fair bit of money to commemorate those sorts of occasions.But we have done more than that. Just to reflect on how the Treaty was supposed to work—the amount of money that the Prime Minister referred to earlier regarding benefit increases the first one in 42 years that increase came about because of the Ministerial Committee on Poverty set up by the Hon Dame Tariana Turia which she co-chaired with the Hon Bill English in their time. These are where those ideas have come from—from working together as colleagues and as partners to find solutions. That is what we have done—not just lifting the benefit by that amount of money for those who are struggling but things like warming up our houses and allowing our kids up to the age of 12 or 13 to get to the doctors at no cost. We lifted the age. Those are the things that come about from the partnership that was envisioned by the Treaty of Waitangi. We do not just talk about it; we actually do it. That is our promise.To all our Māori Party supporters I say: arā te kōrero ki te hoe! [there indeed is the aphorism to the paddle!] Paddles up get ready to roll because this is election year and this is when we come back and take those Māori seats home."