Fox MaramaMARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Ā tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā ka tū ake au ki te mihi atu ki Te Whare ki a koutou e hui nei i tēnei wā te whakarongo ki te nekehanga o tēnei o ngā pire. Nāu tēnei pire nā koutou tēnei pire! I ngā marama i ngā tau kua hipa atu nā koutou tēnei pire i kawe i tautohetohe ki a wai? Ki Te Karauna! Nā reira kai te mihi atu ki a koutou me ō koutou kaha ki te whakapau werawera te tutuki i ngā kōrero katoa o te pire nei koirā te mea tuatahi ki a au. Nā reira e Te Whare me ōku hoa mahi o Te Komiti Whiriwhiri Take Māori kai te mihi atu ki a koutou me ō koutou kaha te āta wānanga i ngā take kai roto i te pire tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa. [Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise to acknowledge the House and you who are gathered here and listening to the progress of this one of the bills. This bill belongs to you; it is yours. You bore this bill in the months and years past. You debated it and with whom? With the Crown. And so I salute you collectively in terms of your efforts and the sweat shed to complete all the talk about this bill which is indeed foremost to me. Therefore I commend you the House and my colleagues of the Māori Affairs Committee for your efforts and diligent considerations of the issues in this bill. Well done; I commend you all.] You know I am not sure that I can be as conciliatory as the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations this morning. Hon Member: Really?MARAMA FOX: I know it is a hard thing and I have thought about this long and I am not sure that I can be as soft-hearted. I have tried. I have tried to chill my pill for the last couple of days but there are some things in this bill that were well debated during the committee stages. Every single part of this bill has been negotiated by people who know more about it than I do. Every single part of this bill has been negotiated by the members of Te Atiawa and Taranaki with the Office of Treaty Settlements—with their Crown negotiators—and I tell you over the years of these settlements you know our people have got better at negotiating. We are pretty good at that sort of stuff. We have been negotiating for 175 years over how to have our rights observed in the law. The Crown has also got pretty good at negotiating and that is why we have this debate about the right of first refusal (RFR). You know when you look back at the Kāi Tahu settlement they got a geographic RFR over practically the whole island—any land in the whole of Te Wai Pounamu that might come up at some time just maybe. We have got an RFR—yay! The Crown has gotten better at that now so now you have got to have a list: Show me which bits of land you want." And then when they found out when they went to go and purchase some land that actually the title was wrong and they thought it was the council but it turned out to be the Government—well we cannot guarantee that any list that is out there is going to be correct. So we debated long and hard over whether to have a geographic RFR as well as a list RFR and can I say that the time has probably come for the whole RFR issue to be reviewed—the how and when. We have found out that actually there are a whole lot of stages before land gets offered back to iwi if it is found to be available and one of them is to offer it to a charity—a charity any charity. It could be the "Fox Whānau Charity" or the "Looking After All Those Sick Kids in the Fox Whānau House Charity". It could get offered back to them first before it is offered back to iwi and I find that quite despicable. I do not see the point in that at all. So I think it is time to review it completely. However all of those things were debated and negotiated by the whānau of Te Atiawa one of whom you acknowledged this morning Mr Deputy Speaker. But there is also Peter Moeahu Wikitōria Keenan Grant—ah I am going to say that wrong—Hon Member: Knuckey.MARAMA FOX: Knuckey—thank you. I was going to say "Kentucky" but no—sorry Grant. There is also Keith Holswich Liana Poutū and Hēmi Sundgren—I am sorry I am really bad at Pākehā names. People mix me up with Marama Davidson all the time so I sort of get it. But you know if I echo the words of Te Whiti o Rongomai he would say that we celebrate the forbearance the patience the stout-heartedness of the iwi and their negotiators in getting to this point. If there was an issue if there was a point to be made or if there was something that through the first reading the second reading or the Committee stage needed to be talked about then surely it could have gone back to them. Tomorrow we could have been celebrating a long hard-fought win that started with the people of Atiawa being accused of treason which started under the Suppression of Rebellion Act. It started because they did not fight against the Crown or the Crown's forces but they simply fought for house and home and refused to sell their lands and in doing so they were accused of treason under the Suppression of Rebellion Act and the soldiers were wheeled in. That is what we are talking about. All of those lands confiscated and people thrown unjustly into prison and held killed and taken and after all of this time of trying to have that grievance settled we come to the eleventh hour. This is why I am so upset. I do not care what little thing you might be pulling out to justify the stunt that was played in this House. Thirty years of negotiations—Rt Hon Winston Peters: This is showboating. We know more about this than you do.MARAMA FOX: Is that right? Tell them that because this is what I will tell you Mr Peters. This is straight from the chairperson Liana Poutū: "We were absolutely angry at the start but now we are just disappointed."—[Interruption]—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!MARAMA FOX: —"More than that New Zealand First have opposed the bill. What we're hearing is it's a technical thing but we don't know much about it. The fact is their actions are disingenuous and to pull not only our bill but five at such a late stage without any explanation to the iwi whose bills they are is really disingenuous and despicable. If they actually have a substantive issue that they are opposed to in the bill I'd rather know about it and I'd be happy for it to be pulled to sort that issue out. They've pulled it without fronting up to us at all and the five busloads of people ready to go down there and that's not easy—a logistical episode." Rt Hon Winston Peters: Stop showboating. You pulled the bill.MARAMA FOX: I did not. I objected. I want it known in the Hansard of this House that I objected to that day being cancelled strongly. And I sent a message with your whip to tell you exactly—Rt Hon Winston Peters: So did we.MARAMA FOX: You did not. Showboating and stunting you know very much about Mr Peters.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Take a seat please I say to the member. Let us just remember what we are doing here today. Members will have a chance to speak. Having a constant barrage across the House and then a response to that does not do anything for the dignity of what we are trying to do here today.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I respect that view and so does my party but this is a debate and at this stage it cannot be a barrage or a rewriting of history and abuse of another party when we will demonstrate—Hon Members: How is this a point of order?Rt Hon Winston Peters: We do not mind them raising it for just one or two sentences but to turn it into a barrage is not going to be tolerated by us because it is utterly false.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I do not need any assistance in respect of that. The point that I made earlier was that the parties concerned will have their own speaking slot in which to state their case. Interjection is something that is part of a robust debate—that is fine—but let us just remember what we are doing here and let us retain the decorum of the House.MARAMA FOX: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. Yes I take it—it is noted. I am going back to try to chill my pill again because I do get a little bit upset about this and I am reading not my words but the words of the chairman who was also upset: "This potential delay is messing with people's livelihoods their ability to move forward and tantamount to a political party trampling on our mana." Not my words—their words. So we come back to the issue of the bill. We are here to support the passage of this bill through the House so that we can move on so that the whānau of Te Atiawa can finally be able to have that redress recognised so that they can finally have the opportunity to correct the imbalance that continues to exist and so that they can finally take hold of the reins of rangatiratanga—supported through the redress of the Crown both cultural and financial—and move on and move past and offer back to the country what we have all recognised is one of the biggest koha to this country of Māoridom. It is one of the largest koha to this country of Māoridom to accept such a pittance—to accept such a pittance—for the great injustice that was carried out first here and then around the rest of the country. And to our whānau I feel the weight of it. This is not the made-up crocodile-tear grandstanding that we are accused of because we feel the weight of it—the weight of the injustice. Your time is here and I wish that it could be settled tomorrow but we will have to wait. But we have waited such a long time we are resilient and strong people and we can wait a little bit longer. Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker."