Henare PeeniHon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. We said on this side of the House that we will continue to interrogate the words in this bill and we will oppose this bill all the way through the stages of the House. Now I want to touch on a number of those clauses within this bill that we will be looking towards interrogating as we come to the committee of the whole House. I also want to state here it plays into what's already been made clear—well actually it's quite unclear from this Government—and I want to draw the House's attention to clause 6 in the bill.The reason I want to do that is what we've heard from the ACT Party in this House is a Treaty principles bill and that they want to have this discussion and then we hear from the Prime Minister that they won't be supporting that bill beyond a particular stage of the bill. But what we read in this particular bill that we are debating here this evening is subterfuge. We are reading in here that this Government is already tinkering with Te Tiriti o Waitangi and its principles and it's laid out clearly in clause 6.This is a Government where the Prime Minister stands up in Waitangi and in front of everyone in this country and says to everybody No no we won't be supporting the Treaty principles bill; we are here to work with Māori and we will continue to support Te Tiriti o Waitangi." Clause 6 of this particular bill that we are debating here tonight is clear subterfuge and straight-out play by this particular Government to make sure that they can continue to tinker with Te Tiriti o Waitangi.When we were in power we made it clear that Te Tiriti o Waitangi must continue to lead the Māori health aspiration. It's riddled all the way through the whakamaua which the Minister has already referred to this evening. It's already in the GPS—the Government policy statement—and we wanted to make sure that it was throughout the entire system. What we are seeing from this bill and this Government is a clear play to change Te Tiriti o Waitangi without even going to the community to talk about it; without even allowing whānau right up and down the country to have their say on this particular bill.Andy Foster: What are you talking about?Hon PEENI HENARE: Now the members on that side of the House say we are talking about it right now. No they're not; they're only taking one-minute calls. I encourage them to get up let's debate these clauses in detail Mr Foster—in detail—and make sure that we can have that robust conversation. I can tell that side of the House that all of us on this side of the House have spoken to the communities who these changes impact the most: Māori communities—Māori communities—even Pasifika communities. A known fact amongst our people: for those aged under 25 just over 50 percent of those people who are Māori are also Pacific. It impacts our communities right up and down this country and this side of the House knows the sentiments and the feelings and indeed the wisdom towards this bill far better than the other side of the House.We heard it already that "We received the mandate in the last election." Well—Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Not from Māori.Hon PEENI HENARE: —not from Māori they didn't; not from Pacific they didn't. That's clear as day to each and every one of us on this side of the House. That side of the House might choose to sit in ignorance and choose to sit there with blinkers on to the actual needs of Māori. I want to reiterate that point.The Prime Minister has stood up publicly in this House saying he will vote down a Treaty principles bill. Yet right here is a clear example of this Government tinkering and changing Te Tiriti o Waitangi to suit their aggressive Māori policy agenda.Dana Kirkpatrick: We're not changing Te Tiriti. How is it changing Te Tiriti?Hon PEENI HENARE: Read clause 6—read clause 6. I encourage those members to get up and speak to it and explain why they are going to be changing this.This lends itself further to the need for the Waitangi Tribunal to be able to prosecute this case and indeed offer recommendations for the consideration of any policy and anything to do with Māori health moving forward. It's clear from this Government that they choose not to listen to those experts. Some people think that the Waitangi Tribunal is simply there to make recommendations and even—I've heard calls from the other side of the House that they are biased. I can speak to much of the work of the Waitangi Tribunal and say this: not only are their recommendations well considered they also act as a body to store knowledge to store information and to store statistics relevant to the points that we are making here today with this bill and the cases in front of the tribunal. What we're not seeing from this Government is a commitment to looking towards those recommendations of the tribunal yet we heard just now from the Minister that he has met with whānau and iwi right across the country. Well I put to the House that that actually hasn't been the case; that when we established Te Aka Whai Ora—very soon we'll be rolling out the list of all the people we met with from Māori health providers communities experts not just Māori health experts but health experts from right across the world in fact—who all called for Te Aka Whai Ora to be built. Yet when we look towards the diary programme of the Minister and even his colleagues with respect to this matter we can't find the kinds of connection that they claim to be making here in the House.We're going to go further into the bill as we look towards some of the words that are changed and have been changed or will be proposed to be changed. We were quite clear when we established Te Aka Whai Ora that it had to be a "must"; that it had to be driven to make sure that they deliver for the people that they serve. What we've read in this particular bill are some changes to "may". Now for most people that might not sound like much but "must" and "may"—there are huge differences there.The Minister in his speech for the second reading also spoke about the iwi-Māori partnership boards and supporting decentralisation. In this repeal bill what it's proposing is that the iwi-Māori partnership boards can only be constructed or approved by the Director-General of Health. Under the current bill as it stands right now before this repeal actually there was a process there to go through Te Aka Whai Ora—the Māori Health Authority—to continue to consult and to make sure that in order for it to be recognised it had to go through that process.What this bill is proposing to do is cut out the voice of Māori and the recognition of themselves to be able to say "I am an iwi and I want to be an Iwi-Māori Partnership Board to continue to serve my people."—and this is the right process to be able to do that. What this bill does however is actually just say "No no we're going to put it in the hands of only the Director-General of Health." Now while I respect the Director-General of Health—the current one and indeed the one that we worked with in order to establish Te Aka Whai Ora Sir Ashley Bloomfield who was hugely supportive of the work that we did for the health reform and of course for Te Aka Whai Ora—what we're seeing here is a continual silencing of the Māori voice as we look towards things like the Iwi-Māori Partnership Board that the Minister and that side of the House pretend to commit themselves to and pretend to support. It's just not true and it's playing out not only in their words because it's contradictory to what's being proposed here in the bill. We will also go on to interrogate the Minister in his speech talking about the simple repatriation of Māori staff or staff into the health system again—or into Health New Zealand or Te Manatū Hauora.What the Minister just described there is the status quo. It's simply the status quo. It's going exactly back to where it was. What happened when it was like that? The health statistics for Māori continued to be poor. The outcomes for Māori continue to be poor. The Minister in the House here has just told everyone it will go back to the status quo. I can tell the Minister who claims to have met with the whānau to say that he will care for them and look after them I can say that actually many of them left the status quo because it wasn't working. They were going to something new and to try something new that will continue to provide for the aspirations of Māori health.Now sadly from the other side of the House all we've heard is the status quo. The status quo on steroids can only tell me one thing: that it's going to go backwards even faster—the status quo on steroids tells me it is going to go backwards even faster.The other side of the House talk about targets. We will continue to hold this Government to account. The Minister himself spoke about a $50 million fund to lift the rates of immunisation across the country. When I asked him about that matter not a couple of weeks ago he spoke about a data system. That's all he spoke about a data system. He didn't tell us how and how much we are going to lift the immunisation rates of our tamariki—in the House on record when asked about it he talked about funding a data system. Tell me how that lifts in a practical way the immunisation rates of Māori. We continue to oppose this bill and we will continue to interrogate clause by clause."