Moroney Sue: Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill — In Committee 
Moroney Sue: Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill — In Committee 
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SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise to speak to clause 6 of the Hamilton City Council (Parana Park) Land Vesting Bill. This is an interesting clause because it not only declares the land to be a recreational reserve rather than a historical reserve—and I know that the Local Government and Environment Committee debated that at some length by the looks of the report from the committee—but also recognises in legislation for the first time the park as being named Parana Park and officially calls it Parana Park. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Wow! 
SUE MORONEY 
: Well Tau Henare does not seem to understand the significance of this. It is completely obvious that National members have no interest whatsoever in what happens in Hamilton. They have absolutely demonstrated tonight that they do not take any interest whatsoever in what happens in Hamilton. It just shows the lack of influence that the local members have when their own caucus members will not even get up and support them in respect of this bill going through the House. They are not prepared to get up and support them at all. 
I am very proud of the Labour caucus members who have supported Nanaia Mahuta and me by getting up and showing at every occasion just how important Hamilton is to them. I am really appreciative of that and I thank my colleagues. I probably should have warned them a little earlier though that I am an administrator of a Facebook page called “Don’t bag Hamilton”. A few of those members were coming perilously close to being reported on that website but they have pulled back from the brink now and have become very very supportive of this bill on behalf of the Hamilton people. 
I want to come back to the issue of the name of the park because I think it is really important. It came to my attention at the second reading when my colleague Trevor Mallard pointed out that officially changing the name to Parana Park may not be as uncontroversial as it sounds. Although for a section of the community it has been known for many decades now as Parana Park for other sections of the community that is not the case. Trevor Mallard said that Putikitiki is the name that the Maori community know Parana Park by. 
Hon Hekia Parata 
: Really? 
SUE MORONEY 
: I know that that is news to Hekia Parata. She does not know that. She has not heard of that before. But here we are legislating to officially change the name to Parana Park yet as Trevor Mallard pointed out earlier we have not gone through the normal process of naming that we would do for every other piece of land. There is an Act of Parliament that governs how that is to be done through the Geographic Board. That is normally how it is done. Yet for some reason that has yet to be explained to me we are departing from the process dictated by that legislation and we are instead officially recognising a name for a piece of land that has not gone through the Geographic Board process. I think we need to— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Whoop-de-doo. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Tau Henare says: “Whoop-de-doo.” I wonder what most Maori in New Zealand think of Tau Henare’s response: “It doesn’t matter if there is a Maori name. Let us just use our Pakeha institution to change the name to whatever we think it should be.” Obviously Tau Henare thinks there is no issue in being really careful in this Parliament about what we name important pieces of land with historical significance. Maybe that does not matter to Tau Henare but I can inform the Committee that most serious members of Parliament who take this job seriously recognise that there is a point to a process particularly when it comes to naming pieces of land that are important to us. We must take that very seriously. We cannot decide on a whim to call it anything we like. Would Tau Henare be happy if we decided to call this Smith Park? Would he be happy with that? Oh well maybe Government members do have plans for the 0.4 of a hectare that has gone missing in the calculations. We still have not discovered what has happened to that by the way. But perhaps we could call this Putikitiki which is what Trevor Mallard understands it is being called.