Fox MaramaMARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I am just choosing my words. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare nei te mihi atu ki a koutou rawe te tūtaki i a koutou anō ahakoa kua tatari roa nei mō tēnei rangi kua tae ki tēnei wā! Hoi anō kai te mihi atu ki a koutou koutou katoa ngā pou ngā rahi kei waenganui i a koutou kai te mihi atu ki a koutou ngā kuia ngā koroua tēnā koutou kua tae ki te wā! [Greetings to the House. I acknowledge you collectively; it is nice to meet you once again. Despite the lengthy wait for this day this moment has been reached. Nevertheless I salute you collectively all of you the pillars the great amongst you. I commend you the elderly women and menfolk. Congratulations; the moment has arrived.]Here is the thing: we signed a Treaty—a Treaty that guaranteed rangatiratanga our choice hole in one our choice. We signed a Treaty that said we would work in partnership—yes a partnership of trust—and in that Hobson's pledge they said they were not interested in land just sovereignty. So it is hard to understand—or maybe it is not hard to understand—that trust. You know I am a pretty trusting person. I give trust freely. You have to break that trust and then you have to earn it back again but I will give it freely first and our people gave that trust. So it is difficult to say that we trust that we will be treated fairly because our history tells us otherwise. It is difficult to say that we can give that trust freely and know that when we vote we will get our people on the council because our history tells us otherwise. So under the Treaty of partnership as a right to recognise our right to have a say and a vote and decision-making powers yes we support arrangements where our people have the right to sit at the table and be heard and to participate in decision making and be heard because actually our history tells us we cannot trust that always in good faith what we say is what we do.I want to talk about Wīremu Kīngi. In the first reading I spoke about that story as articulated by one of your own: how the Suppression of Rebellion Act meant that the Governor of the day could decide what rebellion looked like and therefore roll out any measure—any measure—he deemed necessary to suppress that rebellion in order to put it to rest. But Te Rere-tā-whangawhanga in his ōhākī lay on his bed and reached out to his son Wīremu Kīngi Te Rangitake and said Do not sell our lands ever." He probably said it better than that and in Te Reo and beautifully articulated but that is the essence of what he said: never sell. And all Wīremu Kīngi ever did was try to uphold the wishes of his dying father and refuse to sell the land. The Governor of the day deemed that to be rebellion against the Crown and therefore enacted the first of all the Land Wars that would follow. I am just going to read something about this because Wīremu refused all the way through—vetoed sales pulled out the survey pegs. I wish I had a survey peg. I wish I had a survey peg right now. He pulled them out and let me tell you what happened as a result."For two days Colonel Charles Gold and his Imperial troops tried to overthrow the pā but failed. In The New Zealand Wars … [they say this]: 'Its anti-artillery bunkers and covered trenches effectually protected its garrison from cannon and small-arms fire. Nearly 500 troops poured in a heavy fire all day from as near as 50 yards. Two 24-pounder howitzers fired 200 rounds "every shot through the place" from close range' " but none were killed—because we are pretty clever us Māori people. "And because the pā was so quick to put up—it took just one night—Te Rangitaake and his men had no qualms in leaving it."Two hundred rounds—but that war went on for the next year and at the end they were finally overthrown by numbers; not by stealth not by strategy because they were amazing strategists. It was not because they gave in but because the Crown was able to pull troops out of Australia and bring them here to carry out here what they had already done there. As a result 1.2 million acres of Taranaki land was eventually confiscated. There is little trust but today marks a new era. It is not about putting it behind us. Someone said to me once: "Forgiveness is to remember without pain." I am not sure that I am there. We may not yet be there but we are trying. Here are the examples that your people give us: Te Whiti Tohu Kākahi. Still to this day you uphold their legacy and you say: "It's OK. We're here in peace and we invite you to live amongst us and we will share."—despite all of that. You know the other week we welcomed descendants of Parihaka to the screening of the movie here in Parliament which told the story of what happened to those men: bound enslaved—enslaved. I just repeat that for the benefit of the New Plymouth District Council. They were enslaved and taken away on ships. The story says that when the boat was too heavy some of them were made to hold on to ropes dragged behind the boat in the water. When many of them lost their lives in the journey that followed they were tossed overboard. They were enslaved in the bourgeoning city of Dunedin to build their roads and create the foundations of the Otago University the council buildings and the library. Twenty years later they came home—those who still survived. And so you have given so much to the foundation of this nation in blood sweat and tears and still—and still—you stand in peace with the raukura that reminds us of all of that. My mihi to you. I am not sure that I can remember without pain but I am learning to live with our whānau and try every day not to let that sacrifice go to waste. Every day in this House every day with my babies—every day I learn from the example that you and your people have left us so that we can see a brightness of hope for our future. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou kia ora mai tātou katoa."