Whaitiri MekaMEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe otirā ngā mema o Te Whare nei tēnā tātau katoa. He mihi tuatahi ki Te Minita Take Māori the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell mō tōna karakia mō tātau i tēnei ata nō reira kei te mihi ki a ia. Ā e te iwi Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki nau mai hara mai hoki mai ki tō tātau Whare Te Whare Mīere o Aotearoa nō reira tēnā kou.[Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker and salutations at the same time to us all members of this House. A tribute firstly to the Minister of Māori Affairs the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell for his prayer this morning I acknowledge him. And so to the iwi Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki welcome come hither and return to our House the Beehive of New Zealand. Therefore salutations to you collectively; welcome greetings to you collectively; come hither and accolades to you all.]It is indeed a proud moment for me as the member for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti to stand and make a small contribution on this significant day for Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki. Can I first acknowledge the Ngāi Tai people the negotiators for all the mahi that you have done. It is not an easy process to navigate when you have had such a very challenging history at the hands of the Crown. I am not going to traverse your history but I want to acknowledge your history. I want to acknowledge your stories and I especially want to acknowledge the hard mahi of your negotiators.As a former negotiator—and I just want to mihi to my sister here the Hon Nanaia Mahuta who just successfully got her Ngāti Maniapoto to an agreement in principle yesterday—along with my colleague Adrian Rurawhe we have had the experience of being Treaty negotiators ourselves. So I wanted to say that it is easy to sit on the outside and make suggestions on how you can improve it; it is harder when you are at the table trying to battle over it with the Crown.So I want to say that I absolutely believe that our people deserve more when we look at the mass land losses that we have achieved at the hands of the Crown but I just wanted to stand and mihi to you—mihi to you for your support your generosity to the people of Tāmaki and your patience. I note that you signed your deed of settlement 3 months short of 2 years ago and so I want to say to all members in this House again—the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations probably has very good reasons why but I cannot understand why we have to wait for almost 2 years before we have first readings. So I am glad I am standing here to acknowledge the achievement of Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki in terms of your special circumstances in terms of the redress that you have got here and I do want to wish you well as we get this bill through the House.By way of explanation just very shortly this is the first reading. It is important that all members of this House scrutinise every piece of legislation before it is passed into law. So this is the first reading. Then it will go off to select committee and we encourage—and I want to support other members of this House to encourage—the Ngāi Tai people to submit. The negotiator has brought us this far. Please do not reserve yourself if there are any issues surrounding the Treaty settlement. Use the select committee process to raise any issues.But there is just one point I wanted to leave in my contribution for the Māori Affairs Committee. So we have the first reading which we are just doing right now. The bill will go off to the Māori Affairs Committee where it is publicly scrutinised. So anybody around the country can make a submission on this particular piece of legislation. The committee then comes back to this House and reports what people presented to it—the good the bad and the indifferent. Then we go through the second reading of the bill and of course the third and final reading is when your bill becomes law and the parts of your deed of settlement are enacted by that piece of legislation.So my message in celebrating Ngāi Tai's achievement in getting to a first reading is that when I look at the particular parts of their bill—I have raised this before in previous contributions around Treaty settlements—is about when we get to shared redress. In this particular settlement we see that there is—and I would expect in Tāmaki-makau-rau for there to be shared interests. But I do believe that it is still the domain of the Crown to come up with good frameworks in which we deal with shared redress. I do not believe we have it quite there. I know there are actual examples of iwi that have actually taken out the interest and decided to discuss it and determine how they share that among themselves.So my point here to the Māori Affairs Committee members when we are addressing this particular Treaty settlement for Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki is that we should not examine just what the shared redress is about. My plea to the Māori Affairs Committee members is to look at best practice—at best practice—and ask for advice from officials on where it has worked successfully. I think sometimes we leave that up to the respective iwis and it kind of makes the process a bit more difficult. So all I am asking Mr Deputy Speaker through you is that select committee members on the Māori Affairs Committee do look at best practice models to inform Ngāi Tai's settlement and I know that there will other settlements that are also sharing the issue around shared redress.So that is my contribution to this—not to underdo or undercook my celebration for Ngāi Tai being in the House today or that we have got there. For me it is how we use your particular settlement and improve those that are coming behind you and I definitely see that in the shared redress components for when we are dealing with Treaty settlements in this House. I proudly commend this first reading to the House. E te iwi tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.Bill read a first time. Bill referred to the Māori Affairs Committee.