Paraone Pita: Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParaone Pita: Waitangi National Trust Board Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 20 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3496. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PITA PARAONE (NZ First): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker arā tēnā tātou e te Whare nei. Ēngari i mua i te haere tonu o waku kōrero mō te kaupapa nei i te hono au ki tēnā ō koutou i tū ake i mua i a au ki te mihi i tōku whanaunga ahakoa e horekau ahau e hiahia ana ki te ’hakahē i tā koutou kōrero. E karanga atu ana ki a ia he rangatira. Horekau he raru ki tēnā ēngari ki a mātou i roto o Ngāti Hine he pono he pononga a te iwi. Nā reira e Ērima haere hoki atu. Hoki atu koe ki ngā kōiwi o ō tāua mātua tūpuna. Kua pau kē ngā mamaetanga o tēnei ao kei runga i a koe. Kei runga ngā taumahatanga kei a mātou i muri nei nā reira e kara te pononga o te iwi haere hoki atu. E tātou mā ka hoki mai ki a tātou ki te kaupapa i mua i a tātou i te rā nei. Ka nui te hari te koa o te ngākau i kite atu i tēnei kaupapa i puta mai i te Whare nei. Nā reira tēnā koutou.][Acknowledgments to you Mr Deputy Speaker and to us of this House. But before I continue with my address in regard to this policy I join members who stood up before me to pay a tribute to my relative despite the fact I have no desire to contradict the view made by them. I want to assure them that my relative is regarded highly. There is not an issue with that but within us in Ngāti Hine; he is astute and a servant of the tribe. Therefore to you Ērima farewell and go back. Return to the skeletal forms of our ancestral forefathers yours and mine. The pains of this world that were upon you are spent. The burdens are now upon us the ones left behind so to you dear friend and servant of the people farewell return. I come back to us and to the policy before us today. There is much joy and delight in the heart to see this policy emerging from this House here. Thank you all.]First of all I would like to acknowledge the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage and the fine gesture she made after making her presentation joining our chairman of the Māori Affairs Committee which is really an example of the collegiality that members of the Māori Affairs Committee share with one another albeit that we sit on opposite sides of this House. When we are considering matters that come before the Māori Affairs Committee there is that collegiality which obviously because other people have made comment may not necessarily be exercised in other select committees. So I want to acknowledge the Minister for that.I also want to acknowledge the Minister for her commitment in seeing this bill through in a timely manner taking on board the commitment to carry out a wider review of the Waitangi National Trust Board Act and of the machinations of the board. For me I felt that a lot of the concerns that the board had were already known to the officials and I know that a number of members of the board felt that those issues and those concerns could have been added to this bill. However I take the Minister on her word and notwithstanding the comments made by the honourable member from Waikato-Tainui about her reference to the legislative programme I feel confident that the concerns we expressed in the Māori Affairs Committee process will certainly be addressed in the wider review.Waitangi is being described as the most significant historical place in our country and it is a privilege of mine to be first of all a member of the trust board responsible for the maintenance and care of the estate and also to chair it. I know that my membership of the board may have caused some disquiet some concern with other members of the House but I want to reassure both them and this House that in order to retain that sense of integrity to ensure that there would be no accusation of conflict of interest or patch protection I did not participate in casting votes in terms of the decisions made by the select committee and I also stood down as chairman of the board during the discussions with the board and with officials concerning this bill. I am pleased to be able to report that to the House.I want to say that the board has a very important responsibility. In recent years it has adopted the position that its responsibility should be confined not just to the care and maintenance of the estate but to ensuring that the history of Waitangi is shared amongst our fellow New Zealanders and as the member from the Green Party David Clendon alluded to the number of New Zealanders who have not visited Waitangi. I suppose there are various reasons for that and the honourable member Judith Collins made reference to it. As I hear such comments I feel a little bit annoyed—I am not annoyed at her—about the assumption that that part of Waitangi is allied to the Treaty grounds. In fact those of us from the north know that it is almost like two separate worlds two different planets. However that is the perception that many of our fellow citizens have of Waitangi.This bill looks not only at the structure of the membership of the board but also at increasing the representation of those Māori families. I must say that it has been a real privilege and a pleasure to represent the families of those four tupuna. I want to make this comment. In terms of the particular family that I descend from—and this is a question that has always bothered me—Maihi Kāwiti is one of the sons of Te Ruki Kāwiti of Ruapekapeka war fame. Maihi’s part in history was that every time his fellow tribesmen cut down the flagstaff he promptly put it up. Maihi is the son of Te Ruki and one has to ask the question of why you would put the son ahead of the father. To this day no one has been able to tell me why. Perhaps there have been a confusion in terms of the descent because when the original Act was discussed in the second and third readings Sir Apirana Ngata referred to Te Riri Kāwiti as the grandson of Maihi. In fact he was the son. So I do not know.I just want to confirm that New Zealand First will certainly be supporting this bill. We look forward to the Committee stage and I cannot see too many difficulties during that process. We certainly look forward to seeing it enacted. Although I personally will be affected it is something that I certainly support.As a closing remark I just want to tell those who are already lining up to become members of the board that we do not pay a fee. I just want to say that the admission cost that we have imposed on visitors has caused some disquiet amongst our fellow citizens. I am anticipating that during the wider review of the Act some consideration will be given to an annual gratuity from the Government to the board along the lines of Te Papa. Nā reira i roto i aua ’hakaaro tēnā koutou tēnā koutou kia ora mai anō tātou.[So with those thoughts in mind I acknowledge and salute us and you collectively thank you.]