Davis Kelvin: Te Pire mō Te Reo Māori / Māori Language Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDavis Kelvin: Te Pire mō Te Reo Māori / Māori Language Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 07 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10339. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): I would just like to go back to the apology—and my colleague Nanaia Mahuta has I believe an excellent Supplementary Order Paper—and I think we need to make it really clear that we are not putting it on the Government of today to say that it must apologise. I do not think that is what—well we are not saying that. What we are saying is that this House and all of us in it representing the various parties and representing the history of those various parties need to put that apology across to te iwi Māori whānui—Māori in general.You know this is not about whipping today’s Government; this is about this House acknowledging the damage that has been caused to us as a people over many many decades and putting it right and then as Nanaia so eloquently said moving on. That is what it is doing. We just want to put this behind us and I believe as Adrian Rurawhe has said that everybody who has been denied the ability to speak Te Reo Māori deserves that apology. So it is not about saying the National Government or the Māori Party or whatever needs to put in this apology; we need to do it together. Again as Nanaia Mahuta has said all of us—every party—need to agree to it. I believe that it is just an act of healing and letting us move on because we do want to move on.I also acknowledge what Jono Naylor said when he referred to clause 3(2)(a)(iii) which says “to affirm the status of the Māori language as … a language valued by the nation;”. I agree with him when he says he does not think that the language really is valued by the nation as a whole. Clause 3(2)(a)(ii) says “to affirm the status of the Māori language as … a taonga of iwi and Māori;”. Actually I would like to think that we say it is a taonga of iwi and Māori and the whole nation. Subparagraph (iii) goes on to say “a language valued by the nation;” but I think that Te Reo Māori is a taonga of the whole nation as well as of iwi and Māori in that as we know it is spoken only in New Zealand. It is indigenous to this country and it should be acknowledged as a taonga for the whole country.But then also I believe that Māori in order for our Reo to survive we actually have to let go of—I do not know how to say it without it sounding bad—some of the control. We cannot on our own any more save Te Reo; we need the whole country to be there with us. So when I walk into the community and I want to speak Te Reo Māori or conduct my daily business in Te Reo Māori and I walk into a shop and I would love to be able to have a conversation with the person behind the counter I cannot say: “Oh no. That person’s not Māori so there’s no point in trying.” I would love to be able to have a conversation with that person. And that is way that Te Reo Māori is going to thrive and flourish—if whole communities speak Te Reo Māori.I remember a person—quite a well-known Māori—saying: “No I don’t want Pākehās to learn Te Reo. I don’t want them to know what I am saying when I walk into a room.” This was about 15 years ago. I thought that that was just the most stupid—Peeni Henare: Ignorant.KELVIN DAVIS: —ignorant idea ever. I would love to be able to conduct this debate entirely in Te Reo. Just like Adrian Rurawhe has said you know he does not have the capability to conduct a debate entirely in Te Reo—I am the same. Probably the best person would be Peeni Henare and it has nothing to do with the calibre and the quality of his teacher in form 2 I have to admit. But you know would it not be wonderful if every single one of us just stood up and fluently debated this bill in Te Reo Māori? Would that not be just the most wonderful thing for New Zealand?I say to Māori that we actually need to start working more and more with non-Māori to ensure the survival because we cannot just rely any more on traditional intergenerational transfer of Te Reo. It would be wonderful if that happened but it just is not happening. We cannot rely on traditional methods of language transmission any more. We actually have to start looking at non-traditional methods of language transmission and it will seem unnatural to us.We can still do a lot of things in a Māori context but the traditional way was to speak Māori in the home to speak Māori on the marae and to sit down at the feet of your elders and listen and ask questions. In fact it was Peeni’s grandmother—I remember asking her my Auntie Betty and I said: “Auntiepēhea koe i ako ai i Te Reo Māori?”. I said: “How did you learn to speak Māori?”. She said: “I used to sit down and listen and then ask questions. I would say ‘What did you mean by this? What did you mean by that?’.” But we cannot really rely on those traditional methods any more because we do not have the depth and the numbers of fluent speakers.We have to start looking at non-traditional ways of doing things. I have mooted this idea before about having Trivial Pursuit in Te Reo—total immersion Trivial Pursuit nights on the marae. That is not a traditional method of transfer but it is using a Māori context to still be able to transfer the language. I have talked about newspapers having say once a week a whole page in Te Reo Māori. I have talked about having Māori writing clubs where we get people sitting on a marae writing their life story in Te Reo Māori or even just writing fiction in Te Reo Māori and sharing it and putting it online. We have to start finding ways that do not rely just on speaking and listening. We need to use all the language modes—writing reading as well as speaking and listening—so we need to be creative in looking for new ways to transfer the language.Adrian Rurawhe also referred to this word “revitalisation” which pops up all the time—revitalising Te Reo Māori. What does that mean? One person learning the language—we can say that that is revitalisation. We need to actually have some goals and some targets so that we really do know how many more people because of this bill are able to speak Māori and are also improving their fluency as I have said earlier. We need to be able to measure that. That to me will give some idea of revitalisation.Our Māori caucus in the Labour Party was having a bit of a wānanga and we asked what the statistics are saying. What I think we came up with was that between 2004 and 2012 we had a 3 percent drop in the number of people who were able to speak Māori. At that rate probably in the next 30 years there will be next to nobody who is able to speak Māori. We cannot allow that level of language diminishment over the course of time. We need to be able to measure the problem and it is not easy. Let us not make any mistake—it is not easy to measure those sorts of things but we actually need to do it if we are to make any sort of an improvement.We need to be able to increase the number of contexts out in the community where Te Reo Māori is spoken such as in businesses in shops in post offices and in banks. We cannot legislate for a bank or a business to hire Māori speakers but we can create the conditions where it is easier for its staff to start picking up the language of their business and support it in ways like that. It is vital if we are to increase the number of speakers.The other word in this bill is “support”—to provide the means to support and revitalise the Māori language. You know what does support really mean? It is going to actually cost money. That is one of the big issues. It is going to cost money to create the resources and to create the support in order to increase the number of Te Reo Māori speakers. We need to talk long and hard—what does support look like? What does revitalise actually mean? What are our targets over the next 3 years the next 6 years and the next 9 years? If we are just going to have this bill—OK we are going to have two strategies. I have heard about strategies before and I would really like to know the contents of what those strategies could be. I know we have to leave it up to Te Mātāwai to develop those strategies but they really do need to be grunty strategies.