Fox MaramaMARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): It has been quite enjoyable sitting down and listening to the rhetoric of politicians and I have to admit that I am a politician but I am a little bit over politicians. For the last few weeks I have been travelling around the country and it all culminated in Waitangi where I heard deals being done and half-truths being spoken and information being misinterpreted just to see who could get the limelight to see who could stand at the front of the list and have all the nation look at them. Well I will tell you I am a little bit over it. Waitangi is in fact a celebration of nationhood—the birthplace of this nation where our people came together. Both the whakapapa of my father and the whakapapa of my mother came together and signed a union to live together in harmony. But there are two different versions of that Treaty. One says we never ceded sovereignty; the other says we did. Our country does not know how to live with the reconciliation of that and so we agree to live by its principles because that is more palatable and easier to understand.You know what? It was a very interesting time watching all this manoeuvring going on and being accused of being deceitful for somehow misleading the people in regard to Willie Jackson going to the Labour Party. I know I have heard a lot that has been said in the past couple of days about how he thinks about us but I am going to quote this one. [I]n the past two years he"—Flavell—"has done a good job for Maori and can feel satisfied with a new Whanau Ora injection". He goes on to say: "Flavell knows the Maori spend is minimal in any budget and I know from experience that the Labour spend for Maori was never particularly high. … But in politics you have two choices: Be part of the opposition and have no opportunity to advance anything; or be part of government and take the chance to advance things for your people. Flavell has taken the second option and for that choice he deserves to be commended." That was Willie Jackson in May 2016.It is not that I do not appreciate the game of politics but I wonder what the heck happened to the values of the people who walk in this place because some of them I see advocating—Stuart Nash: You are aligned with the National Party and you're talking about values?MARAMA FOX: —for things like stripping every reference to Māoridom out of the Resource Management Act. That is what New Zealand First promises. Some of them say "Don't give those Māoris a say in water."—that was said in this House—or that the Government has been "brownmailed" by the Māori Party. "Don't you dare give those lake beds and those riverbeds to Māori." And yet beside that member is a man who was the chief negotiator for an iwi to get just that.Then we hear "This is our new face who has a charter school who is establishing a social housing development"—which we have been assisting in for the right thing to do for our people because that is right do it for the people—"and who has a Whānau Ora provider." And now they are just going to bury that under the carpet when they walk in the House? Come on politicians. I have really had enough of left wing right wing because it is the same bird. For 170 years we have been at the behest of the same bird. Have we gotten any better? Actually for a few things in the last few years we have and it is by no coincidence that that has happened because the Māori Party sits in Government. I hear what you say Mr Nash. I hear what you say but we did not stand up to go into Government just so that we could sit on the other side and throw stones at other people.We have done amazing things in this Government like papakaīnga development. I have been invited to the very next one at Kohupātiki to the family of Meka Whaitiri who are now developing a papakaīnga. We have stood up for suicide prevention—$2.1 million—because if a 9-year-old in this country chooses to take their life instead of live their reality then we are all doing something wrong. The best way that we can fix that is for Māori mā to have some faith in ourselves as a people—that we have the answers that we have the vision and that we no longer need to be led by the politics of a left or a right. Blue undies red undies—same skid marks. We need to move on."