Flavell Te Ururoa: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFlavell Te Ururoa: General Debate[Sitting date: 12 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5717. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Minister for Māori Development):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa i tēnei ahiahi. About 2 or 3 weeks ago it was Māori Language Week and I wanted to offer some reflections on Māori Language Week. Can I thank all members for their efforts around pronunciation of Māori names during Māori Language Week. Ka nui te mihi ki a koutou.Mr Speaker can I thank you. I have got to say that on that Tuesday when you came down the aisle here I am pretty sure everybody was watching you and you had plenty of eyes on you. You went up to your platform and you started with our karakia. So koinei te mihi ki a koe. I want to say thank you. Although you took your time over it it was brilliant that you set the scene for the House. I want to say congratulations for that. Maybe next time relax a bit only because I think everybody was watching. I just want to acknowledge you for your efforts. Thank you so much for setting the scene for the week. The hope will be that we take it up and not have that focus for just the 1 week but indeed offer our karakia up in Māori throughout the year. I just ask you to give some consideration to that. But I do appreciate you setting the scene because that set the scene for the rest of the House although I think we have fallen backwards a little bit over the last week.Māori Language Week—I should thank the whole nation because the whole nation came behind that whole campaign. Broadcasters attempted speaking in Te Reo. I had a hui with Government agencies that said that they will give bilingual signs a go. I want to acknowledge the father of the member Peeni Henare. His dad Ērima Hēnare was honoured out at Waiwhetū for his work for Māori language. He was one who was hugely passionate about our language. But I suppose in the end I have got to ask the question: what are we going to do to look at increasing the number of speakers? “What do you really need to do Te Ururoa?” I was asked. I said: “Basically it’s all about a heart thing. You can teach people as much as you like but unless your heart believes in it it isn’t going to happen.”We thank the Black Caps for coming out with “Aotearoa” on the one-day cricket shirt. That is pretty awesome and they are thinking about having a bilingual website shortly. In my office we raised about $30 from those people paying fines for speaking English in our offices. Sojust know everybody that if you visit the Māori Party there is a Māori-speaking zone there. I want to pay tribute to Finnian Galbraith the young boy from Kāpiti College who set the web alight by asking everybody to give consideration to pronouncing Māori properly.When I started my teaching career in a place called Kaikōura all of the children I taught said “Kaikoura”. Their parents said “Kaikoura”. Their grandparents and great-grandparents said “Kaikoura”. I was a Māori language teacher. Was I going to turn that tide round? Probably not. But what it did do was remind me that what we learn as kids is likely to be the way that we will stay generation after generation after generation. So even 2 weeks after Māori Language Week I have been sitting here listening and I have heard the word “Wairarapa” I have heard “Taranaki” and I have heard “Papakura” and I am saying to us as members of Parliament that if we can do it for 1 week surely to goodness we can do it on a daily basis so that Papakura is Papakura so that Papatoetoe is Papatoetoe so that Taranaki is Taranaki and so that Wairarapa is Wairarapa. So I ask members to think about that. It is not too hard. If it is good enough for Finnian then it should surely be good enough for all of us.Shortly the Te Reo Māori bill will be coming into the House. It hopefully sets the framework around strategies for Te Reo Māori in this country. But strategies are just strategies. It really does come down to what we believe in our hearts and our minds.In wrapping up I suppose there are some things that rest with me as a Māori. On our marae we need to take up the challenge to speak our language there because you have to feel safe about what you do in utilising the resources around you. But Te Reo Māori is from this land. It belongs to me it belongs to you and it belongs to all of us. I enter this plea in Parliament this afternoon: that the catchphrase for this year is whāngaia te Reo Māori ki te whānau—feed the language to our children. And it cannot be hard for us to start doing that with our children and our grandchildren because what we learn as young kids will stay with us when we become parents and become grandparents and if we start now with our own in our own families that will set the scene for the country. If people are looking at us in this Parliament to set the scene I think it should not be too hard for us to follow on. Having said that I thank all members for their efforts during Māori Language Week. Tēnā koutou katoa.