Fox Marama: Official Information (Parliamentary Under-Secretaries) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFox Marama: Official Information (Parliamentary Under-Secretaries) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11305. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. I was watching from the comfort of my spacious office—which I am happy for anybody to make an Official Information Act (OIA) request to come and have a look at—when the lovely young Mr Seymour stood to deliver his speech. I thought: “This is great. What frivolity and jest is going on here in the House tonight! I must come down and take part in this.” I was tempted of course to join in the David Seymour roast and throw out a number of instances of why we would not want to make an OIA request about the inner thinking of what is the ACT Party. I was tempted of course to jump on the bandwagon of the “mock David Seymour” competition that seems to be going on in the House until I sat and listened to that. I thought: “Well hold on now I am almost tempted to back the young man up.”Let us have a look—why would we support this legislation? Well as with all other pieces of legislation we put it against the values of the party. No. 1: manaakitanga—the act of upholding someone’s mana. So why would we want to see what a parliamentary under-secretary is doing? Well to ensure that in the carrying out of his duties he is continuing to uphold the mana of not just himself the party and Parliament but also the people whom he represents.No. 2: kaitiakitanga—the caring for. He is responsible for caring for the education of the students in charter schools—something that we have supported because actually when you look around the education system though it is on the improve a number of Māori and Pasifika students have not been well cared for in our education system. Again I would like to see what is going on in our charter schools to ensure that we could make sure those students were being cared for.And No. 3: rangatiratanga—rangatiratanga or self-determination; the right for Māori non-Māori and anyone else on the whenua to assert their own pathways to success. Here is a model of education that many Māori organisations iwi and trusts across the country have decided is the option for them in their schooling choices—asserting their rangatiratanga.And again I think: “OK we can support this piece of legislation to ensure that we can see and understand that those values are being upheld.” And then I think back to the lovely Mr Seymour’s speech. I think he has had OIA requests made of him already. He does not have to respond but he has out of the goodness of his own heart. He has already provided the information requested despite this legislation having not gone through. And then the lovely Mr Seymour has decided again out of the goodness—[Interruption] yes he is lovely sometimes—of his heart to proactively provide the information to the House and to the public for the public good so that people know what is going on.So I ask myself: is the legislation actually needed? If I think about the proactive examples that the lovely Mr Seymour has provided to us tonight I would think: “No actually we do not need it.” But that means that any parliamentary under-secretary now and into the future is going to need to be as lovely as the young Mr Seymour. I only need to look around the House at all the people who want to take a swipe at him and I think I am not sure that that is the case of all of us here though we would like it to be. I cannot be sure that that would be the caseinto our future.In fact for Māori we would like to see these things written into legislation because sometimes the Minister is great and in their goodwill and good faith they will work proactively with Māori for Treaty settlements and such but at other times it just depends on how they feel on the day. So I am going to go with legislation over good luck and the ad hoc and we are happy to support this legislation. Kia ora.