Tirikatene Rino: Maori Television Service (Te Aratuku Whakaata Irirangi Maori) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tirikatene Rino: Maori Television Service (Te Aratuku Whakaata Irirangi Maori) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8797. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 Kia ora. Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tena koutou e te Whare. A ki a koe e te Minita tena koe. E tu atu au ki te tautoko i tenei pire. 
[ 
Thank you. Greetings Mr Assistant Speaker. Greetings to the House collectively. And to you the Minister greetings. I rise to support this bill 
.] 
I am pleased to speak in support of the Maori Television Service (Te Aratuku Whakaata Irirangi Maori) Amendment Bill. We are having this first reading a week short of Maori Television’s ninth birthday ninth anniversary and I think we all—well definitely all us Maori—remember 28 March 2004 very well getting up early in the morning and watching the launch of Maori Television. It was an exciting time and I am pleased to see the progression that Maori Television has taken since its launch back in 2004. 
I would like to acknowledge our matua here the Hon Parekura Horomia who was the Minister of Maori Affairs at the time under a Labour Government who launched that waka of Maori Television. Indeed it is fair to say that Maori Television is held in deep affection across the country as a public service broadcaster but also in terms of fulfilling its role to promote and protect our Te Reo Maori. That is where I would like to start because the whakapapa to Maori Television goes back to the Treaty commitment the Treaty partnership between the Crown and Maori that there is an active duty on the Crown to protect and foster Te Reo Maori and that has given rise to Maori radio Maori TV and various other organisations and activities that have sprung up over the years. 
Maori Television is definitely a flagship for our language and our culture and it was timely that under Parekura it was programmed into the bill that there would be a review. That review was carried out and reported back in May 2009. Te Kahui o Mahutonga—a very capable highly skilled and experienced group of three—carried out that review and it came up with some very good recommendations around the Maori Television Service (Te Aratuku Whakaata Irirangi Maori) Act. It is regrettable I guess that not all of its recommendations were followed through but I do note that if we go to the actual functions of the service one aspect of Te Kahui o Mahutonga’s recommendations that has been adopted has been to further broaden or articulate the Maori Television service to not only promote Te Reo but also to protect and preserve Te Reo and that has been reflected in the amendments to the bill. 
I want to pick up on the part in this bill that transfers the management rights for the spectrum that will allow Maori Television to progress to the digital platform to be vested in Te Putahi Paoho. Te Putahi Paoho is the electoral college that was set up under the original Act. The vesting of these management rights in that body I think calls into question—and this was raised by Te Kahui o Mahutonga’s report—that we really need to look at the composition of that Te Putahi Paoho body.  
We are getting a lot of electoral colleges created these days to get wide representation of Maori stakeholders in terms of their support or their input into appointing directors on to a lot of these Maori structures that have been created. If we look at Maori fisheries for example we have Te Kawai Taumata there. If we look at the Maori Te Huarahi Tika Trust there is an electoral college there. And also we have this electoral college for Maori Television. But if you look at the actual organisations that make up that body I think that is where we need to really look because they have the power to appoint people on to these bodies. 
I have been part of a Maori organisation that has a statutory role to actually have to appoint a representative on to these bodies and I know that a large number of these organisations are barely existing and are very highly under-resourced so it is a big responsibility to be putting on to a few organisations. I think we really need to look carefully at that because we want to make sure that Te Putahi Paoho is not a waka kehua and we do not want kaupoais—cowboys—taking over these organisations. Kia ora tatou.