Roche Denise: Te Pire mō Te Reo Māori / Māori Language Bill — Recommittal In CommitteeCWH Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Te Pire mō Te Reo Māori / Māori Language Bill — Recommittal In CommitteeCWH Third Reading[Sitting date: 14 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10632. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green):Ka tangi te kākā ka tangi te tītī ka tangi ko ahau tihei mauri ora![The kākā laments the muttonbird laments and so do I. Behold the breath of life!]I rise to take this call for the third and final reading of Te Pire mō Te Reo Māori / Māori Language Bill which I feel is truly historic. Ko tōku nei wawata ka taea e tātou katoa e nohonoho nei ki a Aotearoa te tuku i Te Reo Māori Te Reo o ōku rangatira Te Reo taketake o Aotearoa kia rere ai.[My real wish is that all of us living here in New Zealand can unshackle the Māori language the language of my esteemed ones and the indigenous language of New Zealand and let it flow.]All New Zealanders—all of us—should be able to speak our indigenous language. Some of us struggle with it and we will continue. I see that if we learn this language then we strengthen our nationhood. Of our total population only 3.73 percent can hold a conversation in Te Reo Māori and I am one of those 3.73 percent.Language is not just about how we communicate; language forms us. Language—our language—expresses who we are and where we are from and language dictates how we think. Twenty one percent of Māori speak Te Reo and it is slowly declining. The statistics show that there are more speakers of Te Reo Māori in the over-60-year-olds and that kind of explains why there is that slow decline. As people get older and we are not bringing the others through the reo starts to decline.My hope—and I am sure it is the hope of this entire House—is that this bill and the revitalisation strategies within it will reverse that decline. The benefit of Te Reo is that we know where we are from. We know who our people are. We know who we are. Essentially we know our place in the world. And to be without that knowledge is to be dislocated from an essential part of the story about ourselves. It is all too common among Māori across this country and that plays out in the woeful statistics that we see in health outcomes in the early death rates around our low educational achievements in employment and even in our pay rates. Te Reo is a taonga and it is the Government’s duty and the duty of all people in this country to protect it and work on it becoming the flourishing and beautiful language that it should be and that we should all have access to.The story of the decline of Te Reo in this country is the story of colonisation and the true story of colonisation is not known by most New Zealanders because it is not taught in schools. We do not commemorate those who died in the Land Wars in the Waikato for example or have the mainstream understand that the true meaning of 5 November is not Guy Fawkes. The true meaning of 5 November is when 1600 volunteers and armed constabulary invaded the peaceful settlement of Parihaka and arrested Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi.Without that understanding of who we are where we have come from and the history of this land then our nationhood is fractured and the sad histories that are outlined in every Treaty bill—the sad histories of iwi and hapū—are unknown to many New Zealanders . It is so so terrible that most mainstream non-Māori New Zealanders do not even get to understand or get an inkling of what happened.I have heard of kids my daughter’s age talk about the fact that they do not learn anything about the Treaty of Waitangi anything about the true history of this land until they are at university. That is a sad indictment on all of us and on all of us here in this Parliament where we should be making laws to ensure that all our kids have access to the true history of this land and access to Te Reo Māori as a core subject in schools. We have got a long way to go but this is a beginning. It is a continuation but it is also a beginning and the Greens are committed to getting there.