Delahunty Catherine: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: General Debate[Sitting date: 03 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1076. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koe e te Whare Pāremata. It is embarrassing. It is embarrassing that the Prime Minister cannot remember anything and it is also embarrassing that the Prime Minister does not understand our history. Most high school students have a better grasp of the so-called settlement of Aotearoa New Zealand than the Prime Minister has displayed. It is really awkward too that this Government does not appear to understand that the latest Waitangi Tribunal ruling is super clear—crystal clear and uncomfortably clear—that tangata whenua never ceded sovereignty in 1840. But the Government has not taken that on board cannot understand it will not come to grips with it and is showing no leadership on the very crucial issue that rangatira who signed te Tiriti never signed away their sovereignty.So I have got a little quiz for the Prime Minister—a little history quiz—to help him along. It might be possible for some others to answer the quiz as well. I am sure there are people here who know the answers even though he does not seem to. For a start question No. 1 to the Prime Minister: New Zealand was settled peacefully or New Zealand was confiscated from tangata whenua through violence and dubious legal tricks? Discuss which is true without contradicting yourself. Would it not be great to have somebody capable of that in the leadership role in this country? We would love to see an essay as well by the Prime Minister quoting himself when he said that Māori are “grateful for the capital and skills brought by the others”—the rest of us the settlers the colonisation process. Presumably he means especially those skills that were used to strip Māori of their land to poison their resources and to suppress their culture.It is interesting that the Prime Minister when he made the statement about how grateful Māori are was speaking in the present tense. In the essay I would really like him to address the examples of Māori individuals and groups who have expressed their gratitude to the Prime Minister for these wonderful gifts. I have not met these people but no doubt in an essay he could explain this because I have never seen so many people confused by his grasp of history.The other fascinating question that he needs to address is: New Zealand was unusual in its peaceful settlement process. That is what he said. He said that this country was nicer than anywhere else. Colonisation is actually a form of rape—rape. Or rape nicely; there is not much difference to the victim. So here we go indeed. What are the specific differences between the nicer forms of violence used by the Crown in the 1800s such as gunboats in the Waikato and the Coromandel raupatu for Whakatōhea with Tainui scorched earth for Tūhoe and legalised theft for everybody else? How does that make us different from all the other settler countries? I think we have a right to an answer to that question. If the Prime Minister is going to say we were settled peacefully he needs to be able to explain how nice it was just how different it was how superior it was to be colonised by the English. Would that not be a great story to tell?The other question in the quiz that I think would be important would be: the Waitangi Tribunal has ruled that sovereignty was not ceded in 1840. Explain why this is inconvenient and how he plans to ignore it because that is in fact what he plans to do. Most of the time the Waitangi Tribunal is recognised in this House as the basis of the Treaty settlement process but not this one. This one is going to be marginalised and ignored because it is inconvenient.The other part of the quiz and the last question I would like to put to our ill-informed Prime Minister is: discuss how basic historical knowledge is important for a Prime Minister and what should happen if the Prime Minister demonstrates less knowledge than most high-school students. I think it would be useful if he could come to grips with this so that the rest of us need not feel so embarrassed and ashamed that the person who means to lead our country forward and out of historical problems has no grasp of history whatsoever.I think somebody needs to explain the word “settlement” to the Prime Minister. I do not expect him to be a historian. I am not a historian. But from very very fundamental reading it is obvious that the period between 1840 and 1900 was not a peaceful settlement process. In fact the period between 1840 and 1860 was not as violent as during the Land Wars but it was a very difficult time. I wonder whether the Prime Minister has ever heard of the Flagstaff War of the 1840s the Wairoa incident in the 1840s or any of those incidents that showed that the Treaty was under threat right from day one.It is very important that we do not minimise our own history so that we can have a visionary positive way forward together. We do not teach those 1950s myths any more. We do not tell children that we are the best country in the world in terms of our historical colonisation process. We do not lie to the people any more about what happened. We are honest and we try to face up to our history so that we can create a country where everybody has a place.