Tirikatene RinoRINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Otirā tēnā tātou e ngā mema Hōnore o te Whare Pāremata. Tēnā koutou i tēnei rā nui whakahirahira. E ngā hapū maha o Ahuriri nau mai nau mai whakatau mai nau mai whakatau mai ki te Whare Pāremata ki te ana o te raiona. Mō koutou tēnei rā nui whakahirahira. Tēnā koutou ngā hapū maha ae ko Ngāti Hinepare Ngāti Māhu Ngāti Matepū Ngāti Paarau Ngāi Tāwhao Ngāi Te Ruruku me Ngāti Tū ae. Nau mai nau mai whakatau mai.Nau mai whakatau mai ki te whakatutuki i ngā wawatā o rātou mā ka huri tū me mihi atu ki ngā tini aituā kua whetūrangitia haere haere koutou.Hoki mai ki a tātou te kanohi ora e pae nei tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[Greetings Madam Speaker. I also greet the honourable members of the House of Parliament. Greetings to you all on this highly significant day. To the many hapū of Ahuriri welcome welcome welcome to Parliament to the lion's den. This highly significant day is about you. Greetings to all the many hapū indeed to Ngāti Hinepare Ngāti Māhu Ngāti Matepū Ngāti Paarau Ngāi Tāwhao Ngāi Te Ruruku and Ngāti Tū. Welcome welcome welcome.Welcome to the fulfilment the dreams of those who have passed and I turn to acknowledge the many who have become stars in the heavens; may you rest in peace.Returning to ourselves the living sitting here greetings greetings greetings one and all.]I'm delighted to speak at the final reading of the Ahuriri Hapū Claims Settlement Bill—the penultimate region of the great Ngāti Kahungunu—that we are now passing into law. I want to acknowledge all the hapū of Ahuriri ngā hapū katoa which I have just welcomed and joined with everyone to welcome with their welcomes to this House. I acknowledge their long journey which started way back in the 1980s through Waitangi Tribunal claims all the way through to today where finally—we've had a few intervening legal processes that have also come up over the years—here we are. Here we are to celebrate the passage of this legislation.I want to acknowledge all those that have travelled that cannot be in this House today who I know are tuning in. As an uri of Ngāti Pāhauwera I'm very proud to mihi to all my tini whanaungas of Ngāti Kahungunu and in particular Ahuriri who are here to celebrate today. We all celebrate because this is a very historic and significant occasion. I'm delighted that I was able to play a small part in the last Parliament as chair of the Māori Affairs Committee. We heard the submissions on this bill travelled up to Napier and it's always a great privilege to be able to visit the beautiful areas from where Ahuriri Hapū originate and represent. It was not without some degree of discord at times but I'm pleased that all of the issues that were raised have managed to be resolved in particular the issue around the mandate. There was a desire—a directive I guess—to ensure that there were elections held to renew the mandate for Ahuriri. That has since occurred and there is a reconstituted body of representatives for Ahuriri. So I want to acknowledge them for going through all of those various processes to ensure that the Minister and this Parliament can proudly and confidently pass this legislation knowing that all those intervening steps have been met and I acknowledge them all for that.As I recall they were colourful hearings that we conducted at times. I vividly remember our Deputy Speaker who was a member on the committee at the time—never one to back down— engaged with one submitter and it got a bit testy. So much so that he was propositioned outside to settle it out there. Ha ha! Never the one to back down our Deputy Speaker stood his ground in true Te Tai Hauāuru fashion. But fortunately the good chair of the committee was able to bring kia tau te rangimarie we were able to sort it out at that point although our dear member for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti was at the ready with her Māori wardens just in case things flared up. But such is the spirit of collegialness and whanaungatanga that we share as members of the Māori Affairs Committee that we were able to resolve those issues in a rangimarie way. And here we are with this historic bill.I want to just acknowledge features of this bill which I think are significant. We talked about the issue of Māori rights and interests to fresh water. And this was raised by my colleague Louisa Wall just now. I do want to acknowledge the statutory acknowledgment and deeds of recognition contained in this deed of settlement which is put into force fully through this legislation. They are over the sacred rivers of Ahuriri hapū from Esk River and its tributaries all the way through to Ngaruroro River Tūtaekurī River—those famous rivers that we hear in those beautiful Kahungunu waiata. Ahuriri Hapū have deeds of recognition recognising their historical and spiritual and traditional relationships as the tangata whenua status over those water bodies. So I do commend those instruments being recognised in this settlement and through this legislation.There is a long history which Ahuriri have had to endure whether it's landlessness the dispossession of lands the conflicts that arose through no fault of Ahuriri actually but they were just caught up in these conflicts—Ōmarunui in particular and the other Crown attacks in Herepoho during the New Zealand Wars. It was a dark period in our nation's history and Mana Ahuriri certainly felt the brunt of the aftermath of those conflicts only being left with a mere wee fraction of land but virtually completely landless and with all of the resulting hardships that a dispossessed people has faced. And not only over the lands but over their tribal domain of their water bodies and in particular the estuary of Te Whanganui-ā-Orotu. It's right that we instil a new level of relationship and authority for Mana Ahuriri over their ancestral landscapes and their water bodies and traditional lands.So there is so much that we can talk about and I want to acknowledge all the contributions from around the House which are all in support of this bill. The next step from here is that new era of a relationship which every Treaty settlement is really the basis for. I want to acknowledge Minister Little for his work and all the Ministers and officials and negotiators and everyone that's been involved over the many years to ensure that we have gotten to this point. So I don't want to prolong this any longer than it has to be only to just add my tautoko. I also want to acknowledge my colleague tuahine the Hon Meka Whaitiri for her staunch advocacy as a member of Mana Ahuriri herself and as one who has played such an active role in ensuring that she has provided that tautoko for all of her whānau to ensure that we get to the successful passage of this legislation. With that I wish Mana Ahuriri all the very best and I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora tātou.