Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill

The House is resumed. We’re debating the Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill, and the next speaker might like to call.

Mr Speaker, thank you very much. I rise in support of this bill. It’s interesting that we listened to Willie Jackson last night—he suffers from acute amnesia, because he was part of The Alliance and part of the 46th Parliament that passed the provisions for Māori seats and the community’s right to petition for a referendum back in 2002, with the Local Electoral Amendment Act 2002. Willie was in The Alliance, as we recall. Some of us were around in the 45th and 46th Parliament, and leading the charge was the local government Minister at the time, Sandra Lee. She was leading the charge for the provision of Māori seats, but for the community to have the right to petition for a referendum. So we are reinstating that.

The next thing is Willie Jackson will come out and rail against Kiwibank or something. But the reality is we are reinstating what Mr Jackson passionately fought for back in 2002, and that has worked very successfully since 2002 up to 2021 when it all happened and it all changed, without signalling, at the 2020 election. It all changed in two weeks. Submissions were open for two days under Minister Mahuta.

The fundamental question is, do we even need Māori seats? Now, Willie Jackson, Mr McAnulty, and others said that there’s no way that Māori can be represented without the provision of Māori wards on council. Can I remind you of what happened in 2010 at the biggest local government elections that we saw in New Zealand, the biggest participatory rate that we saw. There were no Māori wards—because Rodney Hide insisted on the independent Māori statutory board, which is still in place—there were no Māori wards, but guess what happened in the general seats! Guess what happened in the general seat of Franklin, in the rural National Party seat of Franklin—guess what happened! Des Morrison won by a huge margin—Des Morrison, of course, of Ngāpuhi descent, of Citizens & Ratepayers, won by a huge margin in the general election.

Can we tell you what happened in Howick? In Howick, the seat now of Simeon Brown, the Minister, our Prime Minister—very strong conservative, National Party seat. Jami-Lee Ross won, and he was of Ngāti Porou. Jami-Lee won in Howick. Now, what happened in the Albany seat, with Ōrewa and all that older Pākehā crowd in Albany? Michael Goudie won—of Māori descent, 25 years of age. And what happened in Manukau? Alf Filipaina of Ngāti Porou won. So in 2010, with no Māori wards in Auckland Council, we got 20 percent Māori. We did it then and we’ll do it again. I support the bill.

Good morning, Mr Speaker. Following the amazing historical and factual re-look by our excellent MP for Upper Harbour, Cameron Brewer, I stand in support of the Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill. The bill really only seeks to restore the policy settings for Māori wards, which were in place, as Mr Brewer has pointed out, for 19 years before the previous Government changed it, effectively denying the democratic voting rights of local communities to choose and to have a say about their own governance. This Government is determined to stop the division of New Zealanders where in-group rights and collective identity is used, when we should be celebrating the common humanity that unites us all. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. And there it is—the arrogance and the ignorance of the National Party and this Government. This Government is taking New Zealand race relations backwards—backwards by decades, by centuries.

It was only this week that many of us were in Ōrākau, remembering the lives that were lost in the battles in the Waikato, in Kihikihi. At that time, I stood alongside my Māori Affairs Committee colleagues and they were sympathetic. I saw the empathy that I believe every person in this House has when it comes to dealing with the challenges of race relations in this country, with the sad history that some of this country has. Yet across the room, I see Cameron Brewer with his chest out talking about taking this country backwards. What other group in this country is subject to a referendum like this, subject to putting out a poll where they have to be considered by all people as to what their unique contribution in this country is, how they are represented?

And there we have Cameron Brewer talking about the abolition and the unnecessary need for the Māori seats that represent Māori under Te Tiriti o Waitangi in this country. It is shocking. There we had it last night, with James Meager calling my colleague Kieran McAnulty and one of the Green colleagues “white saviours”. These are people that believe in the Treaty of Waitangi in this country, that believe in the rights of Māori representation and the fact that as a country we can do better. Part of this conversation last night and today is very sad. It’s not the empathy from the other side that I saw when we visited Ōrākau on Monday. I’m sad about that because I do believe that this House can be a better representative of our tangata whenua in this country, that actually we don’t need to go backwards.

This is not the priority of New Zealanders at this time. Yes, race relations for many decades have been challenging, but to go back on a referendum, to go back on a piece of legislation that has only created benefits for communities in this country—all communities, all people, and, yes, Māori. I remember going through the initial legislation and hearing submissions in this particular round. I’m disappointed that this Government isn’t interested in listening to councils on this particular matter. Many, many councils told them that they do not support this legislation that is going through the House today. In fact, today I’m calling out the Minister. He’s National’s version of David Seymour, because under his leadership and this Government’s leadership, we have seen some of the most racist legislation come through this House in a mere six months. I go back to how we started this year around hauora, the disestablishment of the Māori Health Authority. I think of the utu politics of this Minister and his intention to quickly change the names back of Waka Kotahi, to change back road signs that listed Māori names within our communities.

So, in this House today, I do believe this is another example of this Government’s racist legislation that will continue throughout this term of Government, but, more importantly, of their ignorance and their arrogance when they actually believe that legislation like this will take the country forward; in fact, it’s backwards.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. One of the roles of Government is to think hard about how to meet the Crown’s Treaty of Waitangi obligations. To her credit, the Attorney-General did that when she wrote the report on this bill. This is what she said: “[T]he Bill appears likely to result in a reduction in the representation of Māori as a specific community of interest, including by subjecting Māori as a specific community of interest to particular procedural requirements. We consider this is disadvantageous for electors on the Māori roll, in a local authority context, relative to their current position.” In a nutshell, the Attorney-General agrees that this bill takes Māori backwards. One of the challenges for Government is to make sure that the right of Māori, the promise in Te Tiriti of a voice at the table—not off to one side, but around the table—is properly, fully, and fairly heard.

We heard Cameron Brewer do politics by anecdote as he ran through electors, people of Māori descent who had been elected in Auckland’s elections. But have a look at the select committee report. Between 2002 and 2019, only two councils managed to establish Māori wards. The facts of it were clear. Even if you go through all of the elected members, it was a recognised problem that Māori were not getting a seat around the table on a consistent basis, because they simply weren’t getting voted in. So there was a problem to be addressed. The way the problem was resolved—do you know what it was? It was something that the Government over there actually pays lip service to. It was to give local people the choice as to whether they had a Māori ward or not; let the local body itself decide because it knew its communities.

Now, the fact of the matter is—and it’s well recognised in the documentation, and the Waitangi Tribunal has stated it—that going to referendum, to ensure a minority voice, is an effective veto. It doesn’t happen. We know that. We’ve seen that. The obligation to honour the Treaty is not an obligation to ask each and every elector of their reckons of whether we should have Māori wards; it’s to take the steps that are necessary to give a real and cogent voice, and Māori wards do that.

This Government, in its quite misleading narrative—in fact, it’s really misleading to suggest that this is, in some way, restoring one person, one vote. I’ve seen members of the Opposition, including Ministers, say this. There was never a situation where Māori had more than one vote under the Māori ward system; they only ever had one vote, and that was for the ward that they chose to vote in. To say otherwise is pernicious and quite misleading.

This bill, essentially, breaks the promise of this Government to give local bodies more control. It’s yet another example of them saying to local bodies, “You might have liked to do things this way, but we’ve changed your minds for you. We are going to unwind the Māori wards that you’ve chosen to have. We’re going to force you to go to a referendum; a referendum that we know will be much harder to succeed in than the local bodies would otherwise want.”

The fact of the matter is that the principles and the objectives of a local government, set out in the Local Government Act, are for effective control. We allow special interests. We allow special rural wards. That’s fine. Local bodies can choose to have different representation rules for rural wards; or island communities—Great Barrier, Waiheke, whatever—yeah, we recognise it’s a special community of enterprise. That’s fine. But when it comes to Māori, no. Not only no but no in the face of a Treaty obligation to give tino rangatiratanga to Māori, the right to have self-determination, the right to have an ability to determine their own path and participate meaningfully and directly in a decision-making process. Yet the Government says no.

Look, we can pontificate about the Treaty of Waitangi, and that’s important. It’s of critical importance. But here’s the real kicker: local bodies with Māori wards with effective and meaningful and consistent Māori representation around the table, representing Māori communities, are more effective. They do a better job. They run into problems less frequently. They find themselves being hauled through the Environment Court less frequently. They have a breakdown of relationship with iwi and hapū less frequently.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to sit through the select committee and hear local body after local body extol the virtues of the relationships that Māori councillors representing Māori wards created. There wasn’t the odd time where there was a wry smile exchange as we saw people who perhaps 10 years ago wouldn’t have taken that view but now recognise that the relationship building, the connection that this created, the legitimisation of the Māori voice that this gave was highly effective.

The fact of the matter is that Māori are both tangata whenua and also have customary rights. This is something that I think has been skimmed over. Māori, as tangata whenua, have many rights in respect of land and resources, which might not appear on titles, which don’t immediately leap to the fore when some local body decision is being made, but absolutely need to be taken into account. The only way to do that is to have people around the table to talk about that. It’s not enough to nip out for a bit of consultation—important, though, that that might be—but it’s got to be at the top table. This Government is insisting in its one-size-fits-all approach, its vanilla approach, its obsession with equality over equity that that voice isn’t given.

What this, essentially, does is return us to a system which we’d, thankfully, departed from, where local bodies leaned against Māori, not on purpose but because of the way they were composed, because of the way the elections occurred—decisions were made which didn’t balance Treaty rights, customary rights, the interest of iwi and hapū. What they did was they unsatisfactorily skewed because the representatives around the table weren’t entirely representative. It’s the struggle of our democracy, it is the struggle that this House, through its MMP system, addresses, it’s a struggle to have a representative body. That is what Māori wards did. They said that we not only have a Treaty obligation but just a good government obligation to have Māori around the table who aren’t elected in general wards to talk about the interests of everyone who elected them from every walk of life but Māori from a Māori ward who come to speak with a Māori voice about Māori things, things that I can’t talk about but things that need to be said and that need to be listened to.

This bill is a huge retrograde step. As we listened to submissions, time and again, councillors, iwi, and ordinary citizens said, “This is taking us backwards. We don’t want it.” But this Government is determined, driven by the extreme views of its coalition partners, to take a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s shameful.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege to stand and give the final speech in the second reading of this legislation. I want it to be crystal clear: this bill will restore the ability for communities to have a direct influence on the establishment of Māori wards and Māori constituencies by restoring the ability of 5 percent of council’s electors to call for a binding poll on Māori ward establishment decisions. The bill provides a mechanism for councils that either have established or have resolved to establish Māori wards without a binding poll, to disestablish their Māori wards or rescind their decision to have Māori wards before the 2025 local election. Māori New Zealanders, let’s be clear, have successfully been elected as councillors and mayors without the need for Māori wards. Councils have responsibilities to consult with mana whenua on issues that affect them. Changes to Māori wards do not affect these responsibilities.

I looked through the submissions that were received by the hard-working Justice Committee, and there were a couple from my patch. There was a submission from three Western Bay of Plenty District councillors that considered that the consultation processes involved in establishing a Māori ward were not an adequate substitute for a referendum in which all ratepayers would have the right to express their opinion. Some submitters referred to the convention that elected members should not be responsible for making decisions about their own representation, and that the public—the public—should have the final say about representation arrangements. That is the intent of this bill.