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

I present a legislative statement on the Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: I move, That the Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 21 June 2024 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.

I’m pleased to be here today with this local electoral bill. This bill will contribute to further strengthening our local democracy by reintroducing polls on the establishment of Māori wards, requiring councils to hold a poll at the 2025 local elections if they did not hold a poll prior to establishing that ward, and making changes to the local electoral calendar to enable the 2025 local elections to be delivered.

In 2021, the previous Government removed the binding polls that councils had to hold if they received a valid petition to decide on whether Māori wards would be established in their constituencies. By doing so, they also silenced local voices who overwhelmingly voted against it when consulted. We opposed the bill because we support the idea that local people in their local communities should be the ones who make the decisions on how they wish to be represented.

This Government is committed to local democracy. We are not removing the right to establish Māori wards. However, we want each local community to decide whether they want one or not. That is a decision for local people and local communities to make about their local representation.

Under this bill, councils will once again be able to resolve to hold binding polls on Māori wards, and communities will be able to petition their local council to hold one if a council resolves that they don’t want to hold a binding one in the first place. Binding polls will be restored with the same policy settings as they were prior to 2021, including that a petition from 5 percent of electors on a council’s roll at the last local elections will require the council to hold a binding poll. Any person on the electoral roll for a council will be able to vote. A simple majority will bind a council to the outcome, and the outcome of the poll will be binding on a council for the next two local government elections.

The bill will also remove the requirement under the Local Government Electoral Legislation Act 2023 for councils to consider Māori wards every six years during the representation reviews if they have not yet established Māori wards.

Since removing the binding poll mechanism in 2021, 45 councils have decided to establish a Māori ward without having a poll. That is 45 councils where local communities—electors—did not get a direct say on whether they wanted Māori wards or not. This bill gives those local authorities the choice between two options. The council can choose themselves to unmake the ward, or they can hold a binding poll at the upcoming 2025 local elections. These options will give the council the opportunity to avoid holding a poll if they consider that is the right choice for their community.

The result of these polls will take effect at the 2028 local elections. The exception to this is Tauranga City Council, which is holding their local elections on 20 July, which is less than two months away and before this bill will be passed. Tauranga City Council will instead be given the same options as other councils to either hold a poll before the 2028 elections or to disestablish the ward for the 2028 election.

We want Māori voices to be heard and represented. We also know Māori wards are not the only way to give Māori a voice in New Zealand. In fact, members may recall that the Kaikōura District Council unanimously voted no to establishing a Māori ward and instead decided to continue to work in partnership with mana whenua to investigate other options of greater inclusion and council decision-making.

The Local Government Act also requires local authorities to have processes in place for consulting with Māori in accordance with the principles of consultation under the Act. We expect, on this side of the House, that local councils will continue to engage with Māori as they have previously when it comes to the matters that affect them. We also respect the fact that voters will be able to have their say and in some communities they may well decide to keep the Māori wards. They may well keep them, and that is up to the voters in those local communities. Even prior to the 2021 change, councils had had binding polls, and those communities had voted to support those wards.

So I say to members on the other side of the House: what have they got to be afraid of with democracy? What have they got to be afraid of with democracy? Ultimately, it is the public having their say.

Every three years, we’re privileged enough to live in a democracy in New Zealand and to vote for a Government, and every three years, we’re privileged enough to be in a democracy and vote for local councils—for mayors and councillors and community board members—to represent us in our communities. But there are some decisions which, ultimately, we leave to voters to be able to make and to decide upon, and generally those decisions are constitutional decisions. Whether it’s a parliamentary term or whether it’s the type of voting system, we allow the voters of New Zealand to have their say on those matters, and it’s the same when it comes to local councils. When a council is deciding whether to make a significant constitutional change to put in place Māori wards, ultimately, they should be able to let the public have their say on what is a significant change in their local community.

I say again to the people on the other side of this House: what should they be afraid of when it comes to democracy in this country? This side of the House supports democracy. They clearly do not.

Lastly, the bill makes a couple of small changes to support participation in the 2025 local elections. As members know, all councils use postal voting for local elections and have done so since 1995. New Zealand Post provides almost all of these services for local elections and, as postal volumes have declined, it has become harder to deliver voting papers within the current six-day window that is currently required under the Act. New Zealand Post has informed the Government that it would take up to two weeks to complete nationwide delivery of voting papers for the 2025 local elections and beyond, and as this creates a risk that some voters will not have a reasonable opportunity to have their voices heard, I propose to adjust the statutory time frames for how long voting papers can be sent out in order to allow for that. But, ultimately, that does lead to the need to consider further changes around electoral reforms, which this Government will continue to engage in those conversations.

This bill will go to a select committee. People will be able to have their say as part of that process. The select committee, though, will be for a short period of time due to the fact that councils are currently legally required to resolve to adopt their proposals for representation reviews by 31 July 2024. Hence, a shorter select committee process will enable the bill to be reported back to the House by the middle of June so that all remaining stages can be completed, with the bill enacted by 31 July, providing councils with the certainty they require. I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is nothing short of appalling. The speech made by the Minister was nothing short of disingenuous, and the entire rationale behind this bill is racially motivated. It is a disgrace—an absolute disgrace—to stand up in this House and present this as being about democracy when the changes apply only to Māori wards and are not about any other aspect of it. Simeon Brown should be ashamed—be ashamed—for giving in to extreme elements for the sake of a cheap vote.

I predict that in 20 years, 30 years, Māori wards will be normal. They will be universally adopted and people will wonder what the argument was all about. Just like the homosexual law reform or marriage equality—and Simon Watts scoffs. He probably voted No. Maybe that’s why he’s scoffing. The point is that we look back. People might look back to their grandparents’ views at that time and they might look back with disgust, or they might be ashamed of the way that their grandparents voted on an issue, and in time you wonder what on earth the fuss was about. That is my challenge to these members today. In 20 years’ time or 30 years’ time, are you going to be proud of yourselves, because what you are doing today is you are voting to impose a stricter criteria on things that impact on Māori and Māori only.

The Minister’s defence of the Government’s position that rural wards are different because there is a provision to go to the Local Government Commission was pitiful—absolutely pitiful. If they wanted a level playing field, simply make Māori wards have the same provision, and then you’ve got what you say you’re after. But, no.

If there was a member’s bill in Parliament today proposing that what they are putting forward for Māori wards applied to rural wards or urban wards or any other form of wards—but especially rural wards—they would vote against it because they would argue that there’s a very good chance that the much higher-population urban areas in those districts would not vote in the rural people’s interests, and because rural people vote for them. But the same rationale that they would use to oppose this provision on rural wards, they are saying is a virtue for the sake of Māori wards.

That is why I say this is racially motivated—because their principles apply when it suits them. Their principles apply when there’s a chance they might be able to get 5 percent of the vote in order to form a Government. I think it’s disgraceful, and I’m not surprised that there are a couple of backbenchers looking down, because if I was on their side, I’d be looking down too. I would be ashamed because this isn’t anything to do with democracy. This is a politically expedient opportunity to kick Māori—to kick Māori while they’re down.

Local government finally got an opportunity to put forward the idea of Māori wards in exactly the same way that they would consider any other ward. That is all that the change did—exactly the same way—and the Government is changing this, knowing that some communities will vote these out and deprive Māori of a voice. Some communities that have never had a Māori councillor voted for Māori wards because they knew that it would benefit and add to their decision making.

Fifty-plus mayors have signed a letter to this Government saying, “Do not do this. This is an overreach.” The Government is ignoring them. It’s another example of this Government ignoring local government. An appalling Minister—no one likes him, because he never turns up, and when he does turn up, he lectures them just like he did then. It’s another example of this Government breaking promises.

They went right round the country—oh, Simon Watts has quietened down because he knows what I’m going to say. He went around the country and promised local government that if National were elected, they would help them pay for their water. What did those members do when they got elected? They broke that promise. That is why so many mayors went for them instead of water reform—because they promised them they would pay and they lied to them, and today they are ignoring them.

Shame on this Government for ignoring local communities that have made a decision for themselves and for putting extra burden on people because they are Māori. It’s a disgrace.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

E Tukituki ana te iwi Māori me ngā kaunihera puta noa i Aotearoa i ēnei mahi rāweke o te Kāwanatanga.

[The Māori people and the councils throughout New Zealand are clashing due to the tampering done by the Government.]

It is a dark day for local government when we see this overreach of the central government into local decision-making. The uptake of Māori wards across the country—some 45 councils—demonstrates grassroots tautoko for Māori wards, and I say bring it on. Bring it on, because Māori voice adds to the discussion and the decision making in our local communities.

I bring to this debate a Tai Tokerau perspective. As a hapū and iwi kaimahi, I worked alongside local communities, iwi Māori, and council allies to advocate for the adoption of Māori wards. I mihi to Nanaia Mahuta for her foresight and leadership—the enabler who paved the way for the adoption of Māori wards, and I quote Kelly Stratford in 2021, councillor of Far North District Council, who said the introduction of Māori wards is a step towards repairing broken Crown relationships and rebuilding iwi Māori trust in local government. Tēnā koe, Auntie Kelly.

Generations of Māori have had barriers to participation and representation in local government. We’ve got a deep mistrust for both central and local government. We have tried to seek representation as iwi Māori on the local government decision-making tables, mai rānō. Now it’s argued that councils haven’t been representing local community voices in their decision to take up Māori wards. But I argue in their representation reviews in 2021, they did. Taranaki Regional Council went out and said, “Have your say.” Far North District Council, in 2021, went out and polled the community. They received 499 submissions, of which 82 percent responded supporting the adopting of Māori wards within Far North District Council.

Now, on 4 May in 2021, we gathered in Far North District Council to watch the decision making of local government, and Waihoroi Shortland, the chair of Ngāti Hine, stood and said, “In the North, where this nation was born, we are going to set the example, not wait for Government to come down and tell us what to do, because we will have the courage to do it for ourselves. We will have the courage to work together as promised through Te Tiriti o Waitangi.” Anaru Kira from Whangaroa stood and he spoke to Far North District Council, and he encouraged Māori wards would help bring the views and aspirations of whānau and hapū to the decision-making table.

So 45 councils have adopted Māori wards to date. We’re only starting the journey—give it a chance. There’s been a huge uptake. It is mainstream. It is mainstream to have Māori wards at the decision-making table. It’s a plus-plus for councils to have Māori wards. You get both skills and experience and you get the tirohanga Māori at the decision-making table. It’s like us having Māori seats in central government—why can’t we do it in local government? Let’s advocate for more. Let’s encourage hapū and iwi representation in standing committees. Let’s continue on the journey of Māori representation in local government.

Now, the Waitangi Tribunal has already reported that there is a clear breach in Te Tiriti o Waitangi in the decision made by this Government, and I’d like to remind us that removing Māori wards tramples on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and deprives us as iwi Māori to have a voice in local representation and decision making. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. ACT campaigned against Labour’s Māori wards regime, and voters put us in Government with the expectation that we will keep our promises. With the restoration of local referendums enshrined in our coalition agreement, we are keeping that promise.

The aforementioned group of activist mayors that are going against what the community want because they are afraid of the community which they represent having a say, in case they go against what they want, are on a highway to nothing. ACT says that all New Zealanders are alike in dignity, and this should be reflected in our institutions. With Māori wards legislation set to pass first reading, we’re celebrating a step towards a democracy that recognises our common humanity and does not treat you differently based on who your ancestors were.

This bill gives effect to the coalition Government’s commitment to restore the right to a local referendum on the establishment or ongoing use of Māori wards. The fact is that Māori have been doing a fantastic job at local government level at being elected: 13.5 percent of local government representatives are Māori. This is very close to the share of Māori in the general population, but it goes further. This Government, for many years, has been passing Treaty settlement bills, and this has been creating post-settlement entities which have got entrenched rights to be consulted within local government.

The change which the Government is bringing, with the strength of a democratic election behind it, sees Kiwis as individuals. In a democracy, we never say that the will of the people—as we heard tonight from the Green member in question time—is an insurmountable obstacle to democracy. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thanks, Mr Speaker. We’ve already heard that this is about the coalition Government keeping the promises that it made quite clearly. Now, I understand the concerns that have been raised by the Opposition there, but I wanted to pick up two things that Kieran McAnulty said. The first of them is that it is exactly the same process to establish those Māori wards which were established for the 2022 local body elections as all the rest of the wards went through. Actually, no, it wasn’t, and I’m going to come back to that, because that did not go through the lengthy process of the representation review—that is the normal process.

The second thing is he also slighted the Minister and said nobody likes him and he doesn’t get out there. Well, I can report to you that Tom Rutherford and I were with him at an excellent meeting with all the mayors of the Bay of Plenty region, which went very well and was very much appreciated, and I’m sure that that is not an isolated incident. But what I can also say to you—above the noisy rabble on this side—is that my experience, as a local body mayor, of the previous Minister of Local Government the Hon Nanaia Mahuta was anything but positive. It was somebody who came in and said, “Look, where you can opt into three waters legislation—no, you’re going to be forced into it and then you’ve got no ability to opt out.” So maybe the Hon Kieran McAnulty should be a little bit careful, when he’s in glass houses, about throwing stones.

I think that I have been through more local government representation reviews, I suspect, than the rest of the House put together. I’ve done 10 terms, which is a lot of representation reviews. What you do is you go through an extensive process. They’re done six-yearly. There is an extensive process of looking at demographics and making sure that you get the numbers right—and I’m going to come back to those numbers and get those right. You have at least two rounds of engagement with the community—at least two rounds of engagement—and, as we’ve heard, there is a right of appeal to the Local Government Commission. Actually, I’m absolutely sure that I’ve done more appeals to the Local Government Commission probably than anybody else in this House as well—and successfully, too—to get the number of councillors down to a sensible level at Wellington City Council.

What we have with the introduction of these wards—and I am going to say that I understand absolutely the reason for the introduction of these Māori wards, because the reality is that virtually never will they survive a referendum. Very, very few of them will survive a referendum. The question I ask is: is it right for Māori to be able to determine the way in which Māori are represented? The second question: is it right for other people to say, “No, Māori shouldn’t be entitled to be represented the way they want to be represented.”? So I think there is a live question there which we need to hear from the people about, and we didn’t really get the chance to do that—

Hūhana Lyndon: It’s a rushed piece of legislation that undermines the ability for Māori to determine representation.

ANDY FOSTER: —with Labour’s legislation, because it was, essentially, fast-track legislation. If you were listening, you’d actually hear that I’m not so far away from your position, because I was the Mayor of Wellington when we actually introduced a Māori ward, and, actually, I was proud to be part of doing that.

There was one problem, and it comes down to that representation and those numbers. There is a requirement in all other wards to be plus or minus 10 percent population. There are some times when you’re able to be given an exemption by the Local Government Commission. That requirement is not there for Māori wards. Democracy has a couple of fundamental things: one person, one vote—I think we all agree on that—but the other one is that each vote should be roughly equivalent in value, and that’s what the plus and minus 10 percent is all about. But if you have the situation where you only require a ward to have a little over 50 percent of the population of another ward, that means that those votes, effectively, count for twice as much, and that is a problem. As we walk through this process, I would encourage people to think about that and whether that is actually fair.

You’ll remember the Rotorua District Council (Representation Arrangements) Bill. Now, that was resolved by the Rotorua council in May 2021, and it became a very hot topic. Why? Because it set up a general ward and it set up two other wards: one ward was to be a Māori ward, electing three councillors; the other a general ward, electing three councillors. The problem was that the population in the general ward was about three times the size, if I remember correctly, of the population of the Māori ward. That was disproportionate, that was unfair, and that was undemocratic.

So whatever we do in this process as we go through—and I look forward to hearing the submissions as we make sure that we end up with a process that is genuinely fair and democratic to all voters, whether they are Māori or not Māori. I commend this bill to the House, and I look forward to the submissions. I will do so with a very open mind, and I hope you will also do so. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Tēnā koe. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. The removal of Māori wards is another targeted attack on Māori for being Māori. We are being forcibly removed from the decision-making table that we built in the first place and invited Pākehā to sit at in 1840. This is an attempt to silence tangata whenua, whose demise is what founds and continues to fuel this illegitimate Parliament machine and its extensions in local councils. One hundred and eighty-four years, and this Government still thinks we must prove our right to exercise power in Aotearoa, where it is the Government that should be proving its right to exercise its power over us. Yet, perversely, because we’ve been made a minority on our own whenua, we are fighting now for crumbs of what we actually have a right to: full and undisturbed sovereignty.

Furthermore, this Government and the races it represents blindly ignore the truly undemocratic historical actions imposed by this Pākehā Government over tangata whenua: stealing our land, wrongfully seizing political power, cleansing our identity, our knowledge, and creating violent laws that demote us to second-class citizens. The removal of Māori wards is simply a continuation of imperial abuse on tangata whenua. The argument is that Māori wards will be the demise of democracy. To remove Māori wards is an assault on Te Tiriti, the only reason a democracy inclusive of Pākehā could ever exist. Te Tiriti was created so the Queen of England could control her unruly Pākehā in Aotearoa, and I support the recent letter of our whanaunga Margaret Mutu for the British Crown to rein in these unruly Pākehā sitting across from me now.

Disestablishing Māori wards further undermines councils’ autonomy in their rohe. This rings true for the Far North District Council of Te Tai Tokerau. The rohe alone covers 6,000 square kilometres, a whenua home to a population which makes up 46 percent. The establishment of Māori wards in the Far North gave the 13 iwi entities, the 252 hapū, and 100-plus Māori social services, reo, and local trust organisations greater confidence in their local government—a confidence resulting from Māori representation. Yet, to assume that this percentage of Māori would also front and vote in an election is blatant ignorance. This law merely feeds the latent mistrust of my people in the system. You see, my people are not disengaged from Government; they are disenchanted. We are less likely to vote if incomes do not meet daily needs, a reality for many of our own in Te Tai Tokerau, and if we do not see ourselves reflected in or as having a true influence over decision making. This is why Māori wards matter.

The Far North emanates this very sentiment with the establishment of Māori wards. Even those Māori in the most remote areas of Te Tai Tokerau—Pānguru and Mitimiti—are now engaging with council, according to my relation on the ground Hilda Halkyard-Harawira. Removing Māori wards ultimately removes any care for people who reside in remote areas, including Pānguru and Mitimiti. It devalues our people. Māori wards bridge the gap between our communities and makers of law. They offer councils expertise in what remains unreachable to them given their abuse and ignorance of us. Māori ward councillors engage directly with our communities because we know the suffering of our people, the necessity of resource, but also the intelligence, the resilience, and the ingenuity of tangata Māori.

All four Māori ward candidates for the Far North District Council are fluent in the reo of this whenua and the reo of this colonial empire. They are experts of two opposing worlds, fluent in not only the languages but cultures themselves, and we can trust in our people as we are the sovereign of our own liberation of our own minds, as revolutionaries. We do not nurture the colonial dreams of Pākehā. It is this Pākehā desire that has endeavoured to silence our Māori voices from central government, local government, regional councils, from any space in fact that our revolutionary minds could touch. So I absolutely object and do not commend this to the House and plead that any sensible people do the same. Kia ora tātou.

This bill should be neither a surprise nor a threat. I just want to pick up on those two points. Firstly, it’s not a surprise. All three Government parties campaigned on this, leading up to the last election, and were voted in accordingly—in quite a contrast, perhaps, to 2021, where we saw the first changes to representation and Māori wards not campaigned on at all in 2020.

This is the fundamental tenet of democracy: that we tell people what we’re going to do, they vote for us, and now we’re doing it. You’ve seen that from this Government over successive months and with successive bills, and this is another step in that direction. In fact, it is a return to where it used to be for Māori wards, not something new. This is just another example of our Government fixing more mistakes from the last Government, fixing this attitude that Wellington knows best—“We couldn’t possibly trust our local communities to make these decisions for themselves!” That’s why this is not a threat; it is giving the local community their chance to choose how they are represented.

In my electorate of Ōtaki, in both the Horowhenua and Kāpiti councils, Māori councillors fill general ward seats at a higher rate than the general population. They are already represented. Moving them from a general seat to a Māori ward doesn’t change their impact around the council table.

Now, to me, it doesn’t matter how they do it. The local community should be able to choose. The fundamental point is that this is about democracy. It’s about letting the community stay in the driving seat. This actually isn’t about Māori wards and someone trying to diminish Māori having their say or Pākehā having their say; this is about letting the community decide how they will be represented. In our community, they already are represented. But across the country, let’s let Kiwis decide. Let’s let the decisions be made at the lowest possible level. Let’s restore democracy. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Otirā tēnā rawa atu tātou katoa. Aue te moumou taima me te moumou moni o tēnei pire.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. And greetings also to everyone present. Heck! What a waste of time and a waste of money this bill is.]

I cannot believe that in this day and age we’re standing up to debate this topic. While I am extremely proud to come from a district who has gone through the correct process to establish Māori wards, Te Tairāwhiti—so I guess that means Rehette, if you’re watching, you are an “activist mayor”.

Kua kōrerotia e rātou mō tēnei mea te democracy. [They spoke about democracy.] It’s very hard to be inspired by that word “democracy”, when we are in fact the minority in our own country as Māori. There has also been kōrero about The Voice. Actually, I want to go back to the other one. There’s been kōrero about keeping promises. If promises were kept, we would not have needed to establish Māori wards. Yes, I am talking about Te Tiriti o Waitangi. While we’re talking about that, and we want to talk about partnerships and voice, it seems that the Government is happy that we are partners, that our level of participation is to bless chambers but not to have a seat or a voice in them.

Hūhana Lyndon: “Kia ora mō te karakia.”

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: So—ha, ha! Yeah, kia ora mō te karanga me te karakia. Haere ki waho ināianei. [Thank you for the call and the prayer. Go outside now.]

We’ve also talked about the vote, the general vote, and absolutely there are Māori sitting in general seats around, obviously, in here, but around councils all around our country, and there will continue to be. That shouldn’t be a surprise. There are highly educated, intelligent, capable Māori in every industry in this country. However, what we also have is some Māori purely want to be the Māori voice voted for by the Māori people, and that has been supported by many councils. We’re talking about respecting local voices? We are disrespecting the people, the councils, the mayors, the chairs who have already written in to say, “We’ve been through that process.” [Interruption] Yeah. Kua ea, kua ea. [It is satisfied, it is satisfied.] It has been done. Why are we undoing yet another thing in this country which particularly impacts Māori?

Now, the other quote that came up just now was “This shouldn’t be a surprise or a threat.” Well, why are Māori having a seat at councils a surprise and why is that a threat? On that note, I just want to present a quote from one of our very intelligent young wāhine who has now secured a seat on a council: “The opposition of Māori wards is entirely fear-based. It’s the fear that we will use the seats, this representation, this power, to further a Māori agenda at the expense of Pākehā, of Kiwi New Zealanders that call this place we love home. That fear is absolutely misplaced and unfounded. It goes against all the values we are taught from birth and that have been handed down from generation to generation. Māori want what is best for everybody, what is best for our taiao. We want everyone to have good jobs, successful businesses, and we want people to live where they want to be, in their homes, in the city, off the grid, or on their whenua in papa kāinga.”

I acknowledge the acknowledgments of our smaller communities where Māori representation is high and echo her sentiment about the value of having tangata whenua knowledge in our houses, connection to the whenua, connection to the taiao from whom we come and will return. But there’s also huge benefits of having these in urban centres, of having Māori representation. Because having lived in a couple of urban centres, we’re not always privy to having access to our tikanga or indeed see faces that look like ours. So having access to this representation in councils around the motu is only beneficial to us all.

Hei whakakapi [In closing]—oh, I had more to say. Heoi anō, [However] I’m sure there’s going to be a second reading and we’ll have a lot more to say then. Tēnei te mihi atu ki a koe, Nanaia, mēnā kei te mātakitaki mai koe. [I would like to commend you, Nanaia, if you are watching this.] I commend Nanaia for having the courage to bring these changes to our fine country and I commend our pāti Labour, te Pāti Repa, for supporting it and allowing a strong Māori voice in our councils around Aotearoa whānui, and to the councils also who have had the strength and courage and wisdom to do this. Tēnei te mihi atu ki a tātou [Thank you all.]

What a great day for community say. As we say in local government, have your say. This gives all Kiwis the potential to have their say. There was a comment that Māori voice would be deprived at the council table or in local government. Well, in my experience in local government, local government is the best example of Māori relationships, of engagement, of enactment, of enablement. So they have nothing to fear about losing voice in local government because local government, I would argue, are at best practice with local Māori relationships.

So this is all about putting “local” into local government, as other speakers have said. This is about not just putting it through a 17-day process, as the last Government did in 2021—17-day process in 2021, rushed through without any consultation. This puts an opportunity out there.

Guess what! They might be surprised—they might be surprised. Because I know they’ve been throwing it out to middle New Zealand—an insinuation that perhaps the hurdle was insurmountable, which is an insinuation for the rest of middle New Zealand, ratepayer New Zealand, as somewhat conservative and potentially racist. Well, guess what! Those are the same people that voted for MMP, and that was a referendum, wasn’t it? They were the same people that voted for euthanasia, and that wasn’t a conservative issue. They are the same voters that voted in and around cannabis for recreational use at referendum and that nearly got through. So they might be surprised with just how New Zealanders view this if they are petitioned and if it gets to that far.

So Māori have nothing to fear. This is about returning to the community the ability to have their say, and local government does it better than anyone. So I have every confidence that this will end up in a very good place. It’s going to go through a submission process. We will listen on the Justice Committee and make amendments accordingly. But it is a great day for community—have your say.

The speech from the previous member, Cameron Brewer, when he tries to claim that National MPs who have contributed to this debate want more Māori representation at local bodies and want more expertise around the local council table when it comes to iwi relationships, is pretty rich, when that member sat on a local board, I believe it was the Rodney local board, in a year where I, as the general counsel for Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara, was seeking to establish with that board a relationship agreement between the board and the iwi, and it was blocked over and over. That local board could not agree with its local iwi to enter into an agreement to work together.

That is the posture of this Government, to come to this House and say, “Oh, we want success for Māori, we want Māori to be succeeding and thriving, but we won’t let them around the council table and we certainly won’t have Te Tiriti o Waitangi enshrined in our legislation, because that would be a step too far.” It would be a step too far to tell te iwi Māori, to tell rangatahi Māori of Aotearoa that their concerns are of importance to this House, that their concerns are of importance at a local government level and that they deserve to be enshrined!

This debate has been complicated by a number of constitutional issues. But it really is simple that, in 2021, Labour removed the barrier to democratically elected councils to determine whether or not, around the council table, they saw fit to establish Māori wards. These democratic decisions are being overridden by a central government who is determined not to let local governments make that decision for themselves in the normal way that councils use to determine their representation processes. Since that law was enacted, 45 councils have elected to have a Māori ward.

The Government comes to this House and they say that there is a choice for local councils, but the choice is that they can either scrap Māori wards that exist, or send them to a binding referendum that they know will be ugly, because these politics are ugly. Do you know why these politics are so ugly? It’s because we have parties on that side of the House who are drumming up an ugly, divisive debate that has no place in Aotearoa, which is imported from US politics, which is about kicking people when they’re down—in this case, kicking Māori. But it could be anything. It could be kicking renters when they’re down, by taking away 90-day no-cause evictions. It could be kicking disability communities when they’re down, by taking away the very entitlements they rely upon. This Government is on a collision course to take it out on the people who cannot fight back, and it’s shameful.

It’s shameful that we are having a debate in this House today which has been couched in terms of re-democratising, of making things better for the communities, when, in fact, we have mayors around the country saying to the Government that this will drum up the kind of rhetoric in their communities that they do not want to oversee, that this is something which mayors in Aotearoa are saying will be hurtful and divisive and undermine social cohesion in Aotearoa. We should listen to them. Instead, the ACT Party members have come to this House today and called those mayors “activist mayors”. At the same time as they think that they’re championing democracy, they’re also using their parliamentary privilege to sledge every mayor who dared to have an opinion about democracy in their local area.

You would laugh, Mr Speaker, if this were at all funny, but this is the reality that rangatahi Māori in Aotearoa have to grow up with. It is a real shame that we have a Government in power which is determined to use its legislative power, to use the politics of division in Aotearoa, to garner the votes of people who would see Māori progress set back.

I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that Labour will stick up for Māori; it will stick up for those “activist mayors” who are worried about the undermining of social cohesion in their cities and regions, who have been democratically elected to represent people’s interests at a local level; and we will stick up for those outcomes that we see when we have more Māori representatives around the council table—more cohesion, more expertise in te taiao, and the representation of Māori people around the council table, because that can only be a good thing. That is why we should not vote for this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to stand in support of the Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill. The 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 for 5 percent of councils’ electors to call for a binding poll on Māori wards - establishment decisions.

Restoring the right to local referendums on Māori wards is a commitment under both the ACT and New Zealand First coalition agreements. Let me be clear: this should not come as a shock to anyone. All three parties campaigned on reversing the previous Labour Government’s changes to local electoral law and, today, we are delivering on that commitment. Local communities should be given the opportunity to have a say on their own representation. Referendums on Māori wards allow local voters to make their own representation decisions. This bill is simply about restoring democracy to local communities.

One local councillor from the Bay of Plenty got in touch with me after our Government announced that we were bringing this bill to the House, and they said to me—and I quote—“I am grateful that the Government is taking a stand on behalf of local government. New Zealand is a democracy, and to have councils introducing Māori wards without consulting our communities is so wrong.” Today, we are restoring democracy to local communities. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.