Maiden Statements

Members, so that I don’t have to interrupt the celebrations: at the conclusion of the maiden statement, the House will adjourn until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 28 May 2024. I call on Francisco Hernandez to make his maiden statement.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Welcome, and mabuhay.

Thank you to everyone for being here, particularly to distinguished guests Philippine Ambassador Kira Azucena, Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau, and “Dunedin Mayor in exile” Aaron Hawkins. Thank you to all my whānau, friends, and random Twitter strangers here in the gallery.

I’m a little intimidated by the size of the crowd. When I promised the party that I would bring the Filipino community to the Greens, I didn’t think that it would be quite so soon or so literally. Thank you to all of you who are here, and thank you to those who are watching it from afar, from the Philippines to America to Europe—the Filipino diaspora and my whānau have spread beyond.

My entire speech could just be thanking everyone who helped get me here, and 15 minutes wouldn’t be enough, but I’ll try in one minute: to my parents, Ross and Terry; and my brothers, Ian, Feodor, and Tighe; I love you more than you could ever know. Thank you for all the sacrifices you’ve made.

To my friends Jess, JC, Georgie, William, Josh, Meaghan, Jose, Scout, Hannah, Tracy, and Lauren; my fellow Deep South candidates, Scott, Dave, and Pleasance; the Kaitiaki group, Kathy, Alan, Marie, Ross, Hugh, Dan, and Ash; the Campus Greens, Rose, Nicholas, Henry, Tamika, Ella, Tessa, and Nicola; my campaign managers, Ged, Kam, and Mackenzie; the super-volunteers like Alex, Elliot, Peter, and Nat; our staff at Parliament and in the party, Chennoah, Miriam, Robin, Eden, Bridie, Lachlan, and Amber; Eilish, Dave, Briar, EGE, and the fellow gamers on Twitter.

Thank you to the voters around the country, but particularly the ones in Dunedin. I find myself in an unenviable position of succeeding such distinguished and accomplished individuals: our former co-leader James Shaw, who forged a cross-party consensus on climate policy; our friend Fa‘anānā Efeso Collins, who was, tragically, taken before his time, with only a glimpse of his gigantic potential as a parliamentarian; and Golriz Ghahraman, Parliament’s first refugee MP and a trailblazer for our migrant communities.

It’s a privilege to be here and an honour to serve our country. I love Aotearoa New Zealand, and it’s an honour to give back a small fraction of what it’s given me. Very few people love this country more than the people who have to earn their right to be here, and from Kaitāia to Bluff, tens of thousands of my fellow Filipinos are proving their love for our adoptive country. At the crack of dawn, we’re out there milking the cows; throughout the day, we’re maintaining the critical IT infrastructure; and till dusk, we provide the backbone of our hospitals and aged-care facilities; and now we are here in the halls of power, writing the laws and debating the future of our country.

I pay tribute to the Filipinos who have blazed a path in New Zealand: Kookie Samin, the first ever Filipino candidate for Parliament; Dennis Maga, the first Filipino and first Asian to helm a major trade union in Aotearoa; Thelma Bell, the first Filipino elected to public office; and my colleague Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino ever elected to Parliament. Paulo, you may have beaten me to be the first Filipino MP, but the race is still on to be the first Filipino Minister. While he and I could not be further apart ideologically, we are here, united in love for our communities and love for our adoptive country.

But what does it mean to love your country? To me, the true spirit of patriotism is not in pining for a nostalgic, ossified past of New Zealand as it was, frozen in amber and stuck in a past that it can never return to. It’s also not in loving the country unconditionally and without question, warts and all. Being a true patriot is wanting the country to live up to our mythos. True patriots are those who fight to narrow the gap between the New Zealand as it currently is and the New Zealand that we all think it is: a New Zealand that gives everyone a fair go, an Aotearoa that values and protects nature, and an Aotearoa New Zealand that stands up for the little guy and against foreign imperialism.

I arrived here when I was about 12 years old. My parents made great sacrifices to leave our old country behind, as my father had lost his job in the President’s office in the chaotic transition after the Estrada presidency. We’ll always be grateful to my Tito Jun and Tita Espie for sponsoring us through the family reunification category, and the support of our whānau Ding, Brenda, Shaun, TJ, BJ, Rene, Pop, Joey, and Jacob—Filipino families are big.

Shortly after we arrived, my mother had my brother Tighe. He was born with a congenital heart defect, and passed away just a few months later. But despite our status as new migrants who had nothing but the clothes on our backs, and despite my family’s humble means, with my dad working as a factory worker at Fisher & Paykel, New Zealand spared no effort to provide my brother with world-class healthcare at Greenlane and Starship Hospital. It was then that I decided that I would stop at nothing to give back to this country that had given so much to me and seemed to represent paradise on earth.

As I grew up, these childhood dreams of paradise would be lost. At Liston College, I noticed that there were those who had so much; there were those, like me, who had to work to help our parents pay the bills—a shout-out to Maccas—and there were those who had to drop out of school to find work to help their whānau survive. Hard work only takes you so far when you don’t start on a level playing field. Fuelled by the sense we could do more, I joined the Labour Party and got involved in Te Atatū Labour MP Chris Carter’s local election campaign.

After high school, I went to the University of Otago, where my long love affair with Ōtepoti—Dunedin—began. Naturally, I gravitated toward student politics, fuelled by the injustice that was becoming increasingly evident. Even in the relative privilege of university, there were so many who went to lectures hungry, and, even back then, too many had to choose between heating and eating.

I ran for the Otago University Students’ Association (OUSA) on a cost of living platform, modestly proposing that a student association with a $3 million budget could substitute and build a crypto-welfare State in the middle of a transition between universal to voluntary student membership. I didn’t fully succeed, but some of the fruits of my labour have stood the test of time. The free breakfast programme still exists to this very day, and the scarfie shuttles branched off into a very successful local business called Airport Shuttles Dunedin, still run by the taxi driver Divesh, whom we partnered with many years ago. This was thanks to the support of my execs; my secretary, Donna Jones; my general manager, Darell Hall; and our vice-chancellor, Harlene Hayne.

As the founding member of the Marxist-Shawist, market-socialist wing of the GreenLeft Network, I regard class as the biggest driver of inequality, but not the only driver. It was at university that my eyes were fully opened to the intersectional nature of inequality. Thank you to Te Roopu Māori and Uni Q for all your patience on educating me—particularly Neill, Ariana, Marama, Lisa, and Gianna, and my colleagues at Te Tira Ahu Pae, the first co-governed students association, for reinforcing them a decade later.

How can a country that claims to value a fair go for all tolerate the dispossession of Māori whenua and the blatant breaches of Te Tiriti? How can a country that claims to treat everyone equally stand by while our rainbow communities are targeted by imported foreign culture wars? How can a country that prides itself on a fair go for all sleep soundly while tens of thousands of kids go hungry and cold, while their landlords reap the benefit of billion-dollar tax cuts? True patriotism is recognising this country has erred and will continue to err, but working and committing to justice in the future.

After I finished my term with OUSA, I moved to Wellington. It was rough. I had to work several part-time jobs to get by. At Caritas, I stuffed and folded fund-raising envelopes; at the Health Promotion Agency, I researched problem gambling; and at Parliament, I took notes—really, really quickly—becoming part of a team of elite transcriptionists for Green MP Mojo Mathers. This led to my journey with the Greens as a cover executive assistant (EA), then as the EA for Denise, and finishing my term as a leader’s office staffer.

My time with Denise was the highlight of my time at Parliament. It was a privilege to support her through various campaigns on ending zero-hour contracts and abolishing the scourge of plastic bags. She taught me lessons about solidarity, the circular economy, and tikanga that have stayed with me to this very day. She supported me through various misadventures—becoming one of the youth delegates for the Paris climate talks, spending an inordinately large amount of time at our Auckland office as part of a doomed local government campaign—and she even gave me an impeccable reference when I applied to be a political and media adviser for the Green co-leaders’ office, even after I’d inadvertently sent her to the wrong Sacred Heart College, although I suspect she was just glad to get rid of me at that stage. Thank you for all the support you and your whānau—John, Mata, Dani, and Joe—have shown to me over the past decade. You’ve been a friend, a mentor, and a comrade.

To my fellow EAs, PMAs, and the caucus that I served proudly—particularly our co-leaders Metiria, Russel, and James—thank you for the privilege.

After the rollercoaster of 2017, I found myself adrift. Instead of hiring political hacks like me, Green Ministers, rightfully, chose to hire well-qualified, lifelong public servants, who are the pride of the world. Ironically, this led to me becoming a public servant, with stints at ACC and the Tertiary Education Commission, before I found my dream job at the Climate Change Commission.

I’d been part of the youth climate movement Generation Zero since 2012, and it helped with the push—ably led by Lisa McLaren and countless others—to establish the zero carbon Act, which set up the climate commission. To get in on the ground floor of a commission which I helped bring into existence was a real privilege. It was hard work being at the start-up phase of a new, independent Crown agency, and to establish a set of emissions budgets that will endure across Governments in this context is no small feat. I was lucky to work with such a talented calibre of people: Phil, Ben, Sandra, Sally, Matt, Melissa, Paul, Charli, Carly, and many others.

The climate movement didn’t get everything we wanted from the zero carbon Act—just look at Russel Norman’s tweets about the Greens over the past six years, if you want proof—but neither did Federated Farmers.

Members opposite should be very careful as to whether they want New Zealand’s hard-won consensus sacrificed at the altar of political expediency. When overseas markets and our trade agreements are demanding that New Zealand live up to our PR brand of being clean and green, backtracking would be dangerous to our nature and our prosperity as a country.

To be blunt: if members opposite shatter the Shawist legacy of working across the aisle to achieve wins for climate, then they’ll make climate another front in our culture wars, and—I promise—that’s not a war that they’ll win, but it’s not a war that we will win either. The nature of civil wars is that they don’t create too many winners. So, instead of war, let’s have peace. Instead of conflict, let’s have consensus. If we are serious about living up to our self-image as a country that truly values its environment and nature, we must ensure that the hard-won climate consensus that we’ve all worked for here across the aisle holds and that we forge a new one that goes faster and further in protecting climate and nature.

Climate action is hard work. My time as Otago Regional Council’s principal climate adviser showed me how tough implementing abstract policy at the flaxroots would be. Too often, central government tells local communities what to do, but it doesn’t give them the resources to do it. The lack of a consistent national framework and resourcing on adaptation, and the chopping and changing of policies makes the task of climate-proofing our communities even harder.

Working on climate change across councils is hard, but it’s a task that was made easier by my colleagues Shay, Ema, Emily, Vita, James, Andrea, Amanda, Hilary, Jean-Luc, Florence, and many others. We brought the region together through the Otago Climate Officers Group because cooperation is better than competition, and nowhere is that more obvious and evident than in climate change.

Sadly, the world is drifting farther and farther away from peace and cooperation, and closer to conflict and war. Tyrants around the world have taken to unilateral action and have flouted international laws. Whether it’s Ukraine or Palestine, the world must work towards a just outcome that enables the peoples of a free Ukraine and a free Palestine and any other nation in shackles to self-determine their futures.

New Zealanders rightfully pride themselves on having an independent foreign policy that stands up for the oppressed. But we’ve cosied up to a US-led world order, instead of working for a free and independent Pacific, free from empires.

Once again, I express my gratitude to this country for giving me this opportunity to serve. I am here as a cog in the Green machine, the 42nd Green MP to be sworn into Parliament, a tribune for the environmental and social movements that this party exercises power on behalf of and with.

To my friends, enemies, and frenemies across the aisle, I promise that my door will always be open to you to hear you out, because dialogue is the first step to consensus.

To my co-leaders, Marama and Chlöe, and my caucus colleagues, I promise that I will fight alongside you for our planet, our Tiriti, and our people every single day so that the New Zealand of today becomes the Aotearoa that we dream of. Ināia tonu nei—the time is now.

Waiata—“Te Aroha”

The House adjourned at 6.01 p.m.