Electoral (Equal Protection of Māori Seats) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Electoral (Equal Protection of Māori Seats) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the bill.

Madam Speaker, he mihi. Tēnā koutou ngā mātāwaka, tēnā hoki koutou ngā mema o tēnei Whare. E tū ana ahau ki te whaikōrero mō taku pire kua tae mai ki mua ki te aroaro o te Pāremata. Kua tae tēnei ki te wā ki te whakature i ngā tūru Māori, he tūru motuhake.

[Madam Speaker, some acknowledgments. I acknowledge you, the people of many backgrounds, and I also acknowledge the members of this House. I stand to speak about my bill which has arrived before Parliament. The time has come to legislate the Māori seats, seats of special character.]

I am very privileged and proud to speak in support of this member’s bill, which has a great deal of history. My colleague the Hon Rino Tirikatene introduced a bill similar to this in 2018, and it feels right for me, after speaking about his legacy recently in the House, to acknowledge that legacy by continuing his work to make sure that the Māori seats have equal protection to the general seats.

On his bill, Mr Tirikatene said, in his first reading, although it’s small, it is a treasure—“Ahakoa he iti, he pounamu.” This is a short bill and I hope that members around the House take the opportunity to read it. It’s on the Table along with a positive New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet from the Attorney-General, the Hon Judith Collins.

It is a simple bill and it is easy to understand, but I’ll take you through it so that there’s no confusion about what the simple provisions do, because they do speak to those provisions in the Electoral Act which are about making sure that we have fairness for the participation of everyone in our democracy.

The Electoral Act sets out the rules of the elections. Some of those rules are so fundamental to the way that our fair play within the elections work that you cannot change them or get rid of them without the 75 percent support of this House. That’s because it would be unfair for any one parliamentary party or any one Government to be able to change those things that we say are fundamental to the way that we can vote and exercise our right to participate when it comes to our democratic choice.

Sections 268 and 269 of the Electoral Act set out that 75 percent majority rule. There are not many other rules within the Electoral Act which are subject to those rules of the 75 percent majority, but one is section 35—that’s called “Division of New Zealand into General electoral districts.”

So we’ve got this provision here on one side which deals with the way that general seats, which many members of this House here tonight will hold, and that is entrenched. No one can change the rules around those. Section 35 determines how many people should be in each electorate and how they should look in the future as the population grows. It’s so fundamental to the way we organise ourselves in our New Zealand democratic system that it’s not possible to gerrymander the population represented within it. That’s something we need to preserve and both major parties have always been committed to preserving. You would need a 75 percent majority to do that, and so, in effect, you’d need everyone around this House to appreciate that there was a consensus to be able to make some changes there.

Section 45, on the other hand, is the rule which means that the Māori seats exist. It determines how many people should be in each electorate for Māori and how they should look in the future as the population grows—sounds very similar to section 35, right? But the difference between section 35 and section 45 is only that section 35 requires a 75 percent majority to change it, to change the population that is represented by those seats, and section 45 does not require a 75 percent majority.

So a simple majority of Parliament could change the way that the representation in those seats worked, that gerrymandering the population within those seats would not be protected by a 75 percent majority, that changing the way they looked in the future would not be protected by a 75 percent majority. This is what this bill intends to correct. It probably was not and should not have been the intention of Parliament when it passed section 35, which is the rule about how to determine general seats to protect those in a way that the Māori seats were not protected. Because when we look at the history of the Māori seats, they were about giving voters who chose to be on the Māori roll the same representation as those voters who would vote in the general electorates.

That’s why I’ve brought this bill to the House tonight. This is about seeking Parliament’s ability to debate these issues, and I hope we can get to select committee to have these kinds of discussions about how we see the future of our democracy working, how we see the representation of Māori roll voters being protected in exactly the same way that people in a general seat and the MPs in a general seat who are campaigning to them are protected in the future.

The bill seeks to protect both section 35 and section 45. There is no change proposed to the way that the general seats are calculated, because they are of equal importance to our democratic system, our electoral system, and of equal importance to the way that we play the game in Parliament and that we come here. So I hope we can all agree that that even playing field is something we want to continue into the future.

The Māori seats are also a good part of our little democracy. I like our system of government, and it’s not perfect, but I think we’ve got the most no-nonsense system in the world that suits Kiwis’ attitude of no-nonsense when it comes to lots of things. It makes me a proud advocate not only for our parliamentary democracy but also for our constitutional monarchy, which is, in itself, one of the most stable forms of government in the world. It’s something we’ve inherited from Britain, but, look, we’ve made it our own. It’s one of the best examples historically of Kiwis taking something which was not designed by us but fixing it up with minimal fuss and making it work, and we’re still making it work. Our democracy is something that we should be incredibly proud of, and our parliamentary system is one of the envies of other democracies within the Western world. We’ve got the rules basically right. I think that we can agree that if we keep on the even keel here of a recipe which is working, we can make sure that our Māori seats continue in the future in the way that they have worked since 1867.

There is a proud history there which we can all look to and say that we’ve had representatives in Parliament who have won those Māori seats from many of the parties represented here today, and they’ve made a huge contribution. It’s the history of the Māori seats that I want to see this bill through. They’re about us taking on something that wasn’t designed for us—but we made it work—that we created in 1867, and they immediately provided a political flashpoint for organising within Māori communities and around Māori issues, particularly land rights, and, at the time, health issues like alcohol use. Important leaders within Māori society have represented their people by being elected in their seats: Māui Pōmare, my tupuna James Carroll, and Apirana Ngata. The first wahine Māori was elected in 1949, Iriaka Rātana, and generations of Māori leaders have followed her through the Māori seats, like Nanaia Mahuta.

They’re also popular. Every five years we have a referendum on the Māori seats—it’s called the Māori electoral option. More than half of Māori voters choose to be on the Māori roll, and there are 261,000 of us who choose to vote in one of the Māori seats—yep, that’s me. Me and my dad go down to the Anglican church in Manurewa and we cast our votes for Peeni Henare. He is an excellent local MP for me and my father. He loves him probably more than me.

I believe that the Māori electoral option is another way of engaging some of the most under-represented voters within our democracy. Parliament works better when it thinks like the New Zealanders we represent, but according to official figures, approximately 11.5 percent of eligible voters are not resisted to vote, and that’s 440,000 New Zealanders. We should be doing everything we can, no matter what our political affiliations, to increase the number of people who are engaged with our electoral system in the Māori electoral option, and organising around the Māori seats is one of those ways we can reach into communities who have some of the lowest levels of engagement in our democracy.

Māori are less likely to be enrolled to vote than other New Zealanders, and when they are enrolled, they are less likely to exercise their vote than other New Zealanders. Giving options and actively talking about the importance of voting is something we can do for that community to encourage participation, and we should be doing it.

I want to briefly comment on the vet from the Hon Judith Collins in her capacity as the Attorney-General. It is available for members on the Table. The Attorney-General has provided a positive rights analysis when considering the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act implications of this bill. Crown Law have provided advice that should give MPs around the House some comfort about the ability for this bill not to impinge on the rights of any other voters, including their electoral rights and the right to participate in our democracy. This is simply making the rule for Māori seats similar to the rule for general seats, and that is why there are no rights implications that Crown Law have identified.

I draw again on the words of the Hon Rino Tirikatene to finish: He taonga ngā tūru Māori. Māori seats are a treasure. Neke atu i te kotahi rau tau te tawhito. They’ve been around for well over 100 years. He mana tō ngā tūru Māori. The Māori seats still have mana. He taonga whakahirahira. They are a treasured taonga of our people and this country. I commend this bill and I hope we get a 75 percent majority tonight.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Madam Speaker, thank you. Look, can I just take the opportunity to congratulate the member, Arena Williams, for her bill.

I’m only new to this House but I know how hard it is to have a bill pulled. It’s not easy and it’s one of the few chances as backbenchers that we have to make a contribution legislatively to our nation’s democracy. So I just want to pass on my congratulations to the member: you’re a passionate, intelligent, competent member. I’m sorry that the member cannot vote for herself in her electorate. However, there is a history of a long line of Prime Ministers who also have not been able to vote for themselves in their electorate so maybe, who knows, time will tell about what happens in that member’s future.

So I just wanted to again extend my congratulations to her. I know how proud your whānau would be of your bill coming through and I hope you have the opportunity to have another piece of law come before the House in the future because, sadly for the member, the day for her bill to pass through the House may have to wait another day because we in the National Party, on this side of the House, unfortunately for the member, will not be supporting this bill to progress any further.

There are many reasons why, a lot of which my colleagues will outline to the House over the next hour or so, but I have just two key reasons that I wanted to outline to the House this evening. The first is for constitutional reasons and generally, in my view, it is constitutionally inappropriate to entrench legislation like this, first of all through the member’s bill process. I understand for the member there is no other way to get this kind of change through the House. The member was previously in Government and the previous Government didn’t choose to progress the bill through their legislative time frame. So I understand that but there are still constitutional objections to progressing entrenchment legislation through the member’s bill process.

Beyond that, there are a number of philosophical and constitutional objections to entrenching parts of legislation in general and, indeed, whether or not this House has the ability to entrench practically and bind a future Parliament by the current Parliament.

The second reason that I will be speaking against the legislation is a practical reason. The reason I wanted to say practical reason is because I suspect some of the intentions behind this bill, from the member and members opposite, is to protect the interests of minorities in this country and to try to alleviate some of the disparities that we do see on a population basis between particular ethnic groups, particularly for Māori, Pasifika, and other groups.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe that this bill does anything to improve those outcomes. I think the time in this House could be spent on other initiatives that would much more quickly and more effectively progress the rights and the health of Māori and Pacific and all other peoples in our country who suffer the injustice and unfairness of misfortune or life, or who don’t have the opportunities that maybe some others of us in this House have had. So that’s the second point I wanted to make, later on in this contribution, about the practical reasons why we shouldn’t be following it along.

I picked up on the member’s note about it receiving a clean bill of rights vet. Now, I hope the member realises that there is no stronger advocate or person who is more interested in the Attorney-General bill of rights vets than—I was about to say me in this House but then I look across and see the Hon David Parker sitting there, who wrote quite a few of them. Of course, the Attorney-General herself, colloquially known as JC Casey to her friends and colleagues, and then of course Chris Penk I’m sure would be interested in that too. But I’m glad it received a clean bill of rights vet. We can’t say that for all pieces of legislation that go through the House and I’m sure we won’t say that for all pieces of legislation that will ever go through the House. In fact, if the Electoral Act itself was passed through the bill of rights vetting process, some may say and some case law may indicate that the Electoral Act itself may not have passed a bill of rights vetting process. But I won’t be commenting any further on that due to my sincere and long-held respect for the courts and their decision-making process. Of course, if Parliament wanted to indicate its displeasure, it could do so through the legislative process.

I just wanted to also touch on another comment that the member made that this could not have been the intention of Parliament. Well, of course it’s the intention of Parliament. Parliament passed the law, Parliament drafted the words that are in the law, and in the years that have passed since Parliament did pass that law, it has not been changed—not for want of trying, and I acknowledge the Hon Rino Tirikatene and his contribution. However, Parliament has passed this law; it is the law. By definition, it must be what Parliament intended to be the law. So I don’t hold much truck with the argument that it can’t possibly have been Parliament’s intention to have any kind of difference or disparity on that.

I was, at one point, a public lawyer; I dabbled in the public law. I won’t say it was a particularly long-held career or that I was particularly effective at it, perhaps, but I did have some very good lecturers at University of Otago. I just want to acknowledge the Otago alumni who are here with us tonight, gathering in and around the precinct. Lots of very good lecturers, the likes of public law Professors Nicola Wheen; new recruit Dr Edward Willis; and, of course, Andrew Geddis, the, I would say, lead public law commentator and constitutional law expert in this country.

They did teach me very well and I say that Professor Geddis taught me well, although I have a sneaking suspicion that I may have failed one of his electoral law papers. So that doesn’t bode very well for the rest of my argument and take that with a grain of salt. But what I did learn through my education at that fine institution—and I’m sorry the member in charge of the bill chose to go to the second-best law school in the country—was that, you know, entrenchment is a serious process to be taken seriously. We entrenched very, very few provisions in our statute books. The member went through quite a few of them and so I won’t be repeating the provisions which are entrenched, regardless of how long that may take in the House. But the legislative entrenchment process is not a step you take lightly.

It purports to allow one Parliament to bind a future Parliament. What it says to the people of New Zealand is that we don’t trust the people of our country to make decisions for themselves in 10, 20, 30 years. We want to bind you to adhere to the values and systems and settings that we want to put in place now and not give you the democratic choice and freedom to change those decisions later on very easily, regardless of the outcomes that they may have, regardless of how the shifting sands of time of New Zealand’s societal fabric may move throughout those years.

That’s one of the reasons why we don’t have a strong, what you might call, written constitution in this country.

Hon Member: We can do it for the South Island; we should do it for Māori.

JAMES MEAGER: I actually agree with the member wholeheartedly; we have a pretty well-functioning, very good, exceptional constitutional system in our country. I think there’s a good adage to the rule “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” So perhaps the member, in her ending contribution, can reflect on that as well.

Of course, I want to talk about the philosophical implications of trying to entrench a Parliament. Of course, we are the masters of our own destiny here in this House. While some scholars may say it takes a 75 percent majority to overturn an entrenched provision, of course all it actually takes is a majority vote in Parliament to change the Standing Orders or suspend the Standing Orders and then remove that particular piece of legislation. Because the only thing that binds Parliament, until perhaps a bit of case law tells us otherwise, is the fact that Parliament’s Standing Orders require that 75 percent majority. So there is a very sound philosophical argument made by much, much, much smarter people than I and much more educated people than I, that there is no possible way for Parliament to entrench itself and bind itself in the future. So I just think, to the member, it might be one of those occasions where we are trying to do something which actually will not work in the end.

Just in my last 90-odd seconds of contribution, I just wanted to touch on the fact that there are some things that we could be doing in our country which would support the plight of individuals who whakapapa Māori and who are suffering from illness or incarceration or poor education or poverty on a population basis, which is at a much more disproportionate level than anyone else. I would say too, generally, that argument: it’s not my DNA that makes me any worse off, it’s not what’s in my genes that makes me sick, it’s generally the environment, the context, our upbringing and our backgrounds, the societal conditions and, I suspect, poverty, low education, exposure to the criminal justice system, which makes the biggest impact. So if we can actually focus our efforts on those areas rather than trying to drag ourselves into a constitutional debate about whether or not we can entrench ourselves, I think that’d be a much more productive way to proceed.

Finally, can I conclude by acknowledging that this bill has been before the House before in 2018. It was before the House under a Labour Government; it failed before the House under a Labour Government under the name of the Hon Rino Tirikatene and I just wanted to pay my respects and acknowledgement to Rino for his long service in the House. He served in an electorate that I voted in 2008 and I just wanted to acknowledge his contribution on this particular piece of legislation or this bill. But we won’t be supporting it and I wish the member all the best in her future.

Tēnā koe, ngā mihi ki te Whare e tēnei. So, as we all know, it’s Valentine’s today, but something else significant happened on this day in history and it was when Kanaʻina aliʻi took one for the team and killed the notorious coloniser Captain Cook. And, as you may know, one of the principles of the Green Party is non-violence, so I won’t reflect too much on the actions and the means by which this happened, but I will say that it does serve as a warning to us all: dishonour the mana of indigenous people at your own peril.

That’s why we are supporting the bill in front of us today. Because over the last few months we’ve seen this Government unwind decades of mahi that was meant to even out the playing field for tangata whenua, because legacies of colonisation are still all around us, poisoning our people and poisoning our planet. And like with the Maōri electorates, the Government could wake up tomorrow morning and decide they don’t like Maōri electorates anymore and decide to get rid of them like they’re doing with literally everything else, because Maōri seats do not have the same protections as general seats, like the one that I am elected to represent—the coolest electorate—Wellington Central.

I’m not surprised by the fact that Maōri seats are not afforded the same rights and protections as general seats because this Pākehā system was not designed for us. In fact, it was designed to actively exclude us. There is plenty of evidence of that shameful part of our history, and even today, that continues because this House withholds the right to vote from people currently in prison. And we know that that is disproportionately Maōri—that’s another way that our democracy excludes Maōri from participating and being represented in this system. The member before me, James Meager, said “If it isn’t broke, then don’t fix it.”, and I think there’s some truth in that, in that the system is functioning exactly in the way that it was designed, which is to exclude tangata whenua.

I’m the first Maōri MP for Wellington Central and my electorate falls in the Maōri electorate of Te Tai Tonga held by my brother Tākuta Ferris. I’m lucky to represent a city that is Green to its core, and the people I represent are lucky because we can’t face any backlash over our staunch left-wing support. But I can’t say the same for the people that Tākuta represents, because, unfortunately, the Maōri seats become a political football every single election. You have different parties coming out of the woodworks promising to abolish them, which would actually be a real tragedy, because, at the end of the day, I can’t do Tākuta’s job and Tākuta probably doesn’t want to do my job, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have the same rights and protections as each other. At the end of the day, protecting Maōri seats and affording them the same protections as everybody else is really the bare minimum. It’s the very least that we can be doing to honour Te Tiriti and express it in the mahi that we do in this House.

And it’s nothing to be scared of. When I spent four years on the Wellington City Council, we had mana whenua representation around our council table, and we had a Maōri ward, and I found that working alongside Maōri and that kind of arrangement meant that we were making better decisions, we were informed of the history long before this House was even set up, the history of this whenua—the history of this land—and it’s nothing to be afraid of. So I commend Arena Williams for her mahi on this bill and say that we fully support it. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak on this bill. ACT will be opposing this member’s bill, the Electoral (Equal Protection of Māori Seats) Amendment Bill, and I’d like to briefly set out why. Our vision for New Zealand is in keeping with our liberal democratic traditions, and we’re committed to universal human rights and growing ethnic diversity in a modern multicultural liberal democracy.

I think it’s worth noting that over 1.2 million New Zealanders were actually born overseas, and so while we need to appreciate our history, we also need to take into account our changing community. The Māori electorates were originally introduced as a temporary measure during the early days of our democracy and at this stage there’s no need to make a change in an age where we are now a multicultural, liberal nation with a Parliament that governs for all New Zealanders.

ACT has consistently opposed race-based representation and believes this kind of identity politics has no place in the 20th century where there are many Kiwis with different ethnic breakdowns making up this country. Even if we exclude the members who represent Māori electorates, Māori MPs are now overly represented in this House, proving that Māori can be democratically elected to this House. We don’t need to entrench these seats.

Today we have MPs like James Meager, who spoke earlier, and the Minister, who’s here in the House tonight, who have won general electorate seats. In fact, we have 33 MPs of Māori descent in the 54th Parliament, the most ever.

Hon Willie Jackson: Yeah, but are they all real Māoris, though?

TODD STEPHENSON: We have long believed in this concept of one person, one vote as the foundation of democratic institutions worldwide.

Hon Willie Jackson: Are they real Māoris?

James Meager: Do they count?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Jenny Salesa): Order!

Hon Willie Jackson: We’re just asking if they’re real Māoris.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Jenny Salesa): Yes, I hear you, the Hon Willie Jackson, but I do want to hear the speech. I know we don’t always agree but we all have a chance to make a speech.

TODD STEPHENSON: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate that. We oppose the entrenching of the designated seats. Furthermore—and I think this has been spoken to by Mr Meager—when we’re making changes to New Zealand’s electoral law, this needs to be done in a considered way, and I don’t think a member’s bill is appropriate.

In fact, Minister Goldsmith on 16 January made some initial comments around the independent Electoral Commission and its final report and noted that the Government will make a formal response to the review in due course. That report contains over 140 recommendations, and I think we need to think about those changes and ones like this and that broader context. So, for that reason, the fact that it is a member’s bill, we won’t be supporting it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take this call on the Electoral (Equal Protection of Māori Seats) Amendment Bill. I must say, preparing for this speech tonight, one may be a little bit confused because in my hands here I have this bill, which is the bill that we are debating tonight, and in this hand, I have another bill that only six years ago we were here with this one with a slightly different name.

This bill seeks to amend provisions of the Electoral Act 1993 to provide Māori electorates with the same protection as general electorates. The provisions relating to the general electorates are currently entrenched, but provisions relating to the Māori electorates are not. As I’ve already raised, this bill is the rebirth of the electoral amendment bill sponsored by Rino Tirikatene of Labour called the Electoral (Entrenchment of Māori Seats) Amendment Bill. That bill was debated in 2018. So six years later, here we are with the same bill that has had a name change to make it sound more palatable. That bill used the word “entrench”; this bill replaces it with “equal protection”, but everything else is the same.

New Zealand First’s position on the outright entrenchment of Māori seats is clear: we do not support temporarily empowered politicians like ourselves deciding what the constitution of Parliament should be. That is a decision that the people should make, and the people should make that for a referendum. So to the member who has put this bill up, that is actually New Zealand First’s stance and a way forward for a future member’s bill.

In 2019, we advocated for a referendum on the matter as an Amendment Paper. And that was not supported across the House, but had the opportunity to go to a referendum but was not supported. We are the party that believes in freedom, we are the party that believes in democracy, and we are the party that believes in equal citizenship.

Now, this is the rub. We’ve had this debate before. And if Labour was serious about this debate, and the provisions in this bill, they would have simply passed it using their parliamentary majority between 2020 and 2023. The opportunity was there, you had the numbers, and you couldn’t convince enough other people in the House with those types of numbers—that is shameful.

So a referendum, from New Zealand First’s point of view, is the way forward on this bill. So we’ve been here; we’ve done it before. We’ve done that, had the debate, and New Zealand First will not support this bill. Thank you.

Tuatahi kei te mihi atu ki a koe, Arena, mō tēnei pire, me te mea hoki kei te rongo atu awahau i te wairua kei roto i te pire nei. Tika tonu. Tika tonu, tika tonu tō kawe mai, tō pīkau mai i tēnei pire ki roto i te Whare.

Engari kei te rongo atu awahau i ngā kōrero kei ngā taha e rua. Kei te tika tonu wētahi o ngā kōrero kei tēnei taha. I a koutou te mana whakahaere o te Kāwanatanga kua hipa ake, he aha te take kāre i pāhi tēnei tū āhuatanga i tērā taima?

Nō reira ka huri au ki roto i te pire nei, me te mea hoki that this bill Te Pāti Māori will support.

[Firstly, I’d like to acknowledge you, Arena, for this bill, and, furthermore, I feel the spirit within this bill. It’s very appropriate. It’s very appropriate that you bring it here, that you convey it here into the House.

However, I hear the statements on both sides. Some of the statements on this side of the House are very true. When you were the ones in power in the previous Government, what is the reason that this was not passed at that time?

So I will now turn to the contents of the bill, and also say that this bill Te Pāti Māori will support.]

Our representation in Parliament is enabled by the Māori electorates, and our longstanding policy, reiterated in our 2020 manifesto, is that they should be entrenched. As we now hold six of the seven Māori electorates, it’s a great importance that we champion this kaupapa and strongly support it through the House.

While it will almost certainly get voted down by the Government, we can use it as an opportunity to reset and to resist the Government’s anti-Māori and anti-Tiriti agenda, and push our Toitū Te Tiriti kaupapa. The Government continually failed to support legislation that would make the electoral system more equitable and accessible to our people. It’s almost as if it is deliberately planned to keep our people disengaged from being able to have their voice represented in the House.

Political representation is our basic right, guaranteed in article 3 and article 2 and article 1 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. There should be no barriers for Māori participating in the electoral process. I heard you speak about the last member talk about a referendum. A referendum for Māori, as we only make up 20 percent of this country’s population, to put it in the hands of the tyranny of the majority would mean the fate of Māori having a true, authentic, unceded, and unapologetic voice here in Parliament.

I have seen these barriers being maintained by both sides of this House, from the previous Government when they voted against my own member’s bill—that was very similar; that had a whole lot of things in there to ensure that we got to pass the Electoral (Right to Switch Rolls Freely) Amendment Bill that aimed to fix Aotearoa’s racist electoral system, but also aimed to address the fact that the Māori electorates are still not afforded the same protection as the general electorates. Now, you’re talking about equality here. You’ve entrenched the Pākehā electorates, the general electorates, but you will not entrench the Māori electorates.

Miles Anderson: They’re not Pākehā electorates.

RAWIRI WAITITI: What kind of—oh, they absolutely are. They absolutely are, because they were established back in the 1800s—1867, the Māori seats were implemented to control the Māori voice in this House. It wasn’t about, “Oh, we’re going to give them some seats.”, because you know why? Through democracy, we would have had the majority. Back in the 1860s, we would have had the majority in your democracy. But, no, you entrenched us to four seats. This is why we need to entrench these seats. Regardless of whether the population is at 20, 30, 40, 50 percent, Māori should always have representation. It is not about race. This is about rights. This is our right to be able to participate in this country’s democracy equally. That’s what the Te Tiriti o Waitangi promised.

So this aims to address the fact that the Māori electorates are still not afforded the same protections. This is the deliberate way to help facilitate the Crown’s removal of the electorates now that they are a seat of electoral power for tangata whenua. Decisions on the future of the Māori electorates must always be the decision of tangata whenua—nobody else. Too many non-Māori are deciding what is good for Māori. It is about high time you allowed us the space to be able to come up with our own oranga. We are not the problems waiting to be solved; we are the oranga for our people. It is about time that we had the space to be able to do that.

So, in closing, I just want to say we are supporting this bill. While Te Pāti Māori supports this bill, it is a continued reminder that this particular bill works towards what we were trying to do in one hit in the last member’s bill that we presented. There will still be issues with electorate boundaries not being redrawn after each election to reflect current enrolled voters. We’ve inherited an electoral system that was purposely designed to prevent Māori from participating in our democracy and remains one of the most racist areas of law this country has. Kia ora tātou.

Small history lesson for the member from New Zealand First talking about the Māori seats: the survival of his own party depended on the Māori seats in the 1990s. In fact, it was my cousin Mr Tau Henare who actually won the Tai Tokerau seat that allowed his party, the New Zealand First Party, to come back in here. That party quickly forgets that—when it suits them, they’re Māori, and when it doesn’t suit them, “That’s how we roll.” is what we heard on that side. So if they want to talk about democracy, they are literally using the seats that we are trying to entrench to keep their voice in Parliament. Now, the irony that they’re not going to be voting for this particular bill just absolutely astounds me.

Rawiri Waititi: Not even Winston could win a seat then.

Hon PEENI HENARE: That’s exactly right—not even Mr Peters could’ve won one of the Māori seats. I know that winning a seat is hard. I’ve been fortunate enough to win the Tāmaki Makaurau seat for three occasions. In fact, my family have held Māori seats for 36 years—not quite as long as the Tirikatene family, the original holder of this bill, now in the name of my good colleague Arena Williams, but we have been involved in this Parliament, in this democracy, for some time.

I want to acknowledge my colleague and my tuakana Mr Rawiri Waititi, because he’s right. It was used to actually push our representation and our voice down. While I heard members on the other side of the House say, “Oh, well, no, no, that’s not what it did.”, actually, one only needs to read the Hansard from the time that bill was passed—the Maori Representation Act, to up until recent times, in fact, in the 1970s and 1980s, and, some might argue, today—to see that that voice has been silenced. In fact, many of the Māori members in the late 1800s weren’t even allowed to speak in the House—despite having representation, despite having been voted into this House, were unable to speak. Now, we want to talk about democracy and how great it is for our people. That’s why this bill is looking to make sure that these seats aren’t lost into our future.

Let’s be very clear: we’re not an outlier here. There are other democracies in this world who have done very similar things, actually—done very similar things. Singapore is a country that comes to mind, that makes an allowance for an electoral option for their people. Now, all the way to the other end—and I know my tuakana Rawiri Waititi’s going to love this one—I visited the Sámi people in 2017. Under their democracy, they’ve been afforded their own Parliament. Now, imagine that—imagine that. That’s not our bill here today. So let’s start somewhere—let’s start somewhere. Let’s start by entrenching and making sure we can protect these seats for future generations. Who knows, maybe a future Henare might come into the House and continue to extend the length of time that our family has been represented here—maybe, I don’t know; we’ll just leave it there for the tamariki, mokopuna.

But let’s also be clear: that’s not just a Māori legacy thing, because the second - longest-serving family in this House has been—nobody?—the Nash family. Sir Walter Nash, obviously, was a member of Parliament for a long, long time, and my good friend and gym buddy the Hon Stuart Nash, obviously, held a seat for some time, too.

The point is, in our young democracy, where we’ve been able to be agile and evolve our democracy to better represent our country, this is one of those steps that we’re giving the opportunity for the House to discuss, to debate, and to vote on to make sure that we continue to hold our unique space when the world talks about democracy.

Now, the world has looked at New Zealand as leading in so many spaces. Once upon a time, it was smoking; nowadays, it’s not. Once upon a time, we were leading in health initiatives for our people. In fact, indigenous peoples around the world came to New Zealand to see how Māori were doing it. Here’s another opportunity for us to do that, and, sadly, we’ve heard from the other side of the House that they won’t be supporting this.

But I will say this, in my final contribution: we will not give up. We will make sure that this conversation continues to be had in order to protect these seats, the Māori seats, and the evolution and growth of the Māori seats as the Māori population continues to grow into the future. Right now, there are seven Māori seats. I have no doubt, with the way that—is there any member from the Bay of Plenty? Anyway, I can say that, for example, in Rotorua, two out of every three tamariki that are born—two out of every three tamariki—in the hospital in Rotorua are of Ngāpuhi descent. The numbers are only going to increase. That means that the Māori seats will increase. We’re offering the opportunity to protect them. I’m sad the other side won’t be supporting this, but let me remind us: this conversation will never end.

I’m very pleased to rise against this member’s bill today, and I just reflect on the accusation as to why the Māori electorates were set up under the Maori Representation Act of 1867. Perhaps members need to go on and amend Wikipedia, which is pored over by different scholars. You need to make a change, because they say—Wikipedia, which is pored over by scholars—they were created, Māori electorates, in order to give Māori a more direct say in Parliament. And isn’t Te Pāti Māori a wonderful example of that in the last few weeks and months?

I think Jamie Arbuckle, member Arbuckle, said it right when he said why didn’t the Labour Government use their parliamentary majority? And I even see you resonating to that, Madam Speaker. Fifty percent, an MMP record—50 percent. How many MPs did they have, 65 MPs? I don’t know, they disappeared, but it was 65, 66, something like that. They had the opportunity to use that parliamentary majority. And the powerful Māori caucus—remember we used to hear about that, the powerful Māori caucus? Why didn’t they put this forward as a Government proposal when they had an absolute majority?

Entrenchment is not appropriate through a member’s bill. As my colleague, the chair of the Justice Committee, James Meager, said—and of course he is a man of the law; he was trained at one of the world’s most southern universities, Otago, and, of course, those cold, crisp winter mornings gave him the clarity that he brings to Parliament. He said that he had constitutional concerns. This is our own in-house scholar from Otago university. There were practical reasons—he took us through it in his Address in Reply debate speech. Most importantly, he said it does not actually progress the wellbeing of Māori, and that is a very good point. He said that in 1993, with the Electoral Act changes, it was Parliament’s intention then not to entrench Māori seats. And it is a rarity—if you look at the other provisions within the 1993 Electoral Act, those that have entrenchment status are few and far between: it’s around the length of the parliamentary term, the division of general electoral districts, the allowance for adjustment of the quota of electoral districts, the voting age, the method of voting.

We do not support this bill coming through as a member’s bill. It’s wholly inappropriate. The sponsor, Arena Williams—I appreciate the passion and the vigour that she’s brought to this. She acknowledged that we’ve, basically, got it right—that New Zealand’s made our constitutional inheritance from the UK—that we’ve made it our own and we’ve, basically, got it all right. And if that’s the case, let’s not try and fix something that’s not broken. She says she hopes it will lift engagement and lift Māori participation in voting. Well, that is a long bow, and where we need to put our emphasis—and where the Justice Committee will be putting it—is when the Auditor-General and others will be reviewing the electoral processes in and around the general election 2023. That is how we can look at how we can lift participation in Māori voting.

In the meantime, where we can spend our time in Parliament, as my learned colleague James Meager said, is improving, focusing on actually lifting Māori outcomes, lifting Māori out of dependency, reducing the cost of living for Māori, cracking down on law and order for Māori, growing the economy for Māori, lifting incomes, growing the economy, doing everything in favour of Māori. That’s what this Government’s focused on. So I do not support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So it’s all on, Mr James Meager, is it? It’s all on, Mr James Meager. The future of Māori is all on, Mr Meager. I would have backed Tama Potaka before Mr Meager. But, you see, this is the problem. This is the problem—this is a good kōrero. This is a good kōrero because it puts the question up: can you be Māori and be strongly Māori within these mainstream parties?

And this is the problem, you know, Māoridom debate, because Mr Meager over there, he’s not the first brown hope in terms of Māori politics. I think the first one might have been Mr Winston Peters, some years ago, who was going to carry Māori aspirations, hopes, and dreams. Then we had my very good brother Mr John Tamihere come along, and John, of course, was the hope and was carrying all the aspirations for Māori, you know. And, of course, in those days, John was very much into, you know, “We are the world” and had interviews with the New Zealand flag in front of him. And, you know, it wasn’t until he actually lost the Auckland mayoralty that he sort of turned to the other side, eh, Rawiri? Now, of course, my brother’s got a different sort of strategy. And then, of course, we’ve had Mr Shane Jones, Peeni Henare’s uncle, who was another great brown hope. And I say this because this is what this brings. And what happens is you get successful and you do a lovely, great maiden speech and all the Pākehā media adore you, and you think you are the great brown hope and you’re going to carry Māori aspirations and you are the one. You are the one, so you believe that you can deliver within the system.

This bill is so important—and I support my colleague Arena—because it gives our people the opportunity to be strongly Māori all the time. That’s the question—that’s the question. Can you advocate in a kaupapa Māori sense within the current system? And I say you can sometimes and, then, you can’t most of the time, like Mr Meager over there and, sadly, my good friend Tama Potaka, who’s going through all those dilemmas because he’s got all the background, all the training, but he’s got this conflict, because he’s got a dirty, rotten, filthy party, who want to—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Jenny Salesa): Order! Order!

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: It’s just a view, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Jenny Salesa): The member has spoken for about three minutes.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: He’s got a party that is pushing against Māori aspirations, Madam Speaker, and so this bill gives Māori members the opportunity to be Māori, and that’s why we entrenched this bill so that you can stand for a Māori seat and push those aspirations—as my good friend Peeni Henare has done for a number of years, as Rawiri Waititi does in the Waiariki, as Cushla Tangaere does on the East Coast—and not worry about upsetting some of your redneck friends or not worry about—who’s David Seymour’s think commission? You don’t worry about upsetting the Atlas group who are supporting the ACT Party. You don’t have to worry about that.

This bill is incredibly important because it allows our people to be pro-Māori and to advocate kaupapa Māori all the time. And I mihi to Rino Tirikatene-Sullivan for his bravery and our candidate—our MP here—Arena Williams, because it takes some courage. Democracy’s a funny thing. You know, it changes all the time. When Māoris talk about it, we get accused of trying to change democracy. When David Seymour and Mr Goldsmith come to a deal, oh, well, that’s just New Zealand today. But they’re doing a deal on behalf of Epsom; there are deals being done all the time in terms of democracy. This bill gives us an opportunity to really bring in a new type of democracy, and I absolutely tautoko this bill.

Before I call the next speaker, democracy is indeed really important, but when we’re debating a bill, we need to actually be consistent with what the bill is about and not use words that might bring the House into disrepute and, you know, might actually assist members of each side of the House to throw words against each other. Thank you, Hon Willie Jackson. Can I just check: is there another call before we close this bill out?

Arena Williams: No, we’re at call 11.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Jenny Salesa): I think there is another call. I’m sorry, Arena.

I feel that I’m so ill-fit to delve into this debate with the—

Arena Williams: Point of order, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, may I ask the member to yield his four minutes 45 to me to speak on this bill?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Jenny Salesa): It’s not actually a point of order, Arena. But I will put the request to the member. Would you like to yield your time?

PAULO GARCIA: No, Madam Speaker.

Rawiri Waititi: But you said you’re unfit.

PAULO GARCIA: Yes. If you will hear me out, then we could go further. So when I say I’m ill-fit, I’m ill-fit to wade into the amazing speeches of everyone doing battle about Māoridom and rights of Māori. I am, essentially, an outsider myself. I have come from the Philippines. When I stand here, because I have already become a New Zealand citizen, I view everybody as my brothers in New Zealand, and I feel that everyone is a New Zealander in this House. I understand the passion. I understand the need to forward interests. But, at the same time, I am amazed at how divisive the debate has been going.

What we have is a view that was, as has been said, raised already by former Labour MP Rino Tirikatene, who I actually had great respect for at the time we coincided in the 52nd Parliament—now it’s been brought again. That first bill was voted down after the second reading; now it is again here with us. It is truly striking that it was not brought when it could have fostered much further during the past three years, when Labour had that capacity to get it through. It is brought out now when the politics and the debate about Māori rights is extremely hot and out there in everyone’s attention.

However, I must say, the bill seeks to entrench into the constitution matters that do not need to be entrenched. To be entrenched through a member’s bill is not the way to do it. There are 300 clauses, and only a handful are entrenched. This is not the process, nor the time, to bring out an attempt again. We believe, therefore, that entrenchment is really an unusual tool in legislation at this time, especially so through this process. Also, once constitutionally entrenched, provisions like these would require a 75 percent majority in the House to make a change, and if the intent is really to go through ensuring the entrenchment of the provisions that are sought, then this process is not the appropriate process.

This Government is focused on delivering on all the items, all the statements that we have made. We are focused on delivering on the economy and making sure that law and order is back on track. This bill is not a priority and we do not support this bill.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Equal rights for Māori and non-Māori citizens, equal protection for voters to participate in our democracy, equality in the eyes of the law under our constitutional framework—these are the things that by voting down this bill, the National Party members, the ACT Party members, and the New Zealand First party members in the House tonight are rejecting. This is a bill which simply corrects an aspect of our constitutional framework in the Electoral Act which would treat the rights of voters in general seats as different from those of voters in Māori seats. It would be a simple change that would be able to be effected tonight if those members had chosen to support it.

In the time that I have, I want to talk a little bit about the role of Parliament here, because we’ve heard some speeches from the National members particularly, and they were all surprisingly almost exactly the same line about how a member’s bill is not the way to progress something like this change. And it does worry me, because it is something that goes to the heart of what we’re debating tonight: about what the role of Parliament is, about what the role of elected members are within it, about how our democracy should function, and about the role of the executive. The idea that you should not do entrenchment when the executive has not introduced the bill is bananas. The idea that Parliament cannot advance a provision that requires consensus or effective consensus is not something that we should stand for in this House—any member. It’s really important for Parliament to always maintain its own control—its independent control—of things that require us to step outside of the daily fracas of politics and think about the kind of democracy that we want to design. Coming to this House with prepared speech notes from your leader’s office and reading out prepared lines about how the executive is key to Parliament’s decision-making betrays an underlying lack of respect for the role of Parliament in determining how we should operate as a democracy, and we should not tolerate it.

The member James Meager talked about the role of backbenchers to introduce these kinds of bills, but there is a bigger role for backbench non-executive MPs in this Parliament: it is to hold the executive to account and make sure that the rules that we all play by are fair for everyone. There are parties in this House who will not be in the executive in the short term; there are parties in this House who may never be in the executive. The rules that are determined for them and for the major parties are just as important, and every single party in this House should be well represented when we think about how to discuss those rules.

It’s right that when we look at the history of the Māori seats, all parties around this House have an interest in them. We’ve been there; we’ve campaigned in them. If you’ve been a party member of Labour, of National, of the Greens, of the Māori Party, of New Zealand First, you’ve probably been out there, in your t-shirts, campaigning in a Māori electoral seat. We all have an interest in the future of them. We all should have an interest in protecting them, regardless of the electoral outcome that we predict in the short-term future because they’re important for the long-term future of us as a nation, of protecting the kind of democracy that we are proud of, and of protecting the kind of democracy that stands out in the world as one that is stable, one that is respectable, and one that people have faith in.

I’m really disappointed tonight. It’s good that we can have the kind of debate around the House where even something like this, we can approach it jovially, joke with each other, look at the history and take hits on both sides. But this is a debate that has had the outcome of missing another opportunity to make sure that the equal protection of Māori in our law and in our constitutional framework is upheld by this Parliament. It’s a sad day when parliamentarians cannot agree by consensus that the rights of Māori should be the same as every other citizen. And it belies a bad-faith approach by parties who would seek to enter into a Treaty principles debate, where they say they want equal protection of Māori and of non-Māori citizens, when, in fact, they had this opportunity to grant equal protections but it was clear that equal protection, in their politics, only means for non-Māori. I am very disappointed by this debate.