Valedictory Statements

Members, in accordance with a determination of the Business Committee, we’ll now have a valedictory statement from Benjamin Doyle. Following the valedictory statement, the House will adjourn until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 7 October 2025.

I did not come here on my terms. I was summoned under difficult and unexpected circumstances, but I accepted that call. Today, however, I leave by choice, not because I want to but because I have chosen to put my child first. If our tamariki are the reason for being here, how could they not be our reason for leaving? Nothing is more important and precious than those we love most. For them, we must live and fight and, at times, choose to leave.

This place was not built for people like me, which is precisely the point. It was built on the basis of exclusion and control, on taking, hoarding, and guarding power. The colonisers’ tools will never dismantle the colonisers’ house. It’s taken me 10 months to truly comprehend what that means, and while I do not accept that change is impossible from the inside, I have come to learn that it comes with a price of violence and hate towards my people. This is a price I am no longer willing to pay.

I have felt firsthand the unbelievable impact that being here can have on a person and those they love. I have seen that play out in violent, toxic, and real-world ways. No person should have to remove their child from school due to threats to their life. No person should have to avoid going to the supermarket or the letterbox because they have been advised that doing so could expose them to violence. No person should have to tell their parents that they can’t attend the next family event, to ensure their safety and privacy is not compromised; and despite that, I have stayed so true to myself and my community.

I returned to Parliament when I was informed it would be unsafe to do so, because sometimes, love is hard and means making sacrifices. Sometimes it means putting the kaupapa first, putting the needs of our communities, the planet, the generations that are yet to arrive, first. I am willing to put my love for these things before my own needs and even my own safety, but no love is more compelling than that which we hold for our tamariki, and I cannot continue to put this work before the needs of my own child.

So I leave this place knowing that the fight will continue, as it always has and always will. But that fight is also happening right now outside these walls, on the streets, on the land, on the sea, in our communities, in our hearts, and in our minds. Power does not reside here. It is not inherent in this place. We have only allowed that to be so. Power resides in the human spirit and in our relationships with one another, and with this precious earth, to which we owe everything. I rejoin that fight now and wish my comrades here my love and solidarity in the fight they continue in this place.

This is a hostile and toxic place, especially if you’re not a cis, straight white man with a blue suit and a briefcase, but most of all it is not fit for purpose. As a nation, we must reckon with this reality. A political system imposed upon this land and its people from a colonial empire that sought to name, claim, and maim is never going to honour Te Tiriti. It will never recognise the dignity of all life or seek justice for the poor and oppressed. It was built to serve a status quo that protects the powerful at the expense of the people—at the cost of community. This system was built, and so it can be rebuilt.

The revolution begins in our hearts and minds, but there it must not remain. It must rise up from the land, from the people, from love and vision, and hope for something infinitely better than what we are subjected to now—if not for us, then for our children and those in every generation to come.

As long as bombs are dropping in Gaza, in Yemen, in Syria, and in Qatar; as long as the lungs of the earth are being burnt and felled; as long as our rivers and oceans are being pillaged, polluted, and desecrated; as long as the land is being ripped open and exploited for finite resources; as long as the dignity of life is being denigrated and discarded in servitude and civil war; as long as indigenous rights are being eroded, trans lives are being taken, disabled folks are being degraded, children’s voices are being ignored, women’s bodies are being controlled, and the rights of people in prison are being stripped, this is a place of no peace and no justice.

Nobody is free until everybody is free, and this House must recognise that fundamental truth. If it does not, it risks being left behind as community forges ahead in building its own future—one we can be proud to pass on to our mokopuna.

I concluded my maiden speech with a poem by Palestinian poet named Refaat Alareer, who was murdered by Israel during the genocide it continues to commit in Palestine. Today, I will conclude with a different poem, one by Tina Ngata titled “Rekindled”:

The truth, while spoken, never dies

It is a flame that may rest as a smouldering ember

Perhaps for generations

Yet through these lines it will rekindle

We are the flame that never died at Hungahungatoroa, at Waerenga a Hika, at Ngātapa

And for as long as I breathe my story

I am not vanquished

I am at once the victor, and the fallen

Still here today, as walking, breathing, laughing, dancing, love-making, testifying proof against any notion of conquest

Speaking our truth, honouring those who slipped between the privileged pages of this story

Loving new generations into being

New bearers of the flame

That never dies.

Mana whakapapa

Mana tuākiri

Mana Takatāpui ē

Ahuahu mai Ahuahu atu

Kia tau ai te mauri

I roto I a koe

Ko Hinetītama koe

Ko Hinenui Te Pō koe

Koia rā ko te whakaahuatanga

Mana māreikura

Mana whatukura

Mana takatāpui ē

Rere mai Nuku

Rere mai Rangi

Kia tau, whakatau hā ē

Uhi, wero, tau mai te mahana

Haumi ē, hui ē, taiki ē!

[The power of genealogy

The power of identity

The power of the gender diverse

It builds up within all

In order for the force of life to settle

Within you

You are Hinetītama

You are Hinenui Te Pō

This is the formation of

The power of femininity

The power of masculinity

If flows through the land

And the sky

It settles, let it settle

It covers and permeates, warmth settles upon us

It coalesces, it assembles, it is bound!]

Waiata—“Ko Te Tiriti”

[Applause]

The House adjourned at 5.55 p.m.