Waititi RawiriRAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Otirā tēnā tātou e te Whare. Well it is yet another Budget year where we all wait with bated breath to see who got the lollies from the lolly scramble. Three years of so-called Wellbeing Budgets" and the wellbeing of our people here in Aotearoa couldn't be worse off. Let me start by saying that if we bought too much into the framing of the cost of living crisis so carefully orchestrated by my mates here on the right the fact of the matter is that we have been living in poverty for a long long time. Tangata whenua have been relegated as paupers on their own whenua and it's getting worse day by day. It's not until the wealthy are struggling to maintain their lifestyle that this House suddenly deems we have a cost of living crisis. It is a privilege to even discuss a cost of living crisis. Tangata whenua have never been afforded the privilege of experiencing a cost of living crisis because they are still bearing the brunt of the cost of poverty—poverty orchestrated by and reinforced by the very parties that sit beside me and in front of me. This Budget chooses to prioritise the wellbeing of the rich over the wellbeing of the poor by ignoring the big elephant in the room: wealth tax. Now usually we will get up in this speech and do the courteous thing by thanking the Minister of Finance and thanking the Government for their work and being grateful for what we have been given. You know nobody likes an ungrateful person particularly an ungrateful native who has just been given some extra bucks. But I'm not going to do that today because it's not enough and it will never be enough until this Government and successive Governments in turn meet their contractual obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Until such time as a Tiriti-centric Aotearoa is in full operation reflected not only in the equal share of power and resource but in the return of our whenua we will never be happy with any Budget that any Government proposes. So instead today for the slight increase to Māori we see in this year's Budget I pay tribute to the fierce advocates who made it happen: Merepeka Raukawa-Tait the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency—tēnā koutou—Herewini Parata and Te Matatini ngā kapa katoa e te motu—tēnā koutou. I just want to make reference and remind my Māori Labour caucus colleagues thank you for going into the Māori Party manifesto because it is there on page 17: allocate $19 million to Te Matatini. That comes in here. Now we need you to go to page—well you may as well do pages 1 to 20 and make sure that we get all of what our people deserve. We are proud to have fought alongside you and delivered the largest ever increase in funding for Te Matatini but we must ask: what happens after two years—why isn't this baseline annual funding? Every year successive Governments put forward a Budget that bamboozles the hell out of this nation. It bamboozles everyone into confusion and submission. Governments throw a few million dollars to Māori kaupapa to keep the natives quiet. They throw a few more millions into what is said to be Māori money knowing full well it goes into a universal bucket. The intentional bamboozling leads Māori to believe they are climbing up the ladder when in fact the gap is growing wider and wider. Governments know all too well that their Budgets for Māori don't even scratch the sides of equity and equality. The small crumbs that are thrown our way is only playing bare minimum catch-ups for over 180 years' worth of theft and oppression. This is why we are calling this a Budget for the rich. The "Sheriff of Nottingham Budget": tax the poor and give to the rich. Through the conditioning of colonisation us natives are expected time and time again to be grateful and to smile and nod for the hands that feed us for the extra crumbs we receive—the narrative we will no longer accept nor will we tolerate it.Prior to 1840 100 percent of these lands belonged to Māori and 100 percent of the resource and power belonged to Māori. Today we have less than 5 percent of our lands. Today this Government offers 0.47 percent of the entire Budget and you want us to be grateful? The epitome of our saying "Kei runga te kōrero; kei raro te rahurahu" ["Pleasantries on the surface to contradicted by unfavourable action below"]. Not only have not only have you consistently failed to uphold your obligation under the contract of the Treaty of Waitangi; you have you have consistently left your own people behind. But let me move on to our solutions. Te Paati Māori envisions the promise of an Aotearoa hou an Aotearoa hou that makes you feel like you would when you come on to our marae. We will welcome you. We will feed you. We will house you. We will connect you. We will educate you. We will care for you. We will heal you. We will love you. Today one-in-five tamariki Māori are living in poverty. This means that their whānau can't afford a safe home or essentials like regular healthy food doctors visits or to pay their power bills. Food prices have gone up 12 percent in the last year the biggest annual increase since 1989—poverty on steroids. While there are many things that can be done the most important is ensuring people have more money. Our Aotearoa hou will look like everyone having the dignity to be able to put good healthy kai on the table to feed their babies and their whānau. Our Aotearoa hou will look like higher incomes ensuring an annual increase in the minimum wage to keep up with the living wage rate removing sanctions and lifting benefits in line with inflation extending the Working for Families tax credit to all whānau removing GST off kai and regulating price hikes from the supermarket duopoly. Over 60000 Māori are homeless because they can't afford houses. Tangata whenua should never be homeless in their own homeland yet the Government knows there are over 191000 empty homes. That's three times the supply to meet the demand and we've spent more than $4 billion a year on housing subsidies and we're not getting better outcomes. Aotearoa hou looks like every whānau in Aotearoa having a warm secure and affordable home—not just a house but a home. Aotearoa hou looks like putting a 2 percent tax on these empty homes. We have a broken tax system in this country which has fuelled extreme wealth inequity that is only getting worse. The richest 2 percent own 50 percent of the wealth in this country. Ordinary people and poor communities are subsidising the lifestyle of the rich. While the average person in Aotearoa is paying 20.2 percent in tax the wealthy are only paying 9.4 percent. Estimates show that $7 billion per year is being stolen from Aotearoa taxpayers in tax evasion and tax avoidance enabled by a tax system that allows the rich to evade tax further placing the burden on wage and salary earners.Aotearoa hou looks like shifting the tax burden from the poor to the rich. It looks like a capital gains tax that if implemented in 2017 we would have made $200 billion in tax revenue. Just think about that for a moment: $200 billion. That is nearly two times the annual amount of revenue the Crown currently receives. Just think about what that could mean for improving the oranga of our people in an Aotearoa hou.In their recent pre-Budget announcement the Government celebrated that since they came into power in 2017 they have invested $4.7 billion in the defence budget more than double what the previous National Government spent. Instead of investing in what matters—the oranga of our people and the oranga of our whenua—this Government is investing in weapons of war to prop up a global military industrial complex and imperial power games of Washington London Ottawa and Canberra. Our Aotearoa hou looks like the $4.7 billion spent on defence could have been spent on ensuring everyone could afford the doctors visits and the dentists visits; on investing into marae and papakāinga and protecting them flooding and storms; on shifting that $4.7 billion to housing the homeless lifting incomes and enabling people to put kai on the table and pay their power bills. Our Aotearoa hou will have a transformative defence and foreign affairs policy for Aotearoa which asserts the mana Māori motuhake and tino rangatiratanga of tangata whenua. An Aotearoa hou looks like continuing to fund the Defence Force in the Pacific for Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. With the events of the last few weeks we've seen just how important it is that our Defence Force is focused on responding to threats to our own people. An Aotearoa hou is a military-neutral Aotearoa.Climate change is one of the greatest challenges Aotearoa and Te Ao Māori will ever face. This Government continues to allow the granting of permits to drill block offers of petroleum gas exploration permits and offshore seabed mining. The Labour climate scorecard is poor. As Aotearoa lives through the worst effects of climate change we have ever seen this Budget delivers nothing but crumbs. We cannot overcome this crisis through electric cars alone. There is nothing in this Budget to support the transition in our biggest-polluting industry: agriculture. Where is the funding to support a transition into regenerative and organic farming? An Aotearoa hou looks like futureproofing our communities protecting our pepeha and protecting the whakapapa of Papatūānuku. Our Aotearoa hou looks like whānau being able to swim and drink from their local awa without being worried about getting sick gather kaimoana from their local pātaka without worry and not have to deal with flooding week after week.An Aotearoa hou looks like taking climate change seriously. It means investing in clean energy and restoring our taiao protecting and preparing communities for climate adaptation transitioning to regenerative and organic agriculture and banning seabed mining. [Applause] Thank you thank you. Our Aotearoa hou is what is needed right now Mr Speaker and that's a different Mr Speaker—"The real Mr Speaker please stand up!"It is a place that is equal equitable fair and just for all. It ensures the protection of the whakapapa of Papatūānuku. It ensures the mana of Te Tiriti o Waitangi at the centre of our country's constitutional transformation where tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti stand united with honour and dignity. Nā reira come to the gateway of our marae so we can welcome you all home to our Aotearoa hou. Kia ora tātou. [Applause] Thank you thank you."