SpeechHARETE HIPANGO (National): Kia orana Mr Speaker and to the Whare and I acknowledge Minister Poto Williams your Cook Islands heritage and also your leadership as the Minister for Whaikaha the Ministry of Disabled People.On that note let's not kid ourselves. This is a Government that speaks itself up is self-congratulatory and applauds itself for its efforts which are of little value and significance to the people who are most affected the people who wish for their voices not only to be raised in volume but to be listened to not just heard or lip-serviced or lip-synced. They actually want this Government to heed and to take to heart the voices of the people of New Zealand most affected and in fact under this Government most disaffected. This debate is about the Accessibility for New Zealanders Bill. I acknowledged appropriately Minister Williams and the Minister's new responsibility for Whaikaha the Ministry of Disabled People which is a new ministry—more bureaucracy—established on 1 July this year. There was or there still is as I understand and I stand to be corrected an Office for Disability Issues Te Tari mō Ngā Take Hauātanga. This new ministry established this year is another unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. I say that because I have heard in the House with everybody else who has been listening—and not just hearing but listening and taking to heart—the voices of our disabled community and the disability sector. Their voices—as is well known for those of us who have sat on the Social Services and Community Committee for the oversight of the Oranga Tamariki bill and the voices of the people in that sector particularly the voices of the Office of the Children's Commissioner and our tamariki our children who have lived in State care—have been dispensed with. In the same way I've heard speakers address the House this afternoon advocating on behalf of the disability sector—my colleague Penny Simmonds who is our spokesperson for the National Party for the disability sector and our colleague Jan Logie spokesperson again for the Green Party. That voice in unison is falling on deaf ears with this Government. So let's be real. The self-congratulatory speeches from the Government and patting themselves on the back and saying what they've done—everything from the voices of the disability sector from the social sector of our children in care Oranga Tamariki is falling on deaf ears. That is the arrogance of the members in this House that I've heard speaking congratulating and applauding themselves about how great this bill is for our disabled community. What this bill does is it layers up bureaucracy by establishing and setting in place a committee with another committee to appoint and make nominations to that committee which is going to do nothing more in terms of its functions. I now turn to the bill. Those functions set out in clause 15 are going to be scrutinised with quite some eye and detail heart hand and head that are in sync with the disability sector to say that this Government should have done more since 2017 than establish a new ministry and then put this bill before the House to create yet more committees to advise the Minister and her ministry on who should be appointed by a community appointments committee and a Māori nominations committee. I turn back to clause 15 functions of the committee by which two committees have to be appointed to appoint members to the committee whose function will be to provide advice to the Minister. What has the Minister been doing when we have so many agencies voices representatives from our disability sector who have been advocating for years on what needs to be done?Another function is to develop a work programme. Five years later we've got a bill introduced to this House to say we now need to look at developing a work programme but before we do that we've got to appoint two committees to nominate members for a final decision for the Minister to make on who's going to be on that committee. Well there are a number of us in this House who have given service on various committees and it didn't go through that lengthy unnecessary inordinate process for those appointments or selections to be made. Another function is to make recommendations to the Minister. Why is the Minister not listening to the very people most affected or disaffected our people and the disability sector? My colleagues in the House this afternoon have spoken about the different levels of disability and I'm going to bring it back as I always do in terms of where my heart and my relationships and connections are and that is Te Wanganui. So as uri as a descendent of the Wanganui tribal peoples also as National Party spokesperson for Māori development the relationship that I connect back to Wanganui is that a former Minister of this House Dame Tariana Turia—who was Minister for the disability sector back in 2016. There was a news release on 16 June that Wanganui's Sir Robert Martin was appointed to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Robert Martin was our first representative for the disability communities being a disabled person himself advocating and representing as of 2016 at the United Nations. And here we are 3 August 2022 seven years after this Government came into power introducing this Accessibility for New Zealanders Bill. In the remaining moments that I have left I'll be seeking some time to sit alongside members my colleagues on the select committee in terms of input around the details of the letter of the law. Because as lawmakers as legislators we have a responsibility to our New Zealand public to get things right. At a cursory glance at this bill and again I draw on my lived life experience as mana whenua of Wanganui as tangata whenua of dual heritage—my mother a Pākehā tauiwi Celtic third generation New Zealander; my father and his people being Māori. So of course I always look at the letter of the law with my legal discipline but also my dual heritage cultural context and I've already picked up on terms of some detail and definition—whoever writes or drafts these bills and legislation that's why it comes to select committee; because there are those of us that come from the context of different perspectives but the context of lived experience. I look at the terminology: tāngata whaikaha means disabled people who are Māori". Actually tangata whaikaha is a disabled person; tangata whaikaha Māori is a disabled person who is Māori. That's just one example. The other one that I've picked up as well which should be subjected to scrutiny and to perspective—and when I sit on a select committee I sit with that lived experience of a dual heritage context unlike some other select committee members who I'm constantly reminded and they happen to be Labour Government members that I've got it wrong when they haven't lived my life experience. Well I just put it on the record that there are other elements of this bill that need scrutiny that the Government members need to be held to account for because this is their bill; this is what they are to be held to account for. And importantly in being accountable it means more than just hearing and dismissing and dispensing because it suits your kaupapa. I remind members of this House and members on the Government bench that we are here to represent the interests of our communities; not as you see a political agenda to secure the position that you have right now. We are to be reminded that we are here because we have been chosen by the people and it is a privilege to do so not to kick them for touch when it suits your political motivations—my apology Mr Speaker—when it suits the Government's political motivation to do so according to their will.On that note I think my message has been loud and clear. I've raised my voice and volume. I do that because I am here as a member representing the people we represent."