Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. The ACT Party will be supporting this bill. We oppose the legislation introduced by the former Minister for Local Government the Hon Nanaia Mahuta on the basis that it was an aberration to our democracy.Rawiri Waititi: Rubbish.SIMON COURT: I'll give you some facts Mr Waititi—the departmental comment:. the process for creating Māori wards in the Local Electoral Act by local council resolution was—until it was changed by Labour in 2021—subject to a petition of 5 percent of the electors in a binding poll the same as it is for changing electoral systems. In other words if a community wants to change from first past the post to single transferable vote—Celia Wade-Brown: Yes good idea.SIMON COURT: —or the other way—that's right Celia Wade-Brown. Some communities want to choose their electoral system. In fact the 5 percent threshold that was applied to the creation of Māori wards also applied to change the electoral system. It was on that principal basis that the law stood from the early 2000s until Nanaia Mahuta unfortunately changed it—changed it on two days' notice in 2021.So here's a bit of background. I want to restore facts to the debate because it's true isn't it members of the Green Party that facts don't care about your feelings. We care about facts in the ACT party in the coalition Government. Now the bill that we're amending tonight was introduced on 5 February—in other words tabled; our first reading on the 9 February 2021; submissions to the Māori Affairs Committee closed two days later—two days. That meant local government civil society groups had less than 48 hours to submit and what they said was overwhelmingly This is not good and it shouldn't proceed." The bill was passed by a supermajority of Labour and its willing and able enablers in the Green Party and received Royal assent less than a month after it was introduced on 1 March 2021. That was a dismantling of our democracy. We now have to have a very unfortunate conversation about division by race forced on us by the previous Labour Government. That is the legacy of people like Kieran McAnulty who's spoken earlier in this debate. That is the legacy that Te Pāti Māori seek to perpetuate in their absolutely callous seeking of votes from people who are uninformed about our democracy.Now the ACT Party's not obsessed by race unlike the members of the Opposition. What we do want is a bill that restores democracy to pre-Labour conditions. How about that? Restoring democracy to pre - Jacinda Ardern Chris Hipkins Labour conditions. We want to give local communities the right to choose their representation arrangements. There's something else we also want to do. We want to focus on the relationships between iwi hapū marae representatives those groups who have mana whenua in places like the Auckland region where I lived and worked. I want to give [Interruption]—if the members of Te Pāti Māori and the Greens would give me a moment I'll explain what I mean.So when I worked as a civil engineer at Auckland Council one of my jobs was to present environmental remediation coastal remediation—how we clean up heinous old landfills millions of tons of rubbish dumped in the harbour and estuaries in the coastal areas—and my job is to present those plans to mana whenua groups at a forum and seek their feedback on whether the designs and the outcomes from those projects are met with their understanding about how the natural environment should be restored for the communities that we lived in.Shanan Halbert: Do the same with your rubbish from 1840—clean up your rubbish from then.SIMON COURT: Now I don't know if MP Shanan Halbert is interested in improving the environment and engaging with mana whenua groups and Māori in the communities where infrastructure's being delivered—all I hear from that side of the House is a racket. What that suggests to me is they're not really interested in Government and local government having positive and constructive engagement with mana whenua and representatives of Māori entities. What they really want is to use those concepts to garner and gather more political support. It is the parties now in Opposition who led this divisive conversation in 2021 and is the parties in Opposition that now sit in Opposition largely because they insisted on dividing New Zealanders by race assigning different rights in our democracy to different groups when what New Zealanders really really are asking for is an opportunity for better infrastructure and enabling more affordable housing making it easier to get around and a cleaner environment we can all enjoy. And with that I commend this bill to the House."