Menéndez March Ricardo; Mallard TrevorRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. Tuatahi me mihi ka tika ki ngā mana whenua ki te ngā iwi ki ngā hapū ki ngā uri o ngā maunga whakahi. Tēnā rā koutou katoa e manaaki mai ana i a mātou ngā tauiwi ki te whenua nei. Ki a rātou kua whetūrangitia tēnei te mihi. Nā rātou te huarahi i para. Mā tātou ngā tapuwae e whai. Ki a tātou te hunga ora—e mihi ana e mihi ana e mihi ana.[Mr Speaker greetings. Firstly I acknowledge the tribes of this land the sub-tribes and the descendants of the ancestral mountains. I pass on my thanks to those of you who protect us the people from afar in this land. Those who have passed on we acknowledge you. They forged the way forward during their time. We follow their footsteps now. To those of us here today—greetings greetings greetings.]I have spent a lot of time leading up to this thinking about what I would say in my maiden speech. They tell you it's the moment where you can say anything but now I find myself standing here I can't help but feel like I just want to rush it and get it over and done with to get on with the work. However I keep thinking this isn't just my journey but the journey of my village my loved ones my family those who walk with me in times of adversity and joy. So I want to pay tribute to us.I want to start by acknowledging everybody who has ever had to lie to Work and Income to survive. In our queer community there is a saying that I love. It goes Be gay do crime." To me it means to be transgressive to acknowledge that decision makers have created rules that criminalise our survival and our existence. For many migrant communities finding legitimate ways to stay connected to their new homes is a crime that results in an overstayer status. For sole caregivers it means lying to Work and Income about their relationship status in order to have enough income to feed their children. The rules were simply not made for us. They were made to uphold a system where the wealthy few keep getting richer at the expense of our planet and this House is enabling it. When your ability to be who you are—and therefore your survival—is criminalised it is an act of love to break the rules to allow others to thrive.I whakapapa to the Istmus Veracruzano and Cataluña. I stand here as tauiwi and tangata Tiriti committed to honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi and mana motuhake Māori. Like many people in Mexico I grew up entangled in the messy politics of blood quantums ethnonationalism and living with colonial ideas of caste. My identity growing up was in relationship to the State a product of the ongoing colonisation perpetuated by successive Governments. Growing up I identified as a mestizo but as contemporary thinkers like Yásnaya Aguilar remind us and I'll say this in Spanish: el mestizo es el Proyecto que necesita el estado para mantener su hegemonía para mantenernos desingenizados. Yo Todavía estoy reconstruyendo mi identidad descubro mi historia familiar y mi posicionalidad con el estado Mexicano. Pero mientras tanto lo que sé es que las luchas colectivas por un sistema en el que todos vivan con dignidad me dan fuerza y esperanza: ya sea Mexicali resiste los movimientos de mujeres indígenas en Jalisco o las luchas al sur de México que se imaginan una sociedad donde vivimos en harmonía con el ecosistema del que somos parte. Y los paralelismos con las luchas en Aotearoa por justicia climática me recuerda que somos parte de un movimiento global.Identity is pretty messy and simply being "Mexican" barely covers the truth—there are so many threads that make up my messy tapestry and there are so many that I still need to unfold to find their meaning. I was born in Mexico City but I grew up in Tijuana until I was 18—a city receiving the internal displacement due to neoliberal politics the war on drugs and colonisation. Living in Tijuana was constantly living at the crossroads—navigating several languages cultures and spaces. Sometimes we were guests in Turtle Island but a few hundred metres away we were aliens beaners and illegals.It was not until later in life that I realised that the extreme violence that was part of everyday life in Tijuana was not a universal experience. It was only after I had lived in Aotearoa for several years that I came to the realisation that—for many people—it was not normal to grow up discussing what you would do if your parents got kidnapped or seeing mutilated bodies hanging from bridges or having classmates murdered by the cartels. Still I grew up surrounded by love from my family and an incredibly supportive group of friends who allowed me to blossom into the proud socialist transgressive queer that I am now. Tijuana taught me what love in the face of adversity can look like.I grew up with stories of my grandmother Carmen who I never got to meet but who lived on in the bedtime stories that my dad told us. She taught me to be transgressive because she chose to divorce her abusive partner which resulted in her having to flee her hometown to save her life. She was cast away from her support networks because she dared challenge patriarchal norms of the time that prevented her from not only being safe but allowing herself and my dad to be their authentic selves. She did it out of love while dreaming of a future where everybody was free and I'm happy that the love and courage of my grandmother lives on with me now.I arrived in Aotearoa in 2006—at a time when the war on drugs in Mexico was deteriorating and the xenophobic discourse in the US was escalating. My parents made the sacrifice of putting whatever savings and loans they had into offering me the opportunity to migrate—and while it was a heavy responsibility to carry I also acknowledge the privilege it was to even be given that opportunity. After arriving in Aotearoa as an international student I soon found out that the international student fees were far too expensive to cover. We were expected to be able to afford at least $20000 a year in fees while only being able to work 20 hours a week to sustain ourselves. We international students after all have been used by the Government to patch up the lack of funding they gave to tertiary institutions.In 2010 I had to drop out of university. I was broke unemployed and my mum had died of suicide. My world was being torn apart around me. And while I would love to pander to the idea of model minorities of taking personal responsibility the truth is that I only got through that part of my life because of the radical love and collective care others showed me. My best friend Tom and my colleagues at the Capitol Cinema held me at this very vulnerable time and gave me the resources and space that I needed to heal and to thrive.For almost eight years I worked at the Capitol Cinema as a cinema attendant and projectionist. I owe a lot of the skills that led me to Parliament to my time at the Capitol. Being able to deal with a busy crowd telling people at the end of the night they had to leave never being above doing domestic labour like cleaning the toilets. For a few years I ended up being a projectionist a trade that I was pretty proud of. Being a projectionist at work was one of the few pathways to climb above the minimum wage. The role of a projectionist also taught me the realities of automation. When digital projectors were introduced my role became obsolete—now that I was being reduced to clicking a few buttons instead of meticulously putting film reels together and keeping the projector in shape. As a result of automation I was put back into the role of cinema attendant—and my wages subsequently stagnated. The amazing technological advances that meant a machine could do my job should have meant my freedom not an excuse for my employer to not pay me livable wages.Over the years I had to put up with politicians consistently calling my line of work low-skilled and in fact it was politicians dismissing the labour of low-waged workers as low-skilled and low-value that made me tune into local politics. I remember in 2011 watching the election results at the back of the cinema counter while the last film of the night was playing. I clearly remember seeing clips that night of the Winston Peterses and Bob Joneses of the world scapegoating immigrants for the housing crisis for unemployment and for inequality in general. While we were being blamed for buying up all the houses we were also being blamed for bringing low-skilled low-wage labour that didn't contribute to the economy—or so they claimed. It was personal—to be told that billionaires like Peter Thiel could effectively purchase a residency have access to bring his family to Aotearoa because of his wealth while the rest of us had visa conditions that left us open to exploitation and few legitimate pathways to residency. At the time I didn't have the exact words to describe what was happening but I felt both anger and frustration hearing politicians talk about me and my communities like that while I struggled to make ends meet. I realised that for far too long we had been reduced to economic units to exploit. I think of the many workers—migrant and local—who have been made redundant during the pandemic while CEOs rark up huge bonuses and their companies make millions of dollars in profits. Now after years of being involved in political work I am learning that capitalism and colonialism are systems that thrive on these narratives that divide us. I'm learning that our worth isn't determined by our salary or by our degrees. I am learning that we all have an inherent right to a life with dignity despite the wealthy elite actively trying to strip that right from many of us. I see that our immigration system is still a white immigration system a tool of the coloniser to exploit us but until we achieve constitutional transformation and true Tiriti justice this House will continue to be a beacon for these oppressive systems. While for some politicians the discussion about low wages the rights of migrants benefit levels having enough water to drink climate change and public housing is abstract stuff to be debated in the House for some of us it's clear that we are not solely theoretical when we talk about why having livable incomes is so urgent. We talk about increasing incomes and public housing for all because we know what it is like to count your dollars before the next pay cheque. We fight for overhauling the welfare system because we know what it is like to be sitting for hours at Work and Income having every single receipt scrutinised in order to get a measly food grant while corporates easily accessed millions of dollars of subsidies during the pandemic in a high-trust model. It's not abstract because it is a fight for the survival of the communities we serve and we belong to. I come into Parliament grounded by the shared experience of my village the experiences of struggle but also a radical love for one another and our communities; the willingness to unpack our judgments our biases in order to uphold each other's mana. When I first came a few years ago to my role at Auckland Action Against Poverty I had very little knowledge of the Social Security Act but I knew the feeling of shame when I reached out to others and admitted that I didn't have enough to cover my basic expenses. I carry with me that knowledge of my mentors and my colleagues: people like Kathleen Paraha who had the patience to teach me how to do welfare advocacy; Pat Hanly who took the time to explain to me the ins and outs of the ministerial directives; Fred Anaru who emphasised the importance of working across generations; and many others who have given me so much throughout the years. None of my struggles victories and experiences are walked alone.I guess radical love is becoming a theme. It's corny AF but we're here for it. I believe love is a discipline and action. The love we have for our communities makes us angry when we see injustice; gives us the strength to persevere the humility to accept we can learn from one another and the patience to have the difficult conversations at the dining table so that we can carry the important work for future generations to come. I also owe this privilege to our grassroots Green Party members networks campaigners who gave Teanau Tuiono Elizabeth Kerekere and I the mandate to join our amazing caucus. It's great to belong to a movement where our members wield real power.The work ahead is an extension of the work I've done on the ground. I'm really honoured to have been trusted with the social development portfolio to follow on the important work of Sue Bradford Metiria Turei Jan Logie and Marama Davidson who have been staunch Green champions on this issue. I am thankful to those in the union movement who have been unapologetic about supporting the unemployed as well as workers. All of these groups and people understand that addressing climate change requires tackling the extractive practices that drive inequality that workers' rights are intricately linked to climate justice that we can't have a livable planet if we don't uphold the rights of indigenous groups already protecting most of the Earth's biodiversity. The idea that you have to focus on social or environmental issues is an outdated construct and we won't stand by it. Finally to my family watching across the Pacific to my dad to Margarita to Javier and to my fam who can't join me today because of the pandemic: thank you for allowing me to grow into this role. Thank you for your guidance for your counsel for your constant unsolicited commentary over the last few weeks over social media. Thank you for making me feel loved across the world. I look forward to honouring that love. Kia ora.[Applause]WaiataSPEAKER: I call Teanau Tui-ono—Teanau Tuiono: Tuiono yes.SPEAKER: —for his maiden speech.Teanau Tuiono: Yes that's what I'm here for.SPEAKER: Ha ha!"