Jackson WillieHon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development): Tuatahi e mihi ana ki a koutou Ngāi Tahu kua tae mai nei i tēnei wā ki te tautoko i tenei pire. E mihi ana ki a koutou e whakarangatira te kaupapa i tēnei wā. Nō reira ki a koe e te pāpā Tā Tīpene ngā mihi ki a koe e te pāpā. Mō tō kaha ki te kōkiri te kaupapa ki te whawhai mō te kaupapa i tahuri tō korowai rangatiratanga i runga i a tātou i tēnei wā tēnei te mihi ki a koe e te pāpā koutou katoa tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā anō tātou katoa.[Firstly I would like to acknowledge you of Ngāi Tahu who have gathered here today to support this bill. Thank you for honouring this issue today. So to the patriarch Sir Tīpene I acknowledge you. For your energy in championing this cause and fighting for this cause we are honoured by your chiefly presence today greetings oh patriarch and everybody greetings greetings greetings one and all.]Tā Tipene graces us with his presence. He must have had a good laugh at that last kōrero when we had someone talking about democracy who is a product of the new democracy with his dirty rotten filthy deal in Epsom. He's forgotten about the new democracy where his leader did a deal with the ACT Party and put him in on the list. Oh no democracy doesn't count there because that's a dirty rotten filthy deal between the National Party and the ACT Party. Oh no we'll forget about that—the rorting of democracy only applies to Māori! So shame on you Mr Goldsmith.I am proud to tautoko this bill proud to support this bill. This is about the promise of the Treaty coming to fruition and that's what my good friend and colleague Rino Tirikatene has said. It's taken too long for Māori to get the most basic of representation at local and regional level. I salute all our whānau who've come in from Ngāi Tahu for your absolute commitment to this kaupapa. What makes the struggle for equality under the Treaty so much more difficult is when our colleagues on the right pull political stunts to manipulate Kiwis' ignorance of our past by weaponising the one person one vote principle.It is a disgrace that the right would use such spiteful dog-whistles—I was going to say racist" and I think I can say that with right-wingers can't I Mr Speaker; I'm not talking about anyone in particular—by claiming that the honouring of the Treaty amounts to a desecration of the one person one vote democratic value when there are multiple examples from the very democratic tradition that they pretend to care about that shows that one person one vote is but one value within the democracy not the only value.Mr Speaker the House of Lords—I'm sure you've been there—is not one person one vote. The Electoral College is not one person one vote. The Senate is not one person one vote. In New Zealand our own very country with MMP it's not one person one vote. It's one person two votes. Why are Māori having to explain democracy to those who claim to protect it? The right would not for one moment claim that America or the UK were not democracies yet we in New Zealand a country that has "one person two votes" extends the universal suffrage of representation promised to us as Māori. We have Chris Luxon and David Seymour up in arms. Give us a break. We all watched the 6 o'clock news last night. Nicola Willis was squirming and that was a story highlighting how multiple property owners can vote in multiple local body elections giving landowners more power than the poor. I was watching Nicola struggle to answer why one person one vote suddenly doesn't apply to rich landowners. I kept watching it all night. The question is: how many votes is the leader of the National Party going to get in the local elections? Seven? This is democracy—this is the wonderful democracy. This is a group of people who refuse to accept new democracy's change in 1996 when Winston Peters chose them as a Government. That's not a new democracy. It's not a new democracy when you have four women in Parliament. It's not a new democracy when you have more Māori in Parliament. It's not a new democracy when you have more Pasifika in Parliament. Oh no that's not a new democracy. It's only a new democracy when Māori start working the system and it's a wrong democracy! It's disgraceful the way this lot have carried on the way they have manipulated the situation. This Government is an example of the new democracy. We got 37 percent they got 44 percent. We became the Government—that couldn't have happened; under MMP that's the new democracy. What does the Opposition not understand about a new democracy? The representation of Ngāi Tahu on the Canterbury Regional Council for some reason scares them. It scares their friend Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB so much but Mike doesn't need to be frightened by Māori gaining what's been promised to them under the Treaty. We live in a democracy with one another and seek genuine engagement to build bridges not walls. Unfortunately the right refuse to accept this. This is a maturing of our democracy. We seek to frame co-governance as a positive way forward. The right frames it as a racist evil by manufacturing "one person one vote" outrage when the very democratic system they claim to defend allows for many values that go beyond that. I do think as I've said that the greatest hypocrisy in the right's position against co-governance is that we are using the co-governance architecture that was built by the National Party and the ACT Party. Whether they want to admit it or not that's just a fact and that's why I say it's incredible when we look back—and I was just given a note—and see that there are at least a dozen Treaty settlements that support co-governance brought in by the Hon Chris Finlayson. A dozen. And as I said also—Hon Member: What's he got to say about this?Hon WILLIE JACKSON: He supports us actually. He's a supporter. He says co-governance can work not just in the natural resource area. It doesn't just have to be about the lakes and the sky and the sea and stars. It can be about Te Ao Māori in a modern context. So it's just an outrage the way the right wing have been carrying on in terms of this bill. This has been such a wish of our people from Ngāi Tahu who come here. The way that things have been manipulated is almost beyond belief. This is not some Māori takeover. This is not about the Mahuta/Jackson quest for power as the right wing and the National Party and the ACT Party have been trying to frame this for the last couple of years. There's no takeover. This is about partnership. This is a partnership that is working. This is a partnership that is in the Treaty. This is a partnership that judges have talked about for the last 35 years—that apparently David Seymour knows more about than our very learned judges.When we get things right when we have the law in our favour we're opposed by the right wing absolutely. It is a disgrace and this is a disgrace and it's a shame that our very learned knight and leader Tā Tipene has to witness this given all the history and experience he has had with the National Party. In fact—I'm not sure if he was part of it now. I'm sure he'll tell me later. But I know that with his history and his experience and the work he has done with the Hon Doug Graham and Jim Bolger he'll be shaking his head thinking "What happened to the National Party? What happened to that commitment?" When you look at what's happened in Te Uruwera when you look at what's happened in Auckland when you look at what's happened with the Ngāti Whātua settlement—settlements everywhere—you see co-governance working everyone working in tandem and yet the National Party are so opposed to this and are framing this in the most irresponsible and disgraceful way.The Government embraces cooperation embraces co-governance and embraces representation. We see it as not only fulfilling this nation's obligations under the Treaty; we also see it as the best way forward for our society and I'm proud that we've been able to support these two new Māori seats for Ngāi Tahu. Kia ora anō tātou katoa."