Ngarewa-Packer Debbie; Rurawhe AdrianDEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Tēnā koe. Tēnā koe e te Māngai tēnā tātou e te Whare. Ngā mihi kei a koutou mō te tautoko.[Greetings Mr Speaker and greetings to you all in the House. I want to acknowledge you all for your support.]We stand to rise to speak to the first reading of the Therapeutic Products Bill. Te Paati Māori opposes this bill as it currently is and has concerns mainly because of the failing to date to engage with tangata whenua particularly in any meaningful way. We have concerns that the regulation of the rongoā poses huge risk to the protection and restoration of mātauranga Māori and would remove the powerful decisions relating to rongoā from whānau hapū and iwi perspectives to the State.We've been contacted by many of our people over recent months who also are deeply concerned with these reforms and have communicated that to the Government yet they feel they've failed to listen. Rongoā Māori is a Tiriti-protected taonga. Despite this aside from requiring the regulator to have the capacity and capability to give effect to the principles of the Treaty there are no other Tiriti protections in this legislation. If Māori rights under the Tiriti were being acknowledged and reflected in this process then engagement with tangata whenua could have and should have occurred before the bill was introduced to Parliament and this would be reflected by Treaty-based protections in the bill.Minister Little's press release suggests this bill is the result of 10 years of work and a work programme in Government and yet they've failed to work with tangata whenua on rongoā regulations. This was followed up with another press release from Minister Henare announcing a process to consult with Māori during the summer while people won't even be paying attention and told people to submit at select committee.This only shows that the Government failed to do anything about rongoā until right before this bill being introduced. While we are open to discussions about protecting rongoā through regulation this needs to be driven by tangata whenua including rongoā practitioners kaimahi or those who have the active consent of our people at the very least. This bill doesn't protect rongoā at all but brings civil and criminal penalties into practice which concerns us. The Crown from our perspective has ignored its Treaty partner in this way which creates sadly mistrust amongst our people. It's 2022—nearly 2023. We have the largest Māori caucus ever in Government. We have a Māori Crown Relations unit and we've had outrage communicated by our people.So what we want to do is make sure that we have more emphasis on the engagement. There is room to make these amendments and we do call on this bill to be withdrawn and certainly the Order Paper to go back to the drawing board and to listen to and learn from those who are the tohunga and the experts of rongoā and I'm not too sure that many of us can take that claim. So Te Paati Māori again don't support this bill and we encourage that it's changed to protect rongoā Māori and most importantly its tohunga and practitioners. Kia ora koutou.SPEAKER: I call Sarah Pallett—five minutes.