Kapa-Kingi MariamenoMARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. The removal of Māori wards is another targeted attack on Māori for being Māori. We are being forcibly removed from the decision-making table that we built in the first place and invited Pākehā to sit at in 1840. This is an attempt to silence tangata whenua whose demise is what founds and continues to fuel this illegitimate Parliament machine and its extensions in local councils. One hundred and eighty-four years and this Government still thinks we must prove our right to exercise power in Aotearoa where it is the Government that should be proving its right to exercise its power over us. Yet perversely because we've been made a minority on our own whenua we are fighting now for crumbs of what we actually have a right to: full and undisturbed sovereignty.Furthermore this Government and the races it represents blindly ignore the truly undemocratic historical actions imposed by this Pākehā Government over tangata whenua: stealing our land wrongfully seizing political power cleansing our identity our knowledge and creating violent laws that demote us to second-class citizens. The removal of Māori wards is simply a continuation of imperial abuse on tangata whenua. The argument is that Māori wards will be the demise of democracy. To remove Māori wards is an assault on Te Tiriti the only reason a democracy inclusive of Pākehā could ever exist. Te Tiriti was created so the Queen of England could control her unruly Pākehā in Aotearoa and I support the recent letter of our whanaunga Margaret Mutu for the British Crown to rein in these unruly Pākehā sitting across from me now.Disestablishing Māori wards further undermines councils' autonomy in their rohe. This rings true for the Far North District Council of Te Tai Tokerau. The rohe alone covers 6000 square kilometres a whenua home to a population which makes up 46 percent. The establishment of Māori wards in the Far North gave the 13 iwi entities the 252 hapū and 100-plus Māori social services reo and local trust organisations greater confidence in their local government—a confidence resulting from Māori representation. Yet to assume that this percentage of Māori would also front and vote in an election is blatant ignorance. This law merely feeds the latent mistrust of my people in the system. You see my people are not disengaged from Government; they are disenchanted. We are less likely to vote if incomes do not meet daily needs a reality for many of our own in Te Tai Tokerau and if we do not see ourselves reflected in or as having a true influence over decision making. This is why Māori wards matter.The Far North emanates this very sentiment with the establishment of Māori wards. Even those Māori in the most remote areas of Te Tai Tokerau—Panguru and Mitimiti—are now engaging with council according to my relation on the ground Hilda Halkyard-Harawira. Removing Māori wards ultimately removes any care for people who reside in remote areas including Panguru and Mitimiti. It devalues our people. Māori wards bridge the gap between our communities and makers of law. They offer councils expertise in what remains unreachable to them given their abuse and ignorance of us. Māori ward councillors engage directly with our communities because we know the suffering of our people the necessity of resource but also the intelligence the resilience and the ingenuity of tangata Māori.All four Māori ward candidates for the Far North District Council are fluent in the reo of this whenua and the reo of this colonial empire. They are experts of two opposing worlds fluent in not only the languages but cultures themselves and we can trust in our people as we are the sovereign of our own liberation of our own minds as revolutionaries. We do not nurture the colonial dreams of Pākehā. It is this Pākehā desire that has endeavoured to silence our Māori voices from central government local government regional councils from any space in fact that our revolutionary minds could touch. So I absolutely object and do not commend this to the House and plead that any sensible people do the same. Kia ora tātou.