Ngarewa-Packer DebbieDEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Tēnā koe e te Pīka and I join my colleagues in congratulating you—I think I saw you last night as well—on your new position. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I rise to speak on behalf of Te Paati Māori in regards to the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Extension and Reduction of Powers) Amendment Bill—cripes that's a lot. Effectively they are legislative tools that were created to uphold a public health response that failed Māori that failed our Pasifika and that failed our disabled communities. The Government's saying that it needs to extend it to protect the most vulnerable is a bit of a hard tablet to swallow to be honest because from our perspective it's always been seen as the COVID-19 preferential health response". Let me tell you why: over the last three years whānau hapū iwi and our own urban Māori organisations—Whānau Ora our provider ora—filled Te Tiriti obligations of the public health response which effectively side-stepped. In fact what we saw was Māori providing the exemplary leadership and we saw I guess the whole way of avoiding or circumventing dire predictions for our people that in fact medical experts like Jonathan Jarman alluded to because we had to step into the gaps where the public health response just wasn't present. If we were to support this extension—which we're alerting that we won't be—we would be ignoring its performance and it's a performance that saw not only failure for us but it failed to provide equitable opportunities for Māori to access information data resources and vaccinations. In some cases we were actively blocked from our own efforts to protect our own communities and I witnessed that with my very own eyes. Every piece of advice that was given to this Government by tangata whenua experts such as Te Rōpū Whakakaupapa Urutā over the course of this pandemic was ignored by the Government. Te Paati Māori forewarned at the beginning that there would be a mess and that there would be division and we saw some of that. We saw it from the knee-jerk reactions and examples of the mandates—that were scrapped anyway—that a one-size-fits-all approach was not going to work and in fact it contributed to vaccination hesitancy and a lot of the division we see in the nation today. It wasn't just us as Māori politicians and Māori hauora sector experts but there was also a damning report from the Waitangi Tribunal which everyone seems to have forgotten about called Haumaru which highlighted the inequities and higher rates of infection for Māori and Pasifika with huge recommendations that the public health response needed to be seen actively and be proactively taken on board. So Māori constantly found ourselves having to pick the pieces of what we saw as reckless Government legislation that continued to marginalise and often criminalised our people and had the Government heard Māori and engaged better at the beginning we may not have found ourselves peaking in cases today because of mistrust and fatigue.When the original Act was brought to the House Te Paati Māori voted against it because we saw it as a failure of inclusive leadership. It failed to provide a pandemic response that worked for all people of all cultures and of all socio-economic circumstances and it was a response that entrenched rather than eliminated inequities and disparities many of which we see manifesting today. So we've had to make huge sacrifices to ensure that the team of 5 million were protected. We changed our tangihanga we changed tikanga we closed marae and in some areas to ensure our vulnerable communities were protected we did things that haven't been done since muru raupatu. We are dealing with a once-in-a-generation crisis and we needed to have access to all tools to be able to be accountable for our people. Tangata whenua know what happens during pandemics and it was our people who bore the brunt of the virus. So while we support the intent of the Act and the public health measures we could not in good conscience vote for legislation that enabled warrantless searches of marae by the State. This was a huge oversight and we know that it could have been avoided. The Act explicitly singled out marae—the cultural economic and last bastion of our mana motuhake. So I want to mention before I close—because I've got a couple of other calls to make as well—that I'm glad to see that you have learnt and I'm glad to see that you've gotten over this fetish for invading our marae by removing these provisions from the extended legislation but we will not be in a position to support. We cannot support the extension of State power for another two years if nothing is going to happen to keep Māori Pasifika and disabled whānau safe. On that note Te Paati Māori will remain consistent in not supporting it today."