Fox Marama: Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFox Marama: Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 November 2015. Volume:709;Page:7628. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Nei te mihi atu ki a koe. I came to the House this evening interested in the debate. When I heard that it was going to be a conscience vote I took out the bill and had another look at it. I wondered to myself—we had made a decision as a party where we would sit on this because the bill gives people the choice to not have to go to work. But most people in the House understand that I am a deeply religious person and if I had to do this on conscience based on my faith and my religious practices I could not in all fairness stand up and vote for this bill.But I did not intend to speak to it. I came merely to listen to the debate and then to cast our votes until I heard the member from New Zealand First deliver a borderline racist diatribe about the members of this House and their ability to cast their vote or not. In fact I was embarrassed to have to sit here and listen to that. These members who come to Parliament do so because they have been voted in and are New Zealand citizens. To make assumptions about their religious practice and to make assumptions about their ethnic practice and their cultural practice is to me abhorrent. I could not sit here and abide to listen to that type of drivel any more without standing up and saying my piece.I would like to think that if I cast a conscience vote here tonight based on my religious practice and on the faith of the other thousands of people just like myself in this country who would like to have their voice heard I will not be belittled for that and I will not be treated less than fairly for that. I would like to think that here in this Parliament we would have the freedom to speak and that here in this country where we value our freedoms we would have the freedom to assert our opinions without threat—Ron Mark: Without being condescending.MARAMA FOX: —thank you to the member—of being treated as a lesser citizen for doing so of being disparaged and of being spoken down to in the way that was demonstrated here tonight. The member might think that he was listening to someone who was being condescending in voicing her personal opinion but she made no personal attack on any of the other members in this House in doing so. What I had to listen to was a personal attack based on someone’s cultural religious and ethnic background and I object to that.So tonight I will stand and deliver the conscience votes of the Māori Party—one for and one against—as per my religious practices and as per the discussions that we have had with the rest of our party membership. I stand tonight to support the voice of freedom the right to choose in this country and the right to speak freely without fear of being belittled without fear of racial prejudice and without fear—unfortunately that does not seem to be the case in all circumstances—of having your words used against you in unfair and abhorrent ways. Thank you.