Waititi RawiriRAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori): Tuatahi kei te mihi atu ki a koe Arena mō tēnei pire me te mea hoki kei te rongo atu awahau i te wairua kei roto i te pire nei. Tika tonu. Tika tonu tika tonu tō kawe mai tō pīkau mai i tēnei pire ki roto i te Whare.Engari kei te rongo atu awahau i ngā kōrero kei ngā taha e rua. Kei te tika tonu wētahi o ngā kōrero kei tēnei taha. I a koutou te mana whakahaere o te Kāwanatanga kua hipa ake he aha te take kāre i pāhi tēnei tū āhuatanga i tērā taima?Nō reira ka huri au ki roto i te pire nei me te mea hoki that this bill Te Pāti Māori will support.[Firstly I'd like to acknowledge you Arena for this bill and furthermore I feel the spirit within this bill. It's very appropriate. It's very appropriate that you bring it here that you convey it here into the House.However I hear the statements on both sides. Some of the statements on this side of the House are very true. When you were the ones in power in the previous Government what is the reason that this was not passed at that time?So I will now turn to the contents of the bill and also say that this bill Te Pāti Māori will support.]Our representation in Parliament is enabled by the Māori electorates and our longstanding policy reiterated in our 2020 manifesto is that they should be entrenched. As we now hold six of the seven Māori electorates it's a great importance that we champion this kaupapa and strongly support it through the House.While it will almost certainly get voted down by the Government we can use it as an opportunity to reset and to resist the Government's anti-Māori and anti-Tiriti agenda and push our Toitū Te Tiriti kaupapa. The Government continually failed to support legislation that would make the electoral system more equitable and accessible to our people. It's almost as if it is deliberately planned to keep our people disengaged from being able to have their voice represented in the House.Political representation is our basic right guaranteed in article 3 and article 2 and article 1 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. There should be no barriers for Māori participating in the electoral process. I heard you speak about the last member talk about a referendum. A referendum for Māori as we only make up 20 percent of this country's population to put it in the hands of the tyranny of the majority would mean the fate of Māori having a true authentic unceded and unapologetic voice here in Parliament.I have seen these barriers being maintained by both sides of this House from the previous Government when they voted against my own member's bill—that was very similar; that had a whole lot of things in there to ensure that we got to pass the Electoral (Right to Switch Rolls Freely) Amendment Bill that aimed to fix Aotearoa's racist electoral system but also aimed to address the fact that the Māori electorates are still not afforded the same protection as the general electorates. Now you're talking about equality here. You've entrenched the Pākehā electorates the general electorates but you will not entrench the Māori electorates.Miles Anderson: They're not Pākehā electorates.RAWIRI WAITITI: What kind of—oh they absolutely are. They absolutely are because they were established back in the 1800s—1867 the Māori seats were implemented to control the Māori voice in this House. It wasn't about Oh we're going to give them some seats." because you know why? Through democracy we would have had the majority. Back in the 1860s we would have had the majority in your democracy. But no you entrenched us to four seats. This is why we need to entrench these seats. Regardless of whether the population is at 20 30 40 50 percent Māori should always have representation. It is not about race. This is about rights. This is our right to be able to participate in this country's democracy equally. That's what the Te Tiriti o Waitangi promised.So this aims to address the fact that the Māori electorates are still not afforded the same protections. This is the deliberate way to help facilitate the Crown's removal of the electorates now that they are a seat of electoral power for tangata whenua. Decisions on the future of the Māori electorates must always be the decision of tangata whenua—nobody else. Too many non-Māori are deciding what is good for Māori. It is about high time you allowed us the space to be able to come up with our own oranga. We are not the problems waiting to be solved; we are the oranga for our people. It is about time that we had the space to be able to do that.So in closing I just want to say we are supporting this bill. While Te Pāti Māori supports this bill it is a continued reminder that this particular bill works towards what we were trying to do in one hit in the last member's bill that we presented. There will still be issues with electorate boundaries not being redrawn after each election to reflect current enrolled voters. We've inherited an electoral system that was purposely designed to prevent Māori from participating in our democracy and remains one of the most racist areas of law this country has. Kia ora tātou."