Ngarewa-Packer DebbieDEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Kia ora. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I rise to speak on behalf of Te Paati Māori to the first reading of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). Te Paati Māori will not be supporting this bill in its current form. This bill represents a failure of inclusive leadership and a missed opportunity. It is a failure of inclusive leadership because the bill and the original Act it amends fails to provide a pandemic response that works for all for all peoples of all cultures and socio-economic circumstances. It entrenches rather than eliminates inequities and disparities.It's a missed opportunity because the bill was the Government's chance to put right some of their previous mistakes. It makes a number of reasonable amendments to the Act particularly around managed isolation and quarantine that we would have been happy to support. However this bill also deals with the enforcement of the Act and associated regulations. Therefore this should have been the Government's opportunity to amend section 20 which enables warrantless entry of marae by officers of the State. The provision could easily have been aligned with the wording that was recently agreed to by a select committee on the Water Services Bill. That wording made it explicitly clear that entry on to marae and other private property can occur with consent or with a warrant. Currently this Act still singles out marae the cultural economic and spiritual centre of Māori life. This is despite the victory laps made by Labour last year when they announced the change of the provision. They tried to fool our people and pretend that the unwarranted search of marae was no longer there when really all they have done was required a report which must be sent out to the relevant marae committee. That is sent out after they've done the search of our marae. Seriously this is misleading.The Government has a fetish for unwarranted search of our marae. What is with these fetishes? I have no problem kink-shaming this Government and their fetish with our marae. That is our last bastion of our mana motuhake.David Seymour: This is great writing.DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: These are decisions—thanks David—by people who have no connect to keeping their marae warm. They don't hold the keys of responsibility to ensure our kawa are respected. They wouldn't know where to turn the power on. This is absolutely a breach of our tapu coming on to our marae uninvited. This makes the Government an invader. The Government has not made a case for why warrantless searches should apply in our COVID response let alone warrantless searches of marae which is a clear Te Tiriti breach.Today on behalf of Te Paati Māori I'm putting a wero to this House. That wero is to politicians from across the House and to officials from across the Public Service. Tangata w'enua will no longer tolerate these disgraceful attacks on our mana motuhake on our marae. We will not allow the Crown to continue to breach Te Tiriti through this assertion of power over our people over our w'enua and our institutions. We will not accept that State invasions of our marae is a standard provision in legislation as it seemed to have become in recent years. Both this Act and the Water Services Bill explicitly target marae. The counter-terrorism bill which is being considered by the House this week also allows for warrantless entry on to private properties.Warrantless searches of any private premises is a clear example of State overreach plain and simple. We have these basic legal and human rights protections for a reason. But specifically targeting Māori dwellings and institutions takes it a step further and is nothing more than colonisation and racism enshrined in legislation. I'm calling on the Minister for COVID-19 Response to amend the legislation and adopt the wording used in the reported-back Water Services Bill. There's simply no excuse for failing to act. We will not sit idly by and allow the passage of this bill. We'll be doing everything we can to scrap this backward racist provision and make sure our whānau are aware of what you're attempting to do again.I look forward to the select committee consideration ensuring it is amended while also taking the time to go through the bill in detail and examine the various provisions including the other enforcement provisions. This House must ensure that enforcement is applied equitably rather than the double standards and racism that we consistently see targeted at our marae. Nō reira tēnā tātou tēnā koutou katoa.