Coffey TamatiTĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm very very proud to be standing here tonight in support of this legislation that's coming before the House. Today is a great day. Today is a great day for all of those people that came before our select committee and presented to us and spoke to us about the importance of Te Tiriti the importance of making sure that we honour Te Tiriti in this modern day and age.Today is a day that the ex-mayor of New Plymouth is going to be really stoked about. Andrew Judd has been a legend actually and I know that some of his biggest supporters are sitting up there in the gallery right now. To me he's the Rosa Parks of civil rights in local government. You see he's man that's been on a journey and to us Māori he's the kind of guy that you just want to clone and you want to make more of because he's understood the history of this country. He's understood the battles that have gone on in this country. He's understood that the laws that have been made in this place have been riddled with inconsistencies. And he gets that this Parliament that we stand in is actually a very colonial institution and sometimes we don't always get it right. He's a man that has for the last two and a half years been posting on his Facebook page just about how this country needs to overturn this racist legislation. He is a man that some would call woke but in the most beautiful of ways. He isn't unique though because you see before our select committee when we had our submission hearings we heard from a lot of people just like Andrew Judd. We called them—actually they called themselves tangata Tiriti and I want to acknowledge that because I didn't really understand who those people were. But actually this is them in a nutshell. They are Pākehā essentially or they're non-Māori and they have an absolute commitment to upholding Te Tiriti. That's why they're called tangata Tiriti and Andrew Judd is one of them and I want to acknowledge all of those other tangata Tiriti that came before our committee just like him. I also as chair of the committee want to do a big shout-out to the clerks of the committee Aaron Violet and the team; to our translator Maika who had to work some serious hours over because of obviously the truncated process that we had to go through; and all submitters all 12000 of them—thank you to you for coming forward and for sharing your thoughts with us many of which I agreed with but they still got the respect of the time that they deserved for coming forward.I want to thank Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) who are at the coalface of this particular piece of legislation that we're putting through Parliament as well. This isn't a Labour Party bill. This is something that we have put through on behalf of the mayors and all of the Māori workers inside councils spread all around New Zealand. So I want to thank LGNZ Taituarā and the various mayors that came forward and took time to submit despite that tight time frame; Māori organisations—big small—the New Zealand Māori Council the Māori Women's Welfare League the Whānau Trusts; all of those individuals that had never ever put a submission into this House before but felt so powered up by this whole process that they felt the need to sit there in their bedroom nervous as heck but actually submitting into this process. To them I say thank you. This process is all about hearing what people have to say even those voices that we don't hear from very often. I want to thank those people that came up against the people that didn't support this. And there were actually a few of those people in there too—some surprises especially because as we know from the other side of the House they don't quite like this bill. But fortunately we got a submission from former National Party MP Jo Hayes and she did it on behalf of the Rangitāne Tū Mai Rā Trust in support. I'd like to say thank you to Samuel Taylor who presented as an individual but actually as an ex - National Party Youth MP for the Bay of Plenty—kia ora Todd Muller—completely in agreement. In fact it was Samuel that said I think the premise of defending citizens' rights to democracy is a fairly flimsy one. Instead it seems to me that they support this provision because they implicitly understand that it leaves significant barriers in place to dissuade Māori representation in councils." Thank you Samuel. And I also want to acknowledge Raewyn Kapa who is a strong wahine toa from Te Tai Tokerau and part of the Kahurangi Nats and she came forward to say that they absolutely supported this—unequivocal in their support. So it tells me that over on that side the right hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.See what happened as we've been sitting here listening to this debate over the last couple of days as we've heard time and time again about the amount of National Party members that have worked their way with a fine-tooth comb through the Labour Party manifesto—yay! What a great document that is. And because they were being incredibly selective about the pieces of information that they pulled from the Labour Party manifesto—and I want to be really clear because we've got a whole section on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and I would implore the other side of the House to pick up some of that. They may just earn themselves a few votes in the process. What our Labour manifesto says is that we're committed to our obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi and we're committed to the articles of Te Tiriti: the role of Government in article 1 and the promises that it makes to Māori and their tino rangatiratanga in article 2 so that we may achieve equality as promised in article 3.Make no mistake Mr Speaker yes this process has been fast through this House but Māori have been waiting for a seat at the table for a very long time. If in future we come up with little discrepancies like this which continue to keep Māori outside of the tent off the decision-making table then we will be bringing it back here again. Because as the Human Rights Commissioner Meng Foon said this is a racist piece of legislation. Racist legislation has no place in this House.I implore those members of the Opposition that think differently to really check themselves to wonder actually why did you come in here? Because I'll tell you why I came in here. I came in here to make sure that the Crown was a good Treaty partner with Māori. Let that sit with you for just a moment—that the Crown can be a good Treaty partner with Māori. Because let's be honest we've had a terrible time. We've had a terrible time when we look back in our history about what the Crown has done to marginalise Māori. And it was only yesterday in this House that the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill came—SPEAKER: Order! Back to this bill. TĀMATI COFFEY: The Crown has done not a great job but there is a shift going on there is an awareness there is a consciousness and the fact that as we stand here today there are a majority of people in this House that will be supporting this bill to go through speaks volumes. And for that reason I'm implored to say that whilst this is a very significant piece of legislation and it will mean lots of things for lots of people—in fact one of our submitters said it really nicely—there's more work to do. She would rather she said spend the time talking about what we're doing in Oranga Tamariki to make sure that our babies are protected. She said we should actually be focused on some of those bigger issues. Let this be something that we do but there is so much more that we need to do and for that reason I commend this bill to the House."