Swarbrick ChlöeELECTION ACCESS FUND BILLThird ReadingCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): I move That the Election Access Fund Bill be now read a third time. I want everybody in this House to imagine for a second. Imagine that you can't hear me. I'm sure that is something that many of my colleagues in this Chamber would invite and think that they'd very much like but of course I would like them to remove the humour from that proposition. Seriously I ask my colleagues to imagine that they can't hear me but that they can't hear not just me. Imagine that you can't hear the question time bells and you can't hear the conscience vote bells which echoed across Parliament last night well past midnight calling us to work and to vote in the Chamber. Imagine that you can't hear points of order questions nor the answers. Imagine that you can't hear the whispers of colleagues as whips dart across the House and negotiate the day's business and that you can't hear interjections and heckles nor the laughs and the bellows that follow.Imagine that you can't hear your co-workers in the office and the hallways and you can't hear them in caucus in cross-party groups or in select committees. That hearing that access that enabling of basic equality is something that every single one of us in this Chamber who is currently elected to the House of Representatives takes for granted. It is proof that this place was made was designed for the likes of us. But it's estimated that nearly 19 percent of New Zealanders experience a form of hearing loss. Thousands communicate via our official language—New Zealand Sign Language but zero percent of the House of Representatives are currently living that experience. We make the rules for those deaf and disabled New Zealanders but we regularly do so without any knowledge of their experiences.Those experiences aren't just of deafness nor of disability. They are a breadth and a richness of human experiences of lessons learnt of jobs done of advocacy advocated of lives lived. There is no such pigeonhole nor neat and tidy box of deaf and disability issues. In fact every single piece of policy every single debate in Parliament every single decision that is made impacts the homes the environment the country and the worlds that all of us live in.Tokenism is someone without a certain experience asking those with that experience to comment on a perceivably niche narrow something that the person without experience thinks is relevant to those with the experience. It's permission to provide feedback on a specified little area of things that the person without experience is comfortable letting those with the experience see and participate in. It is paternalistic and it is patronising. It is controlling. Representation is an equal platform. It is not telling someone what affects them but asking them and shutting up and hearing the answer. What we're doing today is actually pretty basic but it's also hugely fundamental. We are removing the barriers that none of us in this place right now have had to wrangle with. That fact in and of itself is worthy of inspection. Who has been left behind and made invisible in the conversation because they didn't make it in here? Just today I had my executive assistant Tim Onnes telling me of the difficulty of bringing people into this Parliament to witness this speech—this third reading speech—about accessibility about democracy and how difficult it was for those people to navigate through our Parliament and to engage in this process.What political candidates didn't make it in here because they couldn't afford the unique travel arrangements the translators the costly barriers that we didn't have to worry about? What New Zealanders didn't even make it to contemplating being a candidate because of concern and fear of the excessive bills and the fuss? Which citizens didn't even think of this as a possible place for them and by them because they couldn't see themselves in it? Today we are unanimously fixing a glaring hole in our democracy. If you haven't seen felt or heard that vortex it's because it doesn't affect you. But it just so happens our official statistics belie that it affects the lives of around one in every four New Zealanders. Today we are enabling the impartial and politically independent Electoral Commission to administer a fund to remove barriers faced by the deaf and disabled candidates in our general elections and our by-elections. Those are barriers that others do not face barriers that not one of the 120 members in Parliament right now faced. They are barriers that were faced by my friend the inspirational Mojo Mathers the first Deaf member of Parliament here in Aotearoa New Zealand who gives colour to the narrative that I have laid out this afternoon. It is not just a story it is not myth; it is literally Mojo's life. She brought decades of mahi in environmental protection and water quality and animal rights to our Parliament but she became a disability rights champion because to be frank she was just a champion. Thank you Mojo for unlocking the doors for those who will come after you. Your law will not just change lives; it will change the face of places like this and I hope that it will improve inclusion and the thoughtfulness of our society as well. I also want to mention my mate Joe Boon who was diagnosed in 2008 with something that I'm probably not going to be able to pronounce but I'll give it a shot: Friedreich's ataxia which is a progressive genetic neurological condition. This election he is running—or wheeling as I'm sure his sardonic sense of humour would allow—in Rangitīkei for the Greens. He is one of a number of deaf and disabled candidates who have stood for parties across this Chamber in the past present and I am sure the future. This bill gives those candidates—those potential politicians those New Zealanders—an equal footing because from the 2023 election this law means that they no longer will have to shoulder costs that again none of us here did. That quite frankly is just a fair go.I really deeply want to thank politicians across this Parliament who I've had the privilege to work with so constructively and so fully to bring this law to pass this afternoon. It is not every day that we get to pat ourselves on the back and say that we agreed on a vision for a better Aotearoa New Zealand and that we worked together to do it but today is different. I know having talked to many who have been involved in this conversation for so long of the huge importance and symbolism that comes from all 120 members in this place being united in knocking down those barriers.I want to say thank you to the Governance and Administration Committee. I want to say thank you to my colleagues in Labour and the National Party and New Zealand First and ACT and to Jami-Lee Ross. I want to say thank you to everybody who has fought so long for this. It can only be the beginning.I asked my friend Henrietta Bollinger who helped substantially in developing my thinking coming to this legislation but who is also an impeccable artist and writer in her own right what on earth I should say to celebrate the passage of this law today which has taken two years and a whole lot of work. She just offered that it is important that deaf and disabled people are no longer invisible in this conversation. They have a whole lot more to offer than just their disability but the richness of humanity and experience that all of us have which exceeds and extends far beyond any of our most obvious caricature.I hope that I am done speaking on behalf of and instead of. Here is to a House of Representatives.