Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. Equal rights for Māori and non-Māori citizens equal protection for voters to participate in our democracy equality in the eyes of the law under our constitutional framework—these are the things that by voting down this bill the National Party members the ACT Party members and the New Zealand First party members in the House tonight are rejecting. This is a bill which simply corrects an aspect of our constitutional framework in the Electoral Act which would treat the rights of voters in general seats as different from those of voters in Māori seats. It would be a simple change that would be able to be effected tonight if those members had chosen to support it.In the time that I have I want to talk a little bit about the role of Parliament here because we've heard some speeches from the National members particularly and they were all surprisingly almost exactly the same line about how a member's bill is not the way to progress something like this change. And it does worry me because it is something that goes to the heart of what we're debating tonight: about what the role of Parliament is about what the role of elected members are within it about how our democracy should function and about the role of the executive. The idea that you should not do entrenchment when the executive has not introduced the bill is bananas. The idea that Parliament cannot advance a provision that requires consensus or effective consensus is not something that we should stand for in this House—any member. It's really important for Parliament to always maintain its own control—its independent control—of things that require us to step outside of the daily fracas of politics and think about the kind of democracy that we want to design. Coming to this House with prepared speech notes from your leader's office and reading out prepared lines about how the executive is key to Parliament's decision-making betrays an underlying lack of respect for the role of Parliament in determining how we should operate as a democracy and we should not tolerate it.The member James Meager talked about the role of backbenchers to introduce these kinds of bills but there is a bigger role for backbench non-executive MPs in this Parliament: it is to hold the executive to account and make sure that the rules that we all play by are fair for everyone. There are parties in this House who will not be in the executive in the short term; there are parties in this House who may never be in the executive. The rules that are determined for them and for the major parties are just as important and every single party in this House should be well represented when we think about how to discuss those rules.It's right that when we look at the history of the Māori seats all parties around this House have an interest in them. We've been there; we've campaigned in them. If you've been a party member of Labour of National of the Greens of the Māori Party of New Zealand First you've probably been out there in your t-shirts campaigning in a Māori electoral seat. We all have an interest in the future of them. We all should have an interest in protecting them regardless of the electoral outcome that we predict in the short-term future because they're important for the long-term future of us as a nation of protecting the kind of democracy that we are proud of and of protecting the kind of democracy that stands out in the world as one that is stable one that is respectable and one that people have faith in.I'm really disappointed tonight. It's good that we can have the kind of debate around the House where even something like this we can approach it jovially joke with each other look at the history and take hits on both sides. But this is a debate that has had the outcome of missing another opportunity to make sure that the equal protection of Māori in our law and in our constitutional framework is upheld by this Parliament. It's a sad day when parliamentarians cannot agree by consensus that the rights of Māori should be the same as every other citizen. And it belies a bad-faith approach by parties who would seek to enter into a Treaty principles debate where they say they want equal protection of Māori and of non-Māori citizens when in fact they had this opportunity to grant equal protections but it was clear that equal protection in their politics only means for non-Māori. I am very disappointed by this debate.