CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green): When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. That is what is behind this bill. Its architect tells us that this is about equality, but we do not have equality in this country. Pick almost any statistic that you like—housing, incarceration, health, life expectancy—Māori get unfair and unequal outcomes because of unfair and unequal treatment which started with the Crown's intentional violent actions to dishonour Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
But this is not just about Māori; this is about all of us. Te Tiriti is why and how each of us is on this whenua. It tells us so much about who we are, how we got here, and where we go if we treat each other and our planet well, if we are good Treaty partners.
Capitalism, an economic system with the key priority being to turn profit at almost any cost, needs colonisation. This insatiable, unsustainable economic system needs to assimilate and acquire new frontiers to exploit. It needs to turn every citizen into a consumer and to commodify our natural world. And right now, in this country, the biggest thing standing in its way is the resilience and the fire in the enduring movement from mana motuhake.
When Te Tiriti was signed, Māori outnumbered Pākehā by 40 to one. Can you imagine a small group of people coming to this country, signing an agreement to look after themselves in orderly cohabitation, then, instead, taking our land and our language? Well, that is the abridged history of Aotearoa New Zealand. That is what the British Crown did in establishing this Parliament and its institutions. The legacy of that violence, oppression, theft and colonisation and the breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is represented in today's deeply unequal and unfair statistics in people's lives.
Pākehā mā, tauiwi mā, we have been told for almost all of our lives that Māori sovereignty is something to be afraid of. Who has been telling you that? Who benefits and who pays the price?
The discomfort that you feel—that I once felt—is an invitation to listen, to learn, to understand, and to honour. Te Tiriti o Waitangi is gift. It is a blueprint of an Aotearoa that respects people and planet. It is the antidote to the exhaustion and the disenfranchisement that I know profoundly is felt in communities across this country right now.
Now, some politicians will tell you that we just need a clean slate for the past. They will tell you that people today should not be held responsible for the actions of our forebears. So let's be really, really clear here: you do not need to be personally responsible for the historical dishonouring of Te Tiriti o Waitangi to actively benefit from that horrific legacy today. That is the truth. But this Parliament does benefit; all 123 members of this Parliament do benefit. The power in this place, in this Parliament, was built on a legacy of deceit, dehumanisation, and domination, and today all 123 members of Parliament will vote to either further entrench that utterly shameful legacy or to be honest and to do something about it.
The Prime Minister has told us that there's nothing that he likes about this divisive bill. He's told us that the National Party don't support this bill. Any member of Parliament in this Chamber right now can call for a personal vote on this bill to vote differently from their party, to put the country above partisan politics. A leader or a whip cannot stop MPs' constitutional right to vote how they know that they need to.
My question to MPs is: are you here to hold on to power at any cost or are you here to do the right thing? Are you here to listen to your conscience or are you here to give it all up on one of the most significant votes in this House in our lifetime? Because if you wear the mask for a little while, it becomes your face. We are what we do. If you vote for this bill, that is who you are and this is how you will be remembered. Toitū Te Tiriti.