Thursday, 3 March 2022

Volume 757

Sitting date: 3 March 2022

THURSDAY, 3 MARCH 2022

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

karakia/Prayers

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Deputy Speaker) (remote): E te Atua kaha rawa, ka tuku whakamoemiti atu mātou, mō ngā karakia kua waihotia mai ki runga i a mātou. Ka waiho i ō mātou pānga whaiaro katoa ki te taha. Ka mihi mātou ki te Kuīni, me te inoi atu mō te ārahitanga i roto i ō mātou whakaaroarohanga, kia mōhio ai, kia whakaiti ai tā mātou whakahaere i ngā take o te Whare nei, mō te oranga, te maungārongo, me te aroha o Aotearoa. Āmene.

[Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the Queen, and pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom and humility, for the welfare, peace, and compassion of New Zealand. Amen.]

Business Statement

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Following the unanimous agreement of the House last night, today the House will consider a motion on the action that took place out the front of Parliament yesterday. Following that, the House will adjourn for the rest of the week.

When the House returns on Tuesday, the Government will progress business currently on the Order Paper, and I’ll circulate a list of the priorities for next week to the parties. On Wednesday, a two-hour debate on the Budget Policy Statement will replace the general debate.

PETITIONS, PAPERS, SELECT COMMITTEE REPORTS, AND INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

SPEAKER: No bills have been introduced. Petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK:

Petition of Mawera Karetai requesting that the House change the process and criteria used by the Social Worker Registration Board to register experience-pathway social workers

petition of Maarten Wagenaar requesting that the House pass a motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister and her Government

petition of Pandora Black requesting that the House pass legislation to repeal section 19 of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003

petition of Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers requesting that the House urge the Government to increase funding for the Social Workers Registration Board

petition of Kiri Goodspeed requesting that the House urge Waka Kotahi to rescind its decision to permanently lower the speed limit on State Highway 5, between Rangitaiki and Esk Valley.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee. I present the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment entitled: Knowing what’s out there: Regulating the environmental fate of chemicals. That paper is published under the authority of the House. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Reports of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the:

Budget Policy Statement 2021

Taxation (Annual Rates for 2021-22, GST, and Remedial Matters) Bill

Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update December 2021

report of the Health Committee on the petition of Rebecca Toms.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading.

Motions

New Zealand Parliament—Occupation of Grounds

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): I move, That this House recognise the safe restoration of Parliament’s grounds and the selfless service of our Police, Fire and Emergency Services, Wellington Free Ambulance, Parliament Security, and many others, in returning Parliament to the people.

Yesterday, the Police restored order on Parliament’s grounds after an illegal occupation that lasted 23 days. As a result of that operation, 89 arrests were made, 40 police officers were injured, and 8 were admitted to hospital. In total, 600 police staff were involved in yesterday’s events. There were 50 firefighters on site alongside Wellington Free Ambulance, who were treating those who were injured. And Parliament security once again supported all those involved, and have stood alongside the New Zealand Police throughout the occupation.

To each of you, we say thank you. You were there throughout these events at a great risk to yourselves. Many of you were abused, some were injured, but you put your personal safety aside in order to look after others. And for that, we are very grateful.

To Wellingtonians, I am sorry for what you have had to endure, but I thank you for your resilience. I hope your sense of safety and confidence has been restored.

He mihi ki ngā mana whenua, Taranaki Whānui.

[I acknowledge Taranaki Whānui, the people of the land.]

You have had to endure the trampling of your mana, and we will work with you to see that restored.

I know many of us will have seen firsthand the events that unfolded on the grounds of Parliament yesterday afternoon. I was finishing a meeting on the other side of the building when I heard the sirens of the Fire Service. I stood in one of the Beehive offices as I watched the flames billow up from the front lawn of Parliament. The playground had been set alight. But as I was watching what was unfolding, Parliament continued. The debate in the House was being broadcast into the office, and as I watched the flames I could hear my colleague Barbara Edmonds speaking in the Chamber. She was talking about one of her family members who had recently become infected with COVID-19. It was her niece, who was only six weeks old; a newborn who struggled to breathe because of this pandemic that we are all working so hard to get safely on the other side of. It was hard to square. Here was a violent protest, full of anger, in response to measures that are designed to do no more than keep other people safe.

I watched the first day the protest arrived here. I’ve watched protests come to Parliament over the years, I have received petitions, and I have spoken at many. And yet the day this one arrived, it was clear that it was different. There was an immediate focus on occupying the space. The rhetoric that came from the speakers they installed swung between benign to sometimes threatening. Many media who walked the grounds were either abused or, in some cases, chased away. It was a form of protest I did not recognise, and I found it hard to reconcile it with the reality of what all New Zealanders had faced in this pandemic and yet quietly got on with it.

Barbara’s niece spent time in hospital but is now recovering. And in a way, that’s what we all want. For our vulnerable to be cared for, to get through, and to recover. And we will, but for now, we are in a very hard moment in time.

For the first time in the two years since the start of the outbreak, New Zealanders are experiencing widespread COVID in the community. It is a period of disruption and risk. I saw a powerful message yesterday, shared by one of our health workers. It said that in all of the discussion about removing all of our current protections, they felt unseen—that with hundreds of hospitalisations and staff illness to contend with, the suggestion that we just give up and move on made them feel invisible. I know in this House none of us would wish any of our front-line workers to feel that way. They may not have occupied the front of Parliament, but they must occupy our thoughts.

So my message today is simple. It is to condemn what happened here. Acts of violence cannot stand. It is to reinforce that this will always be a place where difference can be expressed and where that will be welcomed, but that should always be done with dignity and respect for the place upon which we stand; that everyone has sacrificed something in the last two years, but it has not been for nothing—it has been for each other. We just need to keep going a little longer.

And finally, this too will pass. Where we are in the pandemic right now feels hard because it is, but things will change. Our people are coming home. Soon, tourists will return. Vaccine passes, mandates, restrictions—they will all change. There is reason to feel hopeful.

But for now, the smell of smoke has faded. The playground will be restored. And the people, our people, will return to their place.

SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Leader of the Opposition): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Opposition supports this motion, and we join the House in recognising the dedication, service, and courage of the police, fire and emergency services, Wellington Free Ambulance, parliamentary security, and all those who restored order and safety to Parliament’s grounds yesterday. Yesterday was a sad day for New Zealand. After more than three weeks, the occupation of the parliamentary campus finally ended in ugly scenes. Those scenes were the culmination of weeks of intimidation and aggression toward Wellingtonians.

We will always respect people’s right to protest; it is quite rightly a basic tenet of our democracy, and in my time in Parliament, I’ve tried to meet as many protesters and petitioners as I can out on the forecourt to hear their concerns. But something was off in this protest from the get-go. There was real animus in the atmosphere. With roads blocked and public transport disrupted, Wellingtonians had no choice but to significantly alter their daily routines and yield their freedoms. The National Party wholeheartedly condemns the behaviour of these protesters. Their behaviour yesterday was not peaceful protest or activism; it was thuggery. We join parties across the Parliament in paying tribute to all of those who have kept us safe and have contributed to bringing the unrest to an end.

On behalf of the Opposition, I would like to express our enormous gratitude to our New Zealand Police officers, our Fire and Emergency New Zealand personnel, to the Wellington Free Ambulance paramedics and staff, and to our Parliamentary Service security personnel. We thank you for the tireless and courageous work that each and every one of you have done to keep Wellingtonians and New Zealand’s Parliament safe in the face of belligerence and abuse. You exemplify a true spirit of selfless public service.

I would like to particularly acknowledge the immense bravery and selflessness of our front-line police officers. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the privilege of meeting and chatting with a number of officers here in Parliament, and last night I visited them out on the forecourt to thank them and to hear their accounts of the day. They told me how police had all manner of makeshift weapons thrown at them, from chairs and road cones to bottles and paving stones. For some, it resulted in broken bones, and they had abuse screamed into their ears and fire extinguishers unloaded into their faces, and at least seven officers have been hospitalised. Around 80 brave new recruits graduated from Police College and immediately began their very first assignment in uniform, restoring order to our capital. For one young officer I spoke to last night, yesterday was just her second day on the job. I sincerely hope she has a long career where those scenes are never repeated again.

Our police do their jobs not seeking gratitude or glory but out of a very genuine desire to make New Zealand a safer and a better place for all of us. The officers here sacrificed their own safety to protect others, and several of them told me of their pride in protecting our Parliament—their Parliament. Their tenacity in withstanding the protesters’ provocations and remaining calm, patient, and restrained is a testament to their incredible skill and their professionalism, and we all owe them our sincere and heartfelt thanks.

Now, while we recover from the hurt of yesterday’s actions, it is still vital to examine how we got here in the first place. The National Party fully supports such a review taking place, and we commit to engaging constructively with it. A review should examine the relationships between the Police and parliamentary authorities and the process through which decisions were taken. It should consider whether communication channels were effective and whether the actions of some authorities—including those of you, Mr Speaker—served to ease the tension or exacerbate it. It should look at the steps that can be taken to mitigate and to prevent situations before they escalate beyond control. We also need a much clearer approach to the management of Parliament’s grounds in an environment of elevated risks and threats. A review will undoubtedly find practical measures that can be implemented to enhance the security of this place. However, this Parliament is the heart of our democracy, and it must be open and accessible to New Zealanders. Cloistering and insulating this place and cutting politicians off from the people who elect us and send us here to represent them will only fuel more of the behaviour we’ve seen, not lessen it. The competing imperatives of safety and public accessibility must continue to be carefully balanced.

As well as looking at the events of the past three weeks, we also need to consider more broadly how we got to this situation as a country. As I said in a speech last week, two years ago, when the Prime Minister made the wise decision to put New Zealand into a strict lockdown, we were united in our resolve; we came together to combat COVID-19, and we felt good about it. But Kiwis are frustrated that what was simple then has become messy and complicated two years on. There are frustrations shared by reasonable, law-abiding, well-intentioned, and well-informed people up and down the country about the Government’s approach to COVID and its lack of a plan. Of course it was correct that the debate did not take place between lawmakers and law breakers on the forecourt of Parliament, and I am proud that every party in this House agreed not to open a dialogue with the protesters until they de-escalated their behaviour—a condition that they demonstrated they were not up to meeting.

But we cannot risk writing off other New Zealanders’ valid concerns because of the reprehensible behaviour of a disaffected minority. It is reasonable to expect that Aucklanders who spent 15 weeks in lockdown last year or business owners who have lost the ability to pay their staff or put food on their family’s table will want to hold the Government accountable for its decisions and promises. It is healthy for a democracy to allow a Government to be questioned when its policies are creating significant disruption and impacts on citizens’ lives. I’ve often said that is possible to disagree without being disagreeable, but the behaviour we saw yesterday did not exhibit that.

It will take time to heal the divisions in our society, but we cannot lose sight of the fact that there is far more that unites us than divides us. Parliament is a robust place. We all come here to debate what is best for New Zealand, and sometimes that can get heated. We don’t always agree on the way forward, and that is proper in a functioning democracy. But we are all here in this House for the same reason: because we want a better future for New Zealand. As a Parliament, let’s continue to move forward towards unity together.

SPEAKER: Marama Davidson—a five-minute call. It is a split call.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): The motion was to move that this House recognise “the safe restoration of Parliament’s grounds and the selfless service of the Police, Fire and Emergency Services, Wellington Free Ambulance, Parliament security, and many others”. I want to include our allied health workers, particularly in our COVID response, who do the COVID tests, the contact tracing; and the social workers, and particularly social workers who will need to be part of the community-building response and the immediate health, wellbeing, and safety response that is going to be necessary to weave a path towards wellness and healing for everybody, including those who are at the forefront of that violent protest yesterday. The social workers and the community leaders, across neighbourhoods, across whānau, across Aotearoa, will play a forward, front role in doing the weaving and cohesion work that I know we all want to also support.

I join others in making sure that we have mana whenua recognition right at the forefront of our contributions, today and every day, and acknowledge the desecration that took place on their whenua, and to their whakapapa, and acknowledge that in the healing and restoration work, I look forward to having their guidance right at the forefront of everything that we do here and everything that we do collectively across not just Wellington but Aotearoa.

I want to acknowledge the courage that it took for the police to maintain as much of a de-escalation and harm minimisation approach as possible, in the face of sharp pressure to both do something and restore a peaceful environment for all of the Wellington community. This is an approach that the Green Party has always insisted on, and we acknowledge that that approach, over the history of police here in Aotearoa, has, unfortunately, not been applied consistently—and, unfortunately, there has been discrimination in the way that it hasn’t and has been applied. So I acknowledge yesterday as being a really positive step in the way that we police in Aotearoa.

I also acknowledge that I was standing at that window and watching people—people—being harmed at the front line, including police. I was watching humans being harmed, and that rocked me; that rocked me as someone just watching violence from the window. I want everyone to be able to recover physically, spiritually, and mentally from whatever injuries and traumas happened as a result of yesterday’s completely unacceptable violence.

If I can just focus on the violence that led to yesterday, the violence happened long before yesterday. The very premise of that protest out there, included, among many unhinged purposes, a resistance against the safety protections and restrictions that have kept people alive and well, including disabled people, who have wanted their voices to be amplified because they feel that their voices have been completely trampled over, completely invisibilised, and that the mandates have managed to particularly protect disabled people who, around the world, are featuring disproportionately in those who have been harmed and who have lost their lives to COVID. So I acknowledge them and the violence that was apparent in this protest long before people were picking up bricks and throwing them at other people and police.

I want to acknowledge that I look forward to the police—as they have said, they are going to be scanning for other people who were responsible for the physical violence that we saw. That is not the only violence that needs to be held accountable; there have been agitators—people who were nowhere to be seen yesterday who were right at the forefront, whether it’s Counterspin Media, right-wing leadership, and agitators who are responsible for spinning out disinformation, and they were an absolute part of the violence yesterday, and they also need to be accountable.

The biggest prevention of harm would have been for the protestors to go home. That much is very clear. Now I also ask those protestors that any protest with a kaupapa has a clear purpose and values that would involve asking themselves: what of the children and the harm that was caused yesterday, and asking them to be self-accountable. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Just shy of three years ago, I was stopped on my way to work by a man who yelled at me that I had to stop what I was doing at the UN—before fracturing my eye socket with his fist. Now, I know that there are many members of this House who have been assaulted at some point in their lives, so I know that colleagues will know what I mean when I say that time seems to slow down in those moments. And you seem to be able to get a great many thoughts through your head in the time that it takes from standing up to lying down.

And one of the thoughts that crossed my mind in that moment was what he might have meant. One possibility: that he was connecting my work as climate change Minister to the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory. Another was that he was worked up about the UN migration pact, which had been the subject of a highly coordinated disinformation campaign over that summer—a campaign which was driven largely out of Russian internet troll farms and had managed to find its way into mainstream political discourse even here in Aotearoa. Either possibility has the same root cause.

Twenty-nine hours later, 51 people were killed and another 40 injured at the hands of a white supremacist terrorist in Christchurch. It’s apparent that the terrorist spent a great deal of the time over the course of his life in the dark recesses of the internet, where his grievance, his entitlement, and his hate metastasised into the evil fantasies that drove him to kill so many people. The attack on the US Capitol on 6 January last year was fuelled by the misinformation and disinformation campaigns of far-right and proto-fascist movements aimed at destabilising and fracturing society and causing and creating the conditions for authoritarians like Trump and Vladimir Putin.

The doubts about vaccines, mandates, and other elements of the public health response were seeded by the same actors. Those doubts actually manifested as public policy in a number of countries, leading to hundreds of thousands of more deaths than otherwise may have occurred. The protest on the Parliament lawn over the past few weeks was not an isolated event, nor was it new, and nor was it unique to us. But it did happen here, and those were New Zealanders out the front. New Zealand has remarkable levels of social cohesion, which has enabled us to get through the pandemic so far with one of the lowest mortality rates in the world. But there is another virus—another global pandemic—which we, with our breezy “She’ll be right” attitude, have almost no immunity to.

Now, there will undoubtedly be a range of inquiries into the protests over the coming months to see what could be done better when—or if—there is a next time. Could the police have intervened earlier or differently? Should Parliament have a wall around it? Is it ever OK to play Barry Manilow? But these questions are all about how we treat the symptoms. What I’m interested in is preventing the disease from overtaking us in the first place.

I do want to acknowledge the people of Wellington, my city, for their patience and forbearance over the past three weeks. It hasn’t been easy, but we have stood together. I want to acknowledge the police, in particular, who put themselves into harm’s way and had to put up with sustained abuse for three weeks, and yet still worked to ensure a resolution with as little violence as was possible. I want to acknowledge the fire and emergency services, Wellington Free Ambulance, and Parliament security for their work on the front line. I note that the first person to run out with a fire hose yesterday, sheltered by police under their riot shields, in the 10 minutes before the fire trucks arrived, was Mitch Knight, the deputy chief executive of Corporate Services at the Parliamentary Service. Mitch wasn’t the only member of staff who went well beyond the call of duty over the past few weeks—and well beyond his professional background as an accountant—but he does embody the service and the bravery of everybody who did.

I also want to acknowledge the journalists, the photographers, and the camera operators who put themselves in harm’s way to bring the story of the protest to the public. Like the police and others, they suffered abuse, physical threats, and the virus itself. Way to go.

Yesterday, the grifters and the charlatans, the political opportunists, and the white supremacists who were behind the protest melted away like cowards and abandoned the field to the desperate people that they’d led astray. I can only hope that they will be held accountable for their part in all of this and that we can find a way, as a country, to immunise ourselves against their malign impact in the future. A friend sent me this this morning: “I walked across the snowy plain of the tiergarten—a smashed statue here, a newly planted sapling there, with its red flag flapping against the blue winter sky. And on the horizon, the great ribs of a gutted railway station like the skeleton of a whale. In the morning light, it was all as raw and frank as the voice of history, which tells you not to fool yourself: this can happen to any city, to anyone, to you.”

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in support of this motion to thank police, fire and emergency services, Wellington Free Ambulance, parliamentary security, and many others for their extraordinary efforts over the last three weeks, and, especially, the past 36 hours. That is not to say that ACT agrees with everything the Prime Minister said, and more on that later.

I’ve spoken to a lot of police and firefighters and parliamentary security over the last few days. They’re tired, in some cases they’re injured, and in every case they’ve been professional. They’ve come from all over New Zealand. Last night, I spoke to an officer from Ōāmaru and a crew from up in Auckland, and everywhere in between. There was another officer who was guarding the gate at Hill Street. He had blood on his vest and a massive bandage on his forehead. I asked him, “What happened?” One of his colleagues said, with typical police humour, “The senior constable was trying to stop a brick with his forehead.” I said, “Are you still on duty?” He said, “Sure, I’m fine.” Anyone who says that the police were brutal or unprofessional needs to meet that guy.

Yesterday, they encountered extreme and reckless violence. The crescendo of that violence and stupidity was putting LPG bottles on a fire that they’d lit on Parliament’s lawn. Another officer at the gate was standing speechless, and I think I know why. I think it’s the same one Christopher Luxon met. I said, “How are you going?” Another officer spoke for her and said, “She’s two days out of Police College.”, and I said, “I hope that the rest of your career is a lot calmer than that.” One of our jobs in this House is to make sure that that happens.

There’s no question that we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the police, fire, and ambulance, who stepped up to the call of duty—at great personal cost in some cases. First of all, it’s critical that those responsible for this sad scene in New Zealand history are held accountable. That starts, first and foremost, with those obstructing and fighting the police officers yesterday. Let’s be very clear: they were not where they were legally. There is a right to protest, but that right of protest does not extend to taking over the rights of other people around you. You can’t talk about civil liberties when you’re threatening others. You can’t talk about restrictions when you’re preventing small businesses in the area, that have suffered enough through the last two years of COVID restrictions, from getting on and doing their business.

The protesters may well believe that their cause was more important than others, that the ends justified the means. Well, actually, all protests believe that, at some level. But most protests understand that a society that observes democracy and the rule of law is worth preserving, and the preservation of that society is worth more than any single cause. That’s why we have to ask why so many people felt that the society had abandoned them, that they had so little to lose that they would occupy Parliament and central Wellington for three weeks in a protest that everybody agrees is different from anything that we’ve seen before. Well, the Government’s answer to that question came out last night in what I regarded as a disappointing speech from the Prime Minister. So far as she’s concerned, everything is fine, the COVID response is fine; it’s all because of conspiracy theories driven by foreign websites. Well, you know what? That sounds like a conspiracy theory in itself.

Just to be clear, the world does have a big problem with misinformation, with processing information. There’s never been more access to information, and our ability to work through it and sort fact from fiction has not kept up. I get it nearly every day. I get somebody who emails me saying, “I don’t think this vaccine’s effective.” I send them a link from the New England Journal of Medicine—the premier medical journal in the world, the journal of record for the profession that’s doubled life expectancy and made so many things possible—and they shoot back, “No, I’ve got this blog. I’d rather read this.” People are lacking the ability to tell the difference, and that person is misinformed—that is a real problem, and I know it, and I experience it. But that doesn’t mean that everybody who has a concern is misinformed. The problem with being unable to internalise complex situations in our head, to quote an old ad, is that we are failing to do that as politicians too.

One of the things we most need at this time—and I mean the past 36 hours, this year, and the 2020s so far—is the ability to internalise complex situations in our heads. The Prime Minister wants us to believe what Michael Wood said, that there’s a “river of filth” running through the protest. I know Michael Wood. He’s enough of a political tragic to understand the allusion to Enoch Powell’s sinister speech when he said that.

Then the Prime Minister, or at least her party, Mr Speaker, seemed to support you calling people ferals. Coming to you, Mr Speaker, what were you thinking? I hope, one day, you’ll explain what you thought you achieved by turning sprinklers and bad music on the protesters. Even if you wail that you didn’t make it worse, where were you, as the leader and custodian of this fine institution, seeking a mature de-escalation? That’s what we should have seen.

But back to that complex situation. It’s not good enough to dismiss all of the events of the last three weeks as driven by conspiracy theorists and extremists, as the Prime Minister has. We need to be able to accept that there were unacceptable behaviours in the protests but also behaviours by people who simply felt they’d been driven to distraction and ostracised from society.

Let me give you just one example: a man I know came to me the other day—and I want to be clear, he wasn’t at the protest but many like him were—a man who was a beloved chaplain at Dilworth School in Auckland. Now, that school, as some people will know, has been dealing with some historical problems—they’re not the fault of anyone at the school right now; they’re extremely sensitive. This man is not an anti-vaxxer. He had two doses but he doesn’t want to get boosted because of the severe reaction he had to his second dose. His doctor recognises that that is one of the few accepted responses to the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine. She’s not allowed to give him an exemption. The school’s not allowed to make an exemption. He’s not allowed to keep on teaching. That school has lost him at the time they most need him because of an inhuman and inflexible response to vaccination policy.

What would have been more human is if we said it’s vax or test. What would have been more human is if we said an organisation can make its own rules. What would have been more human would have been to say that a doctor, as a respected professional, can keep their autonomy and make an exemption. For him, and many like him, that more human response would have been more in keeping with a Government that was elected to talk about wellbeing, and, had we done that, we might not have created the seeds of this unacceptable and despicable meltdown that we have seen.

Finally, for the record—and I want to just make clear, again, that that man was not in the protest, but many like him who weren’t none the less, share their concerns. What we need, from this point, is to be able to have genuine and candid debate about the future of our country, and the response to COVID-19 in particular, without saying and oversimplifying that everyone that has a concern is somehow a neo-Nazi. You know, the people that are doing that are as much of a problem as some of the antisocial fringes of this protest. We need hope and healing, and that’s going to require, from our Government, some humility. We’ve had a Government that’s been here for 4½ years—all sorts of tragedies, many decisions made under intense time pressure. The only thing they’ve apologised for so far is the Dawn Raids, back in the 1970s.

We need to accept that some of the policies that we’ve adopted haven’t worked, and be prepared to say we’re going to put them right. Only at that point do we come back together. It’s no good calling people names. It’s no good trying to toxify people. It’s no good trying to blame people. What we need is dialogue and discussion about how we go forward, uniting New Zealanders behind good ideas rather than trying to demonise each other. That’s what we need to do. Yes, we need to thank the police—and we should. Yes, we need to hold the criminals, who behaved so awfully yesterday, accountable. Yes, we need a response to COVID-19. But, you know, what we need more than anything is hope, healing, and humility—the ability to have dialogue, not to stereotype each other, or behave immaturely and call each other names. If we can unite behind good ideas, then we can truly heal from this disgraceful day in our history. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) (remote): Tēnā koe e te Pīka, otirā, tēnā tātou katoa. Tēnā tātou i te āhuatanga o ō tātou mate. Ngā mate huhua o te wā, otirā koutou i runga i te rāngai rangatira, te rāngai atua ki tua o paerangi. Haere, whatungaro atu rā. Nei rā te mihi ki a mana whenua, Te Ati Awa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Taranaki Whānui, tēnei te mihi aroha ki a koutou. Ko te raukura ka mau ki te ringa, ko te aroha ka mau ki te ngākau.

[Greetings, Mr Speaker, and greetings one and all. I acknowledge those who have passed. The many dead of this time, including of chiefly status, and the company of ancestors beyond the horizon. May you rest in peace. I acknowledge those who have authority over this land, Te Ati Awa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, and Taranaki Whānui, this is my compassionate greeting to you. When the feather plume is held in the hand, love and compassion resides in the heart.]

Te Paati Māori support this motion and all the services that have been acknowledged today. We would like to add Ngā Wātene Māori—our Māori wardens—to the motion as we acknowledge all the services that have been part of this ordeal. I speak as the co-leader of Te Paati Māori and as the MP for Waiariki.

I have deep feelings of sadness and loss for the hurt caused by successive Governments in this country that have subjugated us to generations of reckless laws that have continuously oppressed us as a people—laws still being passed in this very House today. One of the key objectives of the formation of this Parliament was to kill the “beastly communism” of Māori—a quote made by a past Minister of this House, Christopher William Richmond.

What I saw yesterday on the grounds of Parliament was the manifestation of that colonial vision: the disconnection from our Māoritanga; the alienation from our whenua, our hapū, our maunga, our awa, our language—our reo; the dysfunction within our communities; the intergenerational trauma; the years of never being heard. The whakapapa of this can only be traced back to colonisation. Colonisation has turned our worlds upside down and has rendered parts of the culture unrecognisable. It continues to divide us today because it feasts on our trauma, thus forcing us to disregard the very essence of who we are and who we once were.

When I hear the stories of my tīpuna, I hear leadership and I hear courage. I close my eyes and I imagine our people as the providers of sustenance that feed our wairua, our tinana, our hinengaro; leaders that walked and talked with kotahitanga; I see respect and responsibility; I see sacrifice for the collective; and I hear the projectors of our indigenous truth through a language that was born of this land and our mātauranga that was born of the skies; and I see fierce protection of our honour and our mana. All of this, all at once, and never at the desecration of the mana of others. E te iwi Māori, kia mōhio mai koutou [To Māori, please be aware], when these mandates have lifted, we will still be left here fighting against the racist system that is still designed to kill our “beastly communism”. We will still be faced with Māori health inequities, Māori education disparities, Māori being the highest incarcerated peoples in the world. Māori will still make up 50 percent of the social housing waiting list and 67 percent of the tamariki in State care. We will still be over half of the people in emergency and transitional housing. And the Māori unemployment rate will still double that of non-Māori. That is the true plight that we as tangata whenua have been fighting for near on 200 years, and we will continue to fight once the mandates have been lifted.

I speak to you now as a son, a brother, a mokopuna, a whanaunga, and as a father. The threats, the abuse, and the hate towards us members of this House is absolutely unacceptable, and this is not who we are. The threats, the abuse, the hate, and the belittling of our Prime Minister, who is also a daughter, a mokopuna, and a mummy to a beautiful little girl, brings a sense of sadness to my heart.

E te Pirimia, kei te aroha atu ki a koe me tō whānau me tō tamāhine hoki. Kia kauparetia Te Atua i ngā whakawainga i ngā whiunga a te ao, a te kikokiko a Te Rēwera, a te upoko ariki, a te kiriweti me te poro hae. Kia tau iho ngā manaakitangi a Ihoa ora o ngā mano i runga i a koe me tō whānau, ā, i runga i a tātou katoa.

[To the Prime Minister, I feel compassion for you and your family and your daughter as well. May God protect you from weapons, from worldly insults, from the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil, from inflated egos, the hot-tempered and jealous ones. May the blessings of the Lord God Almighty be upon you and your family, upon all of us.]

E te iwi Māori [To Māori], it is time for us to heal. It is time for us to dig deep into our ngākau to show the world who we truly are. We are an honourable people. We are tangata whenua. We are the people of this land and it is our responsibility to ensure everyone is safe. Kia ora tātou.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave of the House to amend the motion to include our Māori wardens, who, as the last speaker rightly pointed out, were on the front line yesterday also.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to the motion being so amended? It is so amended.

Members, I just want to speak very briefly before I put the motion to acknowledge especially the police and the danger that they were in yesterday. I, over the last three weeks, have got to know police very well; some might say as well as I knew them in the earlier part of my life, and sometimes in quite similar circumstances. I’ve spoken with them often at midnight, at 3 in the morning, and at 6 in the morning—it’s not a great place to sleep here on occasions—and I’ve seen how hard they’ve worked.

I want to also acknowledge our Copperfields staff, who have been here until half past 12 in the morning and been back at 6 in order to support with warm drinks the police, who were on occasions quite tired, quite cold, and quite wet, and I think that was great, too.

There were a lot of rank and file police, and some very new ones. As we’ve said, I think two of the leaders may have spoken to the same young woman, but remember there were 79 others with exactly the same level of experience who came in here on Tuesday. We had for a long time, and right through it, some very experienced sergeants and senior constables. I think that they did a lot in defusing and handling the situation really well, and I just want to say how much I appreciate them, and they did come from all over the country.

I think it’s fair to say that at the beginning, it took us a little while to get the communication channels going evenly with the police, but after about a week, it did. I want to acknowledge Commissioner Coster and especially Assistant Commissioner Richard Chambers, who was my point of contact, sometimes up to 15 to 20 times a day, when there were issues that were arising, and he did a very professional job in that.

I also want to say thank you to party leaders in the House. I ended up with the role, because it was appropriate, of being the communication channel between the commissioner and party leaders, probably except for the Prime Minister, although on a few occasions it was with the Prime Minister, by way of Zoom meetings with the commissioner. Party leaders were very gracious and very positive with the communications, and fed back quite a few questions and suggestions, all of which I think were helpful and useful.

I think I want to say especially to the Leader of the Opposition, thank you very much. I spent more time talking with him—again, at midnight on occasions, or after 11, and at 6 o’clock in the morning on others—than to all the other party leaders combined, and I want to acknowledge and thank him for the personal support that he gave me through a very difficult period.

Members, I just want to reiterate my thanks to our security staff here. They have worked enormously long hours—double shifts—and some of them seem to have aged. They haven’t quite caught up with me, but they look considerably older. Their professionalism has been absolutely superb, and I want to thank them for that.

So the question is, That this House recognise the safe restoration of Parliament’s grounds and the selfless service of our Police, Fire and Emergency services, Wellington Free Ambulance, Parliament Security, Māori Wardens, and many others, in returning Parliament to the people.

Motion as amended agreed to.

SPEAKER: In accordance with the decision of the House yesterday, the House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 8 March.

The House adjourned at 2.47 p.m.