Tākuta speaks on the Fisheries Amendment Bill.

Te Tai Tonga MP Tākuta Ferris, says the Government’s move to scrap the traditional census and replace it with a system reliant on government engagement data risks undercounting Māori populations and weakening resource allocation and representation. The Government has introduced legislation to be read for the first time today that would end the long-standing five-yearly census and instead rely primarily on government datasets to produce population statistics from 2030. “These

Tākuta speaks on the First Reading of the Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust (Trust Variation) bill.

Tēnā, kua rongo au i te kī taurangi a te Pirīmia. E mihi tonu ana ki te parekura ki runga o Mauao. Rātou i ngaro i roto i te āwhā nui, me te horapa o te āwhā ki runga ki te tini me te mano,e mihi ana. [ Now then, I have heard the Prime Minister’s pledge. I acknowledge the great tragedy that occurred at Mauao. Those who were lost in the great storm, and the many who were affected by the storms, I acknowledge you .] As I listened to the Prime Minister address the nation followi

The following contribution was made in the Committee of the Whole House. Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Kia ora, Minister. Look, there are a lot of reoccurring statements and issues being raised, and they are all important because, ultimately, a Government’s job is to increase democratic participation in a country. Whilst many of these points have already been made, I want to raise them again in light of their disproportionate impact on the voters of Te Tai Tonga and on Māori. There are

Mema Paremata for Te Tai Tonga, Tākuta Ferris, says any decision by Labour to actively campaign for the Māori electorates risks giving the Government a free ticket rather than changing it. “Under MMP, Labour winning Māori seats in a low party-vote environment does not create political leverage. It merely replaces list MPs and locks in the existing balance of power,” said Ferris. “The only mechanism that materially changes who governs is an overhang created by Te Pāti Māori or

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to thank my colleagues over here for defending Māori education, and in this case our kids. I want to stress the point, the relevance, and the place of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in education legislation and endeavour over the last 50 years. This is not just a case of “Can you put pop the Treaty in?”, and this speaks more broadly to the broad attack on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the removal of it in education, from preschool all the way through to u

The following contribution was made in the second reading of the bill. Tēnā koe e te Pīka. E te iwi whakarongo mai. Number one, no Government in history has ever had the right or authority to extinguish the Tiriti-based rights of Māori—this is literally why Treaty settlements exist—number two, no contemporary Government possesses any form of right or authority to extinguish the Tiriti-based rights of Māori; and, number three, no future Government will ever possess any form of

The following contribution was made in the first reading of the bill. This bill is a betrayal of survivors, plain and simple. It weaponises redress and turns what should have been healing into another form of punishment. It says that some survivors deserve compassion and others do not. That is not justice; that is control. The abuser has no grounds to criminalise the survivors for their abuse—the State’s abuse—and deny them redress. Those who survived the violence of State-

The following contribution was made in the third reading of the bill. Oh, you weren’t listening just today, were you? You don’t listen, anyway. I did 11 years at Te Wānanga o Raukawa—yeah, Māori wānanga education. Then I went to the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT), as the director of Māori education—they still call it the NMIT; Tasman might have a tussle with you there, Stuart Smith—and then I did seven years at Massey University, as the principal Māori advi

The following contribution was made in the Commitee of the whole house. I’m interested in a couple of things in the preamble. One of the core tenets of the 2004 ruling and how it proceeded was the Government of the day was asked to demonstrate any Government of New Zealand passing a law that actively extinguished the Māori right to the takutai moana that was vested to Māori in Te Tiriti o Waitangi, so they came up extremely short on that. There hadn’t been an Act of Parliamen