[ad_1]
Maori Party co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer launched the new legislature with fiery maiden speeches, including a call for an apology from the Crown similar to that made by the Stuff media company.
Waititi was the first to speak and said that his job in this period was to balance “those who cling to colonial ways.”
“Do you know what it feels like to have a stone in your shoe? That will be my job here. “
He told spokesman Trevor Mallard that he had been “waiting for this because I know he can’t sit down. But I will not test you. ”It was a joking reference to his run-in last week when he had tried to make a point of order in te reo Māori.
READ MORE:
* 2020 Election: South Taranaki iwi Leader Becomes MP, Other Regional Results Confirmed
* Election 2020: Maori Party wins second waka in surprising return to Parliament
* The detail: special votes could change the election results
Hagen Hopkins / Getty Images
“When will the Crown recognize its failures and commit to doing better?” Rawiri Waititi asked the deputies.
Then he launched into the waiata that the party used throughout the campaign, Magical people. It was picked up and sung by fans in the gallery above.
During his speech, Waititi said that New Zealand’s largest media organization Stuff he had publicly apologized to the Maori and “held accountable for their mistakes.”
“My question is: When will the Crown do the same? … When will the Crown recognize its failures and commit to doing better? “
Waititi said she refused to allow her children and grandchildren to one day “sit in the same seat and ask the same question.”
It was time to transform politics in Aotearoa, he said. “It is time for the Maori to take care of the Maori as we know what is best for us.”
Robert Kitchin / Things
On Thursday, Maori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said she was a descendant of a people who survived “a genocide sponsored by this House.” (File photo)
“I will ensure that our unapologetic Maori voice is heard and that our Maori mantle sits and is present in all laws and bills passed in this chamber.”
Labor swept all Maori electorates in the 2017 elections, in a victory that ousted the two Māori MPs, Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox, from Parliament.
This year, under then-co-leader John Tamihere and Ngarewa-Packer, the party ran candidates in all seven seats, with Waititi winning in Waiariki, which covers the Bay of Plenty and South Waikato.
In the end, it was the only Maori seat the Labor Party lost in the 2020 elections.
Ngarewa-Packer, who remained unsuccessfully at Te Tai Hauāuru, covering Tirau to Porirua, entered the list after the special votes were counted.
ROBERT KITCHEN / Things
Maori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi before being sworn in in the House. (Photo file)
On Thursday, Ngarewa-Packer stood in Parliament and spoke painful truths about the House where he would now represent his people and the party.
He said he was a descendant of a people who survived a holocaust, “a genocide sponsored by this House.”
Crown representatives confiscated their people’s lands, imprisoned them without trial, and murdered and raped their women and children, he said.
Fortunately, the determination and strength of her whakapapa (heritage) survived the efforts of “the monsters on these walls” who inflicted their atrocities on Taranaki.
His mother was Pākehā and his father was Maori, a kind of incarnation of the Treaty of Waitangi, he said.
Hagen Hopkins / Getty Images
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer remained unsuccessfully in Te Tai Hauāuru but came to Parliament on the party’s list.
In the 1980s, the economic recession hit his South Taranaki hometown of Patea hard, he said.
“Those were really dark times. There was not much hope. “
Despite that, there have been incredible achievements. Dalvanius Prime, “one of our larger than life uncles”, had created against all odds the best-selling musical hit of 1984, Then E by the Patea Māori Club. It was the only Maori song to reach number one, he said.
“I am proud to say that many of those aunts and uncles, my role models, are here today.”
When Waititi’s speech ended, one of the first to congratulate him with a hongi was his Waiariki rival, Labor MP Tāmati Coffey.
When the Ngarewa-Packer speech was over, the crowded public gallery stood up and sang a harmonic version of several parts of Then E which resonated in the chamber and in the halls of Parliament.
