E te māngai, tēnā koe. E te whare, tēna koutou katoa

Mana whakapapa
Mana tuakiri
Mana takatāpui ē

Ahuahu mai, ahuahu atu
Kia tau ai te mauri i roto i a koe

Ko Hinetītama koe
Ko Hinenuitepō koe
Koia rā ko te whakaahuatanga

Mana māreikura
Mana whatukura
Mana takatāpui ē

Rere mai nuku
Rere mai Rangi
Ka tau, whakatau hā ē

Uhi, wero, tau mai te mahana
Haumi ē, hui ē, taiki ē!

Ko te tuatahi, e rere ana he mihi ka tika ki ngā atua tūturu, ko
Papatūanuku te whaea, te māreikura o tenei ao, tēna koe. Ko
Ranginui kei runga, tēnā hoki koe.

Ki te whare e tū nei, ki te ātea e tākoto nei, tēnā kōrua.
E ngā mana whenua o ngā rōhē nei, Te Upoko o te Ika ā Māui,
ngā kaitiaki pono o te taiao, o te moana, o te whenua. Ko Te
Atiawa, ko Taranaki Whānui, ko Ngāti Toa Rangatira, rātou ko
Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga. Karanga mai, karanga mai,
karanga mai.

Kia whakahonore tō tātou Arikinui, te Kūini Ngā Wai hono i te
Pō, rātou ko te whānau whānui o te kāhui ariki. Rire rire hau,
paimārire.

Tēnā koutou i o tātou tini mate. Koutou kua whetūrangitia i te
korowai o Ranginui. Koutou kua wehi atu ki te pō, ki te tua o te
arai, ki te okiokinga i o tātou tūpuna. Haere, haere, haere atu
rā.

Te hunga mate ki te hunga mate, te hunga ora ki te hunga ora.

E ngā paepae o te whare, e te tī e te tā, e ngā hau e whā, e rau
rangatira mā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Ko tāku kōrero nei, he kupu arataki, he whakautu ki ngā pātai,
ko wai au? Nō wai au?

Ki tōku taha Pākehā,
Ko Lugnaquilla te maunga
Ko Avoca te awa
Ko Wicklow te rohe

Ko Arklow te pā
Nō Airani, Kōtirana, me Piritania ōku tūpna
Ki tōku taha Māori,
Ko Kapowai, ko Te Ahuahu, ko Whakarongorua ngā maunga
Ko Waikare, ko Waitangi, ko Utakura ngā awa
Ko Ngātokimatawhaorua te waka
He uri ahau nō Te Whare Tapu o Ngāpuhi

I tipu ake au ki Whangaparāoa, engari e noho ana au ki
Kirikiriroa ināianei.
Nā reira ka mihi ki te maunga ko Taupiri me te awa ko Waikato

He uri ahau, he mokopuna ahau, he pāpā ahau, he takatāpui
ahau, he whaikaha ahau, he ira tangata hoki ahau.

Ko they/them ōku tūkapi
Ko Benjamin Kauri Doyle tōku nei ingoa

E te Kāwanatanga, e te whare, whakarongo mai ki tēnei kōrero
i o tātou tūpuna: Ka pō, ka ao, ka awatea.

Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ōtira tēnā rā tātou katoa.

Yesterday was International Trans Day of Remembrance. A day to celebrate the gift that is our trans whānau. Let it be known in this House, that trans lives are taonga, Irawhiti rights are a Te Tiriti issue. It is a day to reflect on the tireless work of our trans leaders and elders. The icons who have fought, who have organised, who have existed in the face of enormous vitriolic hate. A hate, I might add, that was imported to Aotearoa by colonisation. International Trans Day of Remembrance is a day to recall the countless trans lives stolen by acts of violence. The lives lost to inadequate healthcare, to educational discrimination, to systemic exclusion, to police brutality, to prisons, to state and faith based “care”. We remember, yesterday, today, and every day, those who came before us.

People like whaea Georgina Beyer, the world’s first trans member of parliament, an aunty, a leader, a guide, who has laid this path so that I and others may walk upon it. On International Trans Day of Remembrance, and every day, we will remember you.

I am not here for any one part of my identity, any singular community to which I belong. I am here for all the many interwoven and textured strands that constitute me, and which constitute you. Our collective selves, past, present and future.

Onamata, anamata. I am a descendant of the earth, a mokopuna of Te Tai Tokerau, an uri of Ngāpuhi. I am a parent, a lover, a friend, a comrade. I am a teacher, and more importantly a student. I am a gardener, a writer, a devotee of (adequately funded) arts, and a dedicated advocate for tāngata me te whenua. I am proud to be takatāpui, queer, non-binary - which means that my gender is expansive and fluid, not muzzled by the strict confines of a suffocating binary. If my pronouns confuse you, here’s a tip - just use my name. And if the way I dress causes you concern, I say to you, be more threatened by the contents of my mind than that of my wardrobe.

I live with a chronic illness, and although it may be something you can’t see, 20,000 New Zealanders have to manage this condition every day, one of the highest prevalences in the world. I want to remind you that a disability does not need to be seen to be real, and nor does it require your comprehension to deserve equitable and adequate healthcare, employment, housing or respect.

This institution we represent and its successive neoliberal governments have put profit before people and planet, time and time again. This relentless insatiable hunger for growth, this glutton for endlessly more: more wealth, more natural resources, more power, it is a fruitless endeavour. The earth is finite. It cannot be extracted from and pillaged without end.

When we dump pollution into our oceans and scrape the precious life from its beds, when we carve open our lands and fill them with waste, when we explode and extract from our ancestral mountains, poison our rivers, decimate our forests, we are not just killing the earth, we are not just devastating our living systems, our primordial mother Papatūānuku. We are destroying ourselves, our children, our pasts, presents, and futures. Whatungarongaro te tangata, Toitū te whenua.

Humanity will fade, but the land will remain. 

We have a choice to live in harmony with te taiao, as kaitiaki and as teina. We do not need to dominate the land, we must love and respect her. The earth is a great teacher, it is not too late to learn from her, to humble ourselves to her wisdom. That like the river, we must flow and adapt; that like the birds, we must rise, we must sing; that like the forests, we must breathe.

Indigenous peoples have known this mai rā anō - since the beginning. Tāngata whenua have continuously offered knowledge and wisdom, mātauranga, opportunities to work and live in partnership, alongside rather than in opposition to one another. And yet those in power continually fail to listen, and to act accordingly.

This week, the Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti arrived on the grounds of parliament, tens of thousands of people, tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti from all across Aotearoa, echoing in the reverberating steps of those that have come before, the land march of ‘75, the foreshore and seabed hīkoi of 2004. The people will not allow the divisive and incendiary rhetoric of the obnoxiously loud and ill-informed few to recklessly hack away at the foundations we have worked for so long to build. Toitū te Tiriti!

In the resounding words of mātua James Henare, a whanaunga to many of us sitting in this house:

“Kua tawhiti kē tō haerenga mai, kia kore e haere tonu. He nui rawa ō mahi, kia kore e mahi tonu” – We have come too far not to go further. We have done too much not to do more.

Don’t get me wrong, our relationships are not perfect, and the systems this generation has inherited are ill-equipped at best, and catastrophically destructive at worst. But we must not lose sight of what could be. We can choose to end poverty. We can choose to transform the tax system. We can choose to adequately fund equitable health care and child and whānau-centric education. We can choose to stop killing the environment, the very thing we require to exist. It is a matter of political will, of community strength, of collective dreaming, of radical love for eachother and for the world. On love, Bell Hooks said “The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others”

Radical love does not look like prisons, or like military boot camps for children. It does not look like people sleeping on the street, or being kicked out of emergency housing. Love does not look like drilling for gas and oil in the habitats of critically endangered species, or like mining on conservation land, or upon wāhi tapu. It does not look like animals being raced to death for the profit and pleasure of bets, or like banks investing in the illegal settlement of stolen lands. Love does not look like sitting idly by while people in slavery are mining for cobalt in the Congo, or innocent people are being murdered in a genocide in Palestine and Lebanon. To love is to move against domination and oppression. To love is to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

Before I conclude my maiden speech, I am going to recite a poem by Refaat Alareer, who was murdered in December last year by an IOF airstrike in Northern Gaza during Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine. Let this poem be a reminder of the grave injustices being committed and the lives violently stolen, not only in Palestine, but around the world - in Lebanon, Sudan, the Congo, Kanaky, West Papua. The struggle for liberation and justice is interconnected, and we must recognise the insidious tendrils of colonialism and capitalism which, in the reckless pursuit of power and wealth, justify the grotesque disposal of human lives and the evisceration of our environment. Nobody is free until everybody is free. E kore

tātou e wareware.

If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale

Mana atua
Mana tipua
Mana takatāpui ē
Ka rongo te pō, ka rongo te ao. Tihei mauri ora!

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