NZ's Youngest MP and First Refugee MP Slayed Their Maiden Speeches

Three weeks in, and the Labour-led government has already set progressive hearts aflutter. Left-wing New Zealanders, for the previous nine years, have been so used to cringing at policy announcements or political faux pas that now it almost comes as a surprise to lift their heads above the ramparts—ready for outrage at the latest government announcement—only to meekly withdraw, going, “Actually, yeah, I agree with that.”

The news that Teina Pora would be justly compensated for his time behind bars, the announcement that the three strikes law would be scrapped next year, increased parental leave, free tertiary education, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wagging her figurative finger at Australia’s treatment of refugees—all good signs.

But governments run out of ideas. To sustain its initial burst of energy, the coalition might be wise to listen to the ideas of two of its newest members. Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick—who VICE has profiled here—and Golriz Ghahraman—here—both made their maiden parliamentary speeches today. Below, in a selection of excerpts from those speeches, are some of their ideas.

“Mr Speaker, young don’t have a monopoly on political disillusionment, it just so happens that we listen to better music while feeling it. It’s hard to engage in a system that doesn’t look or sound like you, that talks down to you, that disparages your participation, and that you don’t feel that you can change. The issue is, regardless of whether people choose to participate in this system, it governs their lives.”

"I couldn't help but realise that this mental health epidemic rippling through our communities is the logical endpoint of austerity, the consequence of decades of economic and social reform that has shredded communities, safety nets, and—most fundamentally—care." "What happens in this room is largely theatre. Politics is what happens when all of us in here go back to our roots and we close our doors and we shake hands and we make decisions. The consequences of those decisions saturates our lives. These decisions inform who is rich and who is poor, who gets sick and who gets better. They decide what we eat and what we drink and the quality of the air that we breathe. They decide who has, or may have, a future and who does not."

"I started understanding that this system, systems like this, are designed for people who look like me. That's what echoes of colonisation look like. If we are ever to heal those wounds, we need to look at them in broad daylight. They hurt and they are uncomfortable when we bandage them over because they require attention."

"The front lines of our justice system is where I learnt about unchecked prejudice, and that's what turned me into a human rights lawyer… It was living in Africa working on genocide trials for the UN where I learned how prejudice turns to atrocity. It starts with dehumanising language in the media, it starts by politicians scapegoating groups as groups for social ills. I think that every time I see it here."

"Human rights are universal. We don't have fewer rights because of our religion, where we were born, or who we love. We don't have fewer rights because we had our children out of wedlock, or because we've been charged with a crime. We don't have human rights because we are good, but because we are human."

"You can't say we have a democracy or free speech unless we also have the right to education, and we don't have the right to education unless the kids we are teaching have food and homes. For too long, for about 10 years in New Zealand, our very democracy has been undermined, our economic, our social, and our cultural rights have been breached. I want to entrench those."

"Protection of people's rights and nature's rights are intrinsically linked—just ask the people of the Pacific, our neighbours, whose homelands are being drowned out because of waste, pollution, consumption that they have not participated in or benefited from. One of the greatest threats to both human and nature's rights right now is subjugation of our democracy to corporate interests. A rampant market on a finite planet cannot exist."

"I stand here as a child asylum seeker, as an international human rights lawyer, as an activist, as a Green. And my standing here proves New Zealand is a place where a nine-year-old asylum seeker, a refugee, a girl from the Middle East can grow up to one day enter Parliament. It proves the strength and goodness of New Zealand's values."

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