TAMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It's my pleasure, actually, as the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, to stand and to contribute to this, the Local Electoral (Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill. As I do this, I know that there are thousands of people out there watching and listening right now to the contributions being made in this House, because this has been a long time coming. It's been 20 years in the making. It has been 20 years in the making and a whole lot of frustration, because Māori representation on local council has been dismal. In fact, because of the small provision, which enables 5 percent of the local voting constituency to be able to overturn what's essentially, as the Race Relations Commissioner said, a racist piece of policy, a discriminatory piece of policy, actually because of that reason we have a lack of Māori being able to represent Māori at the decision-making table. 