Green MP Fa'anānā Efeso Collins has died less than a week after giving his maiden speech in Parliament.
Fa'anānā, 49, was a youth worker and became an Auckland councillor for the Manukau ward, and chair of the Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board for three terms from 2016 to 2022.
He was a member and supporter of the Labour Party for many years as a councillor, and ran for mayor with the endorsement of both Labour and the Greens, before standing for the Greens in last year's election for the Panmure-Ōtāhuhu electorate.
Labour's Jenny Salesa won that seat, but Fa'anānā was elected as a Green MP at 11th on the list in October's election, making the cut on election night. In his maiden speech in Parliament just last Thursday, Fa'anānā spoke about his upbringing.
Efeso Collins Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Of Samoan-Tokelauan descent, he was the youngest of six children, born in the Auckland suburb of Ōtara - his parents having arrived from from Samoa more than a decade before his birth. He said it was an "indescribable feeling" to address the House.
"I am well aware of the giants whose shoulders I stand on and the masters whose feet I learnt at," he said.
"My parents arrived in New Zealand in the early 1960s, told that this was the land of milk and honey. Dad started off as a taxi driver with South Auckland Taxis, and mum on the factory floor at New Zealand Forest Products in Penrose," he said.
"We lived in a four-bedroom State house on Preston Road in Ōtara, and I attended local schools: East Tāmaki Primary, Ferguson Intermediate, and the great Tangaroa College. We're forever grateful for the State house that was our home for around 20 years, and the quality public education we received from our local State schools.
"Over the past years, with the support of my family and friends, I've taken to trying to converse again in Samoan, reading more texts in Samoan, praying in Samoan, and sending our youngest to a local Samoan early childhood centre. Our beautiful language, Gagana Samoa, has returned to our home and is helping to overcome the inadequacy that had taken root in my soul.
"If I was to inspire anyone by getting to this House and my work over the next three years, I hope that it's the square pegs, the misfits, the forgotten, the unloved, the invisible-it's the dreamers who want more, expect more, are impatient for change, and have this uncanny ability to stretch us further."
His speech railed against politicians who would target the people who had less.
"The government cannot be a bystander to people suffering confusion and disenfranchisement. New Zealand must close the divide between those who have and those who have not, because the reality for my community is that those who have more money often wield more power, more health, more housing, more justice, more access, more canopy cover, more lobbyists with swipe cards, and more time," he said.
"The opposite is true for those who have fewer resources: it's hard to be poor, it's expensive to be poor, and moreover, public discourse is making it socially unacceptable to be poor. Whether it's bashing on beneficiaries, dragging our feet towards a living wage, throwing shade on school breakfast programmes, or restricting people's ability to collectively bargain for fairer working conditions, we must do better to lift aspirations and the lived realities of all our people."
He also echoed the words of Jacinda Ardern, saying the "neoliberal experiment of the 1980s has failed".
"The economics of creating unemployment to manage inflation is farcical when domestic inflation in New Zealand has been driven by big corporates making excessive profits," he said.
"It's time to draw a line in the sand, and alongside my colleagues here in Te Pāti Kākāriki, we've come as the pallbearers of neoliberalism, to bury these shallow, insufferable ideas once and for all."
Fa'anānā's father was a pentecostal church pastor and bus driver. His upbringing in that environment led him to hold some conservative views, including opposition to the legalisation of same-sex marriage, but later apologised for that.
"I acknowledge I made an error and I hurt people back in 2012. I'm offering my desire to walk alongside people, to understand their backgrounds and what drives them," he said. "In the same way, in a respectful way, I will be asking people to be respectful of my journey as well - coming from a strict pentecostal background to the place that I occupy today. Life isn't linear."
As a councillor he received a torrent of online abuse after posting about the television programme Police Ten 7, saying it fed racial stereotypes. Threats - including bomb threats against him and his family - were bad enough police called him in for a briefing.
He contested the Auckland mayoral election that year after sitting mayor Phil Goff announced he would not, coming second to Wayne Brown by about 57,000 votes.
Afterwards, he said his skin colour had given him a 20,000 vote deficit, and research had warned him early on voters would judge him negatively on his race.
"For some people, a tall brown man represents something that makes them very uncomfortable," he said.
Fa'anānā's last social media post was a tweet on Tuesday congratulating Barbara Edmonds on her elevation to finance spokesperson in the Labour Party. He said he was proud of her achievements. Edmonds is the first female and pacific finance spokesperson for the party.
He was bestowed with the chiefly title of Fa'anānā from his mother's village in Samoa.
He is survived by his two children, and his wife Fia.
The last MPs to die in office were Parekura Horomia in 2013, and Rod Donald in 2005.
