I want everyone to take a deep breath.
I'm serious.
I'll do it with you.
Hā ki roto. Hā ki waho.
I'm sure this is exactly what our friends in the media think that we do at a Green Party conference.
In case you missed it guys, the Morris dancing was last night.
I'm joking.
But back to the breath.
In. Out.
We're here, together. Right now. We're alive.
There's a lot going on in our world. Genocide. Exploitation. Harm and hurt and pain.
There's a lot going on at home.
But every breath can remind us that all human beings, ultimately, are built of the same stuff. We all come from the same planet, and to that planet we will ultimately return.
Every second breath we take comes from our ocean.
The ones in between rely on our forests.
Every human being in the world needs this oxygen to survive.
That is our most basic common ground.
It is a modern tragedy that from our first breath, our infinite human potential is commodified and constrained by market logics and clipped by the lottery of economic circumstance and geographic luck. By man-made systems so divorced from our true nature. From freedom.
So - another breath - before we dive in.
Christopher Luxon's Government comes up with a new way to make people feel angry every single day.
Eye-watering power bills land in New Zealanders inboxes, from formerly public energy companies delivering record returns for shareholders, while offshore fossil fuel corporations are handed out $200m in taxpayer subsidies designed to keep us trapped on this cost of living, climate burning escalator.
Every day, New Zealanders race to pick up their kids from early childhood education after working their guts out to scrape together the money to pay for the profits of those managing something that should - like school - be free.
Every morning, New Zealanders who rent wake up and watch mould crawling across the ceiling of their bedroom and feel a wheeze in their lungs, while their landlord schedules a meeting with their banker to suss another 'investment' property.
But I don't really want to just talk about the bad guys and the bad things today.
Because I know that we're angry. We have a lot to be angry about.
But that anger, while righteous, won't get us anywhere if we don't channel it into organised action.
So, today, I'm asking us all to take a deep breath. To connect everyone here in this room with what we all have in common. With each other, but more importantly, with the New Zealanders who are not in this room.
In the political arena, it's pretty common for people to accuse the other side, and people who vote for the other side, of being idiots.
If we can't understand why people do the things that they do, then, the logic tends to flow, they're wrong, and they just don't get it.
That's clearly not a winning formula.
For most people, forced to fight for daily survival-for a spot on the GP waitlist, for a decent job and a faint hope that one day you might be able to take the kids on holiday-where's the energy left for the whole politics thing?
Most New Zealanders lament politics. They straight up hate it.
They're losing their brother to Australia and they don't want to hear another argument on the radio about whose fault it all is.
They might have voted for the strong man political leader who promised a version of making things great "again," then sold everyone out before the end of the 100 day plan.
We can't blame regular people for switching off from that.
Most people have the sense that successive governments, and politicians, and CEOs, and landlords and big, bumbling monopolies, have screwed over most of us-our people and our planet-by sacrificing public good for private profit.
There is a reason social media algorithms are designed to outrage. It gets our attention. It gets our focus. It sucks up a lot of our time and engagement. It benefits the billionaires.
There's a similar reason a lot of politics is designed to outrage. It gets headlines. It gets cut through. It sucks up the oxygen and depletes the energy necessary to focus on the bigger picture. It benefits the multi-multi-multi-millionaires and billionaires, and their puppet politicians.
All of this is designed to deflect, distract and divide.
If regular people are fighting each other, it's propping up this system, whether that's the intention or not.
So we need to take a breath, and find our shared intention, and act from that place.
The Green Party is a vehicle for political change - the big ideas factory - inside of our current electoral system. We don't pretend to be entitled to anything.
We invite people into this movement because we want them to own it as much as we do.
New Zealanders care about each other and the planet that we live on.
All of us actually see proof of that every single day.
In the understaffed Emergency Department, the nurse goes out of her way to try and make the kids laugh.
In the rest home, the caregiver remembers that the thing your great grandma needed to make her smile, stopping by her room to deliver despite their minimum wage shift ending an hour ago.
In the classroom, the teacher finds and nurtures the potential of tamariki, providing safety and stability that young person might not find at home.
On the bus, in the rain, when you forgot to top up your card and someone rushes to the front to save you, and ensure you get on and aren't late to work.
This is human nature. This is who New Zealanders are.
It's no surprise that our common ground is often just the basic things that all of us need to survive.
We all need air to breathe, food to eat and homes to live in. All the better if we find people to love who love us back.
Marama and I have spent the last few months with our MPs travelling all across this country talking to nurses, teachers, farmers, firefighters, students - New Zealanders rural and urban - about our Green Budget.
Everywhere we go, we see that our ideas are immensely popular. That the impacts of climate change and wealth inequality are felt by people everywhere, and that in every room we speak, New Zealanders are hungry for solutions, because the current system isn't working for them.
That means there is a country full of people ready to join our movement.
We've seen, in Auckland Central, and in Rongotai, and here in Wellington Central, that when we get curious about our neighbours and find our shared values, when we show up for our communities and build our movement beyond our traditional circles, we win. The people win.
So, my friends, as much as there's a lot to be outraged about, I don't want your outrage. I want your action.
Imagine. It's the year 2040. Two hundred years on from the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Its promise is delivered.
Our air is clear. Our soil is healthy and grows the nutritious food we all need. Our rivers flow clean and swimmable. All of our people are housed. Our cities and towns are connected by high-speed trains.
We have the time and space to enjoy our lives and the planet that we share. We are proud of who we are, and what our country stands for.
That future doesn't just happen.
We see glimpses of it being built in our everyday, with regular people being decent, kind and generous with each other. But the current economic system and its managers suppress that, with all their might, at scale.
So we need a breakthrough. We need to connect the dots on the acts of humanity, building something so big it overtakes and replaces this system of extraction and exhaustion and exploitation.
Now, those making bank from the climate crisis and profiting from deep inequality will invest everything they've got in telling you it's impossible. They need you to believe that. They need you fighting your fellow New Zealander. They need you to not look up.
So take a deep breath. Look around. And look up.
Where do you want to invest your valuable energy and focus?
On winning debates or changing our world?
On being right, or building relationships?
On being comfortable, or growing?
How do we get a mass of exhausted regular people, fed up with politics, to engage and organise with a bunch of earnest nerds - that's us, guys - to win power against some of the most well-funded and unscrupulous industries and political actors?
Last year, standing behind this podium, I told you it was about building trust.
That means understanding what we're trying to build isn't just community among ourselves.
It's beyond electoral politics, and interest groups, and bigger than all of us.
We need to rebuild society.
Because you don't need to know someone to want them to live a decent life. You don't even have to like them.
But I want you to fight for them as hard as you fight for the people that you love. As hard as you're willing to fight for yourself.
That is the social contract. All of us, regardless of who we are, get human rights not because someone else decides that we are worthy. But because we are human.
We win when we acknowledge that none of us are perfect. When we recognise and empathise with that in others. When we find our common ground, and act from there.
It's in the conversations with your distant uncle.
It's organising with your parents' group to save your local library.
It's connecting with new people in your neighbourhood, who might not agree with you on everything, to plant a community food garden.
It's fundraising with the church group to cover someone's bills while they go through hard times.
Change only happens by reminding ourselves, again and again, that we are capable of doing it. We do that best when we just do it. When we take a deep breath and work together to do the damn thing.
It doesn't need to be perfect. It's not always clear just how things will end up. It just needs to be done. Again, and again, and again. That's how this grows bigger, and bigger, and bigger.
This is how we create the most progressive Government Aotearoa has ever seen. Not just by shifting people's voting patterns. By practicing our values, every day, in ways big and small. By living our Aotearoa.
And when you're not sure where to start, take a breath.
Know that breath connects you to the planet beneath your feet. To the wind rustling outside. To the whales singing in our oceans.
Know that breath connects you to every other human being on this planet. Know that you are not alone.
From Aotearoa to Palestine, human beings are strongest when we define ourselves by who we are and what we stand for, not what we are in opposition to.
We stand for love. We stand for peace. We stand for justice. For people and planet.
We build the world that we want in our daily lives.
That is our power.
Off the screen. In the real world.
With other people.
Right here, right now.
