“Paulo - you beat me to be the first Filipino MP - the race is on to be the first Filipino minister. While [we] could not be further apart ideologically,” Hernandez said of Garcia, “we are here – united in love for our communities and love for our adoptive country.”
Hernandez migrated to New Zealand with his family when he was around 12 years old with nothing “but the clothes on our backs”. Soon after the family arrived, Hernandez’s brother, Tighe, was born with a congenital heart defect and died a few months later.
“Despite my family’s humble means with my dad working as a factory worker at the Fisher & Paykel factory, New Zealand spared no effort to provide my brother with world-class care at Greenlane and Starship hospital.
“It was then that I decided that I would stop at nothing to give back to the country that had given me so much and seemed to represent paradise on earth,” he said, through tears.
Hernandez studied at the University of Otago, where he gravitated towards student politics “fuelled by the injustice that was becoming increasingly evident”, including seeing students going to lectures hungry or having to choose between paying for heating or food.
He was elected president of the Students Association and implemented programmes to deliver free breakfasts for students using surplus food.
He tried unsuccessfully to get elected to the Dunedin City Council, before moving to Wellington, where he worked several part-time jobs to get by. During his early days at Parliament, he was so efficient at note-taking he became one of Green MP Mojo Mathers’ live transcriptionists.
He held various other roles inside and outside the party before entering Parliament this year as an MP.
On the coalition Government’s climate change initiatives, he told his “frenemies” on the other side of the House to “be very careful” about whether they wanted “New Zealand’s hard-won consensus sacrificed at the altar of political expediency”.
“When overseas markets and our trade agreements are demanding that New Zealand live up to our PR brand of clean, backtracking would be dangerous to nature and our prosperity as a country.
“To be blunt - if the members across [the House] shatter the Shaw-ist legacy of working across the aisle to achieve wins for climate, then they will make climate another front in our culture wars - and I promise - that’s not a war that they will win.
“But it’s not a war that we will win either - civil wars don’t create many winners. Instead of conflict, we must have consensus.
“If we are serious about living up to our self-image of a country that truly values its environment and nature, we must ensure that the hard-won climate consensus holds.”
Hernandez ended his speech to a standing ovation from the packed public gallery that included Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau and former Dunedin Mayor Aaaron Hawkins.
“To my co-leaders Marama and Chloe and my caucus colleagues, I promise that I will fight alongside you for our planet, our tiriti and our people every single day so that the New Zealand of today becomes the Aotearoa that we dream of.
“The time is now.”
