Collins Judith: Address in Reply 
Collins Judith: Address in Reply 
[Volume:628;Page:349] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 It is such a pleasure to follow the humble member for Waimakariri who told us so many times how humble he was then went on to prove how wrong that statement was. My goodness Kate Wilkinson will certainly be taking that seat at the next election! 
Can I start Mr Assistant Speaker by congratulating you on your election to your role. I also congratulate the Hon Margaret Wilson on her election as Speaker my colleague the Hon Clem Simich on his appointment as Deputy Speaker and Ann Hartley on becoming an Assistant Speaker. Mr Assistant Speaker you have always been very fair and I am sure I will not give you any more trouble this term than I normally do. I will do my best. I would also like to pay tribute to Don Brash and his leadership of the National Party. Don Brash brought us back with a new invigorated team. 
One of the most outstanding things in this debate has been to listen to the maiden speeches particularly from the National Party and the Maori Party. I am one of those Pakeha members of Parliament who have no fear of the Maori Party and I will tell members why. The Labour Party prefers Maori MPs to be tame. The National Party does not like anyone to be tame and the Maori Party is not tame. It is made up of people who have challenged some of our ideas. Certainly we do not agree on everything but by goodness we do agree on welfare and on welfare reform! 
At this stage I would also like to thank the Clevedon electorate. In the 2002 election it gave me a majority of 3127. In this election—and I am not going to have any false modesty about it—my majority went up to 12871 and I thank those people so much. I am there for them. The people of Clevedon including those in Papakura and in all other parts of the electorate may not always agree with everything I say or with everything I do but by goodness they certainly know what I stand for. The Labour Government with Winston Peters certainly does not know what it stands for but we know what Helen Clark and Winston Peters stand for: anything that gets them the baubles of office and enables them to keep them. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: That’s very harsh. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Doug Woolerton has just said: “That’s very harsh.” with a smile. 
As the MP for Clevedon let me just digress for a moment. I would like to thank the Hon Harry Duynhoven for agreeing that the inquiry into the National Rescue Coordination Centre should be an independent inquiry. I thank Harry Duynhoven for that. Michael Erceg who as we all know has died was a very very important member of the Papakura community and therefore of the Clevedon electorate. He was a very very important person. On meeting Michael one would never know who he was because he was so totally without pretension. I met him only a few times but he certainly made an impression. He had incredible drive incredible personality and incredible focus and he was obviously incredibly intelligent. He made jobs for people who had no jobs. He did not sit here in Wellington in Parliament talking about the Government doing things; he did them himself and he helped other people do them. I hope that when Minister Duynhoven looks at the inquiry he will also look at why the US embassy and the US Department of Defense offered to make available—and did make available—satellite photos of aircraft flights here in New Zealand when they should have been available anyway. I do not think that people who are grieving who are looking for loved ones or even who are looking for wreckage should have to ask about this or try to find out about it for this themselves. They are not experts. These people are volunteers; they are not experts. 
I hope also that Mr Duynhoven will be looking at why the Swedish Government was more willing to help than people thought the New Zealand Government was. I know there is an argument that says that rescue coordination people have to say “Stop” at some stage and I utterly agree with that. But when people are willing to pay for extra help why can they not have it? People have said to me that if we do that then people who are rich will be searched for and the poor will not. I say that that is nonsense because New Zealand Army personnel were put on to Peter Jackson’s movies as paid extras to help him. I think that people actually come before movies and that we should look at the whole wider area of who the army and the search people are there for. It has to be the people of New Zealand and their families. 
Tomorrow Michael will have his funeral and today is the anniversary of John F Kennedy’s assassination. Tomorrow is also the anniversary of my mother’s death so it will be a very sad day. It will be very sad for the Erceg family. It is very important for us to always think that people should come first no matter what. 
I have the pleasure again to be the National Party’s spokeswoman on welfare and I take on the role with gusto. I have seen the benefit figures. The Minister crowed yet again today about the unemployment figures and I say to him: “Those are fantastic. Let’s have more of them. Good on you.” except that I know that the jobs are not created by Governments. The jobs are created by people like Michael Erceg and his family. I do know that when the number of people on the sickness benefit and the invalids benefit continues to grow we cannot turn round and blame people like me who happen to point it out. We must tackle the issue. When I consider the fact that about 40 percent of the people on the domestic purposes benefit are Maori and that so many Maori children—about 90000—are brought up in homes with no income other than a benefit I cry for this country. We have to deal with this situation and we will not deal with it by turning round and blaming people like me who give that message. Neither will we deal with it by constantly blaming Governments or Government departments. We will deal with it only by taking responsibility for our own actions. 
If there is one thing that the Maori Party brings to this House I hope it is that Maori must stand up for Maori and be there. The reason it is so important is that if we do not get this right we will not be able to complain like we do about powhiri—because we will not have any powhiri. We will not be able to complain as people sometimes do when Maori stand in the public gallery and perform a waiata. I say good on them for doing it. [ 
Interruption 
] I wish that member over there Darren Hughes the man with the smallest majority in Parliament would just keep his voice a little smaller. When Labour Party members tell Maori to vote for them because someone else did that is not good enough. The Labour Party has stood by and allowed this situation to happen. 
When we look at Child Youth and Family Services in South Auckland—and I do not go around just talking about South Auckland; I live there—we see we have a department that is absolutely dysfunctional and a Minister who comes to the select committee and tells us how wonderful it is. Every single day the newspapers report another story and another tragedy. So often the children involved are Maori and so often those children are the children of full-time beneficiaries. So often this happens to our most vulnerable children. It is simply not good enough that we stand by and allow this to happen. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.