Harawira Hone: Motions — Nuclear-Free Legislation—20th Anniversary 
Harawira Hone: Motions — Nuclear-Free Legislation—20th Anniversary 
[Volume:639;Page:9766] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tenatatou te Whare . I am proud to stand here today on behalf of the Maori Party to honour all those who worked so hard to make Aotearoa nuclear-free many years ago. In doing so I wish to start by honouring Labour Cabinet Minister and Tai Tokerau MP the Hon Matiu Rata  who sailed with a fleet of yachts to Mururoa to protest against French nuclear-testing in the Pacific. A Cabinet Minister and a Maori one at that sailed into a nuclear-testing zone. Me mihi ki a ia. 
I express my thanks to my Pacific cousins for their strength and their support dating back more than 30 years to the Conference for a Nuclear Free Pacific in Fiji in 1975 and in Ponape in 1978. I also remember the sterling efforts of people like my mum and others who fought to broaden the scope of those conferences so that by 1983 the conference in Vanuatu produced  
The Peoples’ Charter for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific 
 which stated: “We the people of the Pacific have been victimised too long by foreign powers. The western imperialistic and colonial powers invaded our defenceless region they took over our lands and subjugated our people to their whims. This form of alien colonial political and military domination unfortunately persists as an evil cancer in some of our native territories such as Tahiti New Caledonia Australia New Zealand. Our environment continues to be despoiled by foreign powers developing nuclear weapons for a strategy of warfare that has no winners no liberators and imperils the survival of all humankind. We note in particular the recent racist roots of the world’s nuclear powers and we call for an immediate end to the oppression exploitation and subordination of the indigenous people of the Pacific.” 
I am also reminded that the call for a nuclear-free Pacific came at the same time as the Maori Land March of 1975—a natural connection arising out of colonisation land confiscation environmental destruction and nuclear war. I note that Maori have always had a strong presence in the fight for a nuclear-free Aotearoa including Matiu Rata NganekoMinhinnick Pauline Tangiora Grace and Sharon Robertson and indeed my own wife Hilda Halkyard amongst many others. Indeed it was not long after the first national black women’s hui held in Tau Henare’s home town of Otara in 1980 that the Pacific People’s Anti-Nuclear Action Committee was set up by Hilda Halkyard-Harawira and Grace Robertson. They had no money but their own no resources save those they could appropriate a tiny office at Kokiri te Rahuitanga ki Otara and attitude to burn. The committee’s goals were based on  
The Peoples’ Charter for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific 
 and in 1980 the committee hosted Te Hui Oranga o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa at TataiHono Marae in Auckland. At that time TataiHono was the home base to the notorious Anglican activist the Rev. Hone Kaa; the stay-over for people involved in Bastion Point occupations; the launching pad for He Taua the War Party that in 60 seconds ended decades of racist abuse at Auckland University; the theatre for indigenous performances like Maranga Mai; the debating chamber for the Waitangi Action Committee; the meeting place for the Patu squad during the Springbok Tour trials; the breeding ground for independent Maori thought; and a seething hotbed of Maori radicalism. 
Te Hui Oranga was an extremely important hui for Maori because it dragged us kicking and screaming out of our own world and connected us to people facing similar issues in the Pacific. Te Hui Oranga attracted more than 120 people from all over the Pacific who had gathered for a common purpose: “to speak of land rights movements throughout the Pacific in their broadest context and the struggle of indigenous people everywhere to regain power over their lives and lands and resist global military and economic interests.” 
Te Hui Oranga was the first of its kind in Aotearoa bringing four international leaders to the forum including Charlie Ching a Tahitian independence leader; Grace Smallwood and Mike Smith Koori from north Queensland; and MariflorParpan of the Nuclear Free Philippines Coalition and helping Maori to see their own plight as part of a global movement. 
I also want to use this anniversary of the 1987 legislation to acknowledge others who helped shape that history; a history where Herbs expressed the nation’s anti-nuclear feelings through songs like “French Letter” “No Nukes” “Light of the Pacific” and “Nuclear Waste”; a history that poet Hone Tuwhare captured in his own special ode to nuclear madness “No Ordinary Sun”; a history that links us through the threat of nuclear destruction to the people of the Marshall Islands who still suffer from American nuclear tests the people of Bikini and Rongelap evacuated and devastated by the surface testing of US nuclear weapons; our cousins from Tahiti Nui who have been killed and mutilated by French nuclear-testing on Mururoa and Fangataufa; New Zealand Australian and Pacific military used as guinea pigs in the British nuclear programmes on Malden Island and Christmas Island; the Koori people pushed out of the Maralinga desert for nuclear testing; the people of Kwajalein forced to host the Ronald Reagan missile test site; and the people of Guam and Hawaii who continued to enjoy the stockpiling of nuclear weapons battleships bombers and military operations. It is a history that links the Pacific and a common resistance against the effects of colonisation—physical cultural spiritual economic nuclear and military—and a history with a common struggle for self-determination and independence. 
I want to acknowledge too the importance of the anti-nuclear protests during that time in helping to define a distinctive identity here in Aotearoa. Following on from the strident Viet Nam protests there was the Maori Land March the protests at Waitangi the many land occupations throughout the country as Maori took their own place in the new world and the protests against the Springbok Tour. 
I also acknowledge the work of international organisations like Greenpeace and I make special mention here of Fernando Pereira whom my wife and I had the privilege to meet just hours before he was killed when the  
Rainbow Warrior 
 was blown up by French agents and sunk in Auckland Harbour. I acknowledge too the efforts of ordinary Kiwis who raised their opposition to nuclear power from 30 percent in 1978 to more than 90 percent by 1986. 
I acknowledge Helen Clark for pushing the bill to make Aotearoa nuclear-free when a lot of her own party were not particularly keen on it. I acknowledge Marilyn Waring the National MP who voted with her conscience and supported the Opposition’s nuclear-free New Zealand bill and brought down our own Government in the process. 
I acknowledge David Lange for whopping Jerry Falwell on the public stage in Oxford in a debate “That nuclear weapons are morally indefensible” winning the debate and earning international admiration for our position. I particularly acknowledge all New Zealanders for not allowing our Governments to cave in when the Yanks tried to force us to back down. 
Our anti-nuclear status is now an integral part of our society something we must never forget and something we must always be prepared to step forward on. We must never forget the courage of those who fought for our country to be nuclear-free and we must never forget those who continue to suffer ongoing problems from nuclear testing. 
In closing let me quote from the re-versioning of Hone Tuwhare’s poem “No Ordinary Sun” as it was re-presented by Maranga Mai all over the nation as a warning to us all that this fight is nowhere near over. 
Tree—let your arms fall; don’t raise them to the bright cloud 
Soon they will lack toughness 
For this is no mere axe to blunt or fire to smother you  
Your sap won’t rise again to the pull of the moon 
Your ears bend to the winds talk or stir to the trickle of rain  
Your branches won’t be wreathed with the delightful flight of birds 
Or shield lovers from the bright sun.  
Tree—let your arms fall; don’t raise them to the bright cloud  
For this is no ordinary sun.  
No ordinary sun.  
And your end is written at last …  
Kia ora tatou.