Mark Ron: Protected Objects Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mark Ron: Protected Objects Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise to indicate that New Zealand First will be supporting the passage of the Protected Objects Amendment Bill through the Committee stage and offer just a couple of comments. 
Firstly I agree with everything that has been said thus far by all the members who have spoken. This is very timely and appropriate legislation. It is legislation one wishes had existed many many years ago. One might say that given the shape and tendency of New Zealand and the way we behaved in the past one might be quite surprised that such legislation should eventually be passed by this House. But time moves on and Maori artefacts that were always considered to be taonga by Maori and to be curios by other people will finally through this legislation have the protection they have long needed.  
It is a tragedy that my whanaunga Te Arawa people are having to deal with the issues of raising $1 million $2 million or $3 million—I do not know how many millions of dollars—simply to acquire something that is theirs and should never have been removed either from their rohe or from Aotearoa in the first place. We can surmise guess and speculate as to how such a taonga ended up where it did. The fact is that it left our borders and that should never have been permitted. This bill is like shutting the gate after 1000Kaimanawa horses have bolted but shut the gate we will. 
It is interesting that my longstanding friend the Hon Tau Henare raised the issue of Charlie Upham’s medals. I am an Upham class cadet and proud of it. Charlie Upham is one of my most important role models and as a16-year-old I got to shape myself on that model. The thought and notion that his medals would be sold and become part of a private collection somewhere in the United Kingdom sent a shudder up my spine. More important it did not sit well with the survivors of the 20th Battalion and particularly those who served in his company. It did not sit well with them because they knew that Charlie had always said from the day he was first nominated and told he had been awarded the Victoria Cross that the medal was not his. He had always said that. He continued to repeat until the day he died that the medals were not his but they belonged to his men. I have been fortunate in the last month or so to again have had close association indirectly with the Upham family through the development of the proposal to film the life story of Charles Hazlitt Upham VC and Bar. 
I am not able to tell the Committee at this point in time the final decision on those medals but I am very very hopeful that a good-news story will come out of it. I know that Phil Goff has had continued discussions in that area. This is one piece of militaria that I believe is part of our history and culture and should be protected by this legislation—whether it is remains to be seen. 
I also point to schedule 4. Schedule 4 raises a lot of other questions for me as a former military person and also as a person who dabbles in collecting military artefacts. There are a lot of taonga out there held by families of the Maori Battalion that were brought back into this country and that many people would look at and be aghast to know are here. They are Nazi memorabilia. Most people in this Chamber would be aghast and ask what we could possibly want with Nazi memorabilia in this country. The fact is that they are the spoils of war that were gained with the blood of our ancestors. If nothing else the continued presence and the retention of those artefacts and taonga will always and forever serve as a reminder to us of the price that was paid for our freedom and right to stand in this Chamber. 
My interpretation of schedule 4 is that those artefacts are covered under the legislation. Therefore I hope that many of those artefacts that were recovered by our veterans—most of them illegally; we know that—and were secreted away but have subsequently come to the fore in private collections will not be forced to be destroyed buried melted down or shipped back to the country from whence they came. I hope that they too will be considered as taonga as heritage items that were fought for and paid for with the blood of our forefathers and that in time they will come to be valued taonga by our mokopuna and their mokopuna as well. 
This is very good legislation and I welcome it.