Flavell Te Ururoa: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFlavell Te Ururoa: General Debate[Sitting date: 22 August 2007. Volume:641;Page:11357. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker; kia ora tātou. I have some awesome questions for my Māori Party colleagues because I suspect they will know some of the answers but there may well be others in the House who have the answers to these questions. I ask members to put up their hands if they have heard of the United Nations. Very good; well done. I ask them to put up their hands if they believe that New Zealand places a high value on our relationship with the United Nations. Well done; excellent. Last year New Zealand gave $7.7 million to the 2007 United Nations budget and on top of that we contributed $15.3 million to 14 UN peacekeeping operations and nearly $1 million to the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. And it is not just about money; we have contributed largely in terms of personnel and services to many UN missions over the years.Has this high-value relationship just happened overnight I ask my Māori Party colleagues? No no—hell no. Some 62 years ago New Zealand took the plunge and we put up our hands to become a foundation member of the UN. Our Prime Minister at the time Sir Peter Fraser chaired the committee that wrote the trusteeship chapter of the United Nations Charter. We have been a member from time to time of a number of the key UN committees since 1945 including the General Assembly and the Security Council. Indeed New Zealanders have held some top jobs there. The Unesco World Heritage Committee is currently chaired by the Ngāti Tūwharetoa paramount chief Tumu te Heuheu Sir Lesley Munro was President of the UN General Assembly in 1957 we have been elected to membership of the Security Council three times Sir Kenneth Keith is a judge on the International Court of Justice and Mr Paul Hunt is the special rapporteur on the right to health.How seriously do we take UN calls to action? Let us take just one area. New Zealand has been a staunch supporter of the international campaign against terrorism responding rapidly and substantively to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373 through contributions to political diplomatic legal intelligence and military initiatives. We have also signed up to Operation Enduring Freedom through the deployment of ground naval and air troops and we are now party to all 12 UN anti-terrorism conventions. So the big question is what will we do with the latest UN report on New Zealand from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination also known as “CERD”?What are we talking about here? It is racial discrimination. Perhaps a definition we could start off with might be something like this: racism occurs when one group of people is perceived to be inferior and deviant and another group is perceived to be superior and normal. Well the UN committee identified that the New Zealand Government’s actions “tend to diminish the importance and relevance of the Treaty and to create a context unfavourable to the rights of Maori.”Rt Hon Winston Peters: Whom did they talk to?TE URUROA FLAVELL: I will get to that. The committee was concerned that only a small percentage of the Waitangi Tribunal’s recommendations are followed by the Government depriving claimants of a right to an effective remedy. The committee was concerned by the discrepancy between the assessment made by the Crown and that made by non-governmental organisations on the foreshore and seabed issue. There are six pages of straight-to-the-point discussion and recommendations. The committee came up with 16 ideas for action such as renewed dialogue and consultation of which one part is our effort to have the repeal bill that is in our name put in front of this House.The committee talks about giving status to the implementation of the Treaty of Waitangi and granting the tribunal legally binding powers.Finally I ask the class of the mighty Māori Party how do members think the Government responded? Well it is interesting that the Rt Hon Winston Peters in addressing the UN committee stated: “New Zealand remains unwavering in its support for the United Nations.” That is what he said. But in talking about this report he said that it is meddlesome and that its authors were not experts on the issues they were dealing with. Dr Cullen thankfully had some supportive statements to make when he said that the report put the Government on notice to consider and consult carefully.Well we have been there before. Two years ago the same committee released its findings on the Foreshore and Seabed Act and our Prime Minister derided its work as being that of a “committee that sits on the outer edge of the UN”. That sort of response is pretty disappointing considering that people like Mark Solomon the Treaty Tribes Coalition and Joris de Bres amongst others also put a number of statements in front of the committee. They gave statements and supporting evidence. Some of those people are appointed by the Government so there we go.The longer-term effects of racism short-change everybody. Racism sets groups of people against each other and makes it difficult for us to perceive our common interests so we hope that this report will be taken very seriously.