Harawira Hone: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Harawira Hone: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 June 2008. Volume:647;Page:16794. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Tena koe. Tena tatou katoa e te Whare. First of all let me extend a formal apology to Claudette Hauiti of Front of the Box Productions and say that my sincere wish is that we can work together on projects in the future.  
Let me begin my speech today with the words I used when I spoke on this bill the last time it came up: “I do not mind saying right up front that I am not a fan of tagging … not today not yesterday not tomorrow. It is ugly it is offensive it makes one’s town look like crap. People do not want to stop in those towns because they see the existence of tagging as a clear mark of the existence of crime. I personally do not mind some of that cool looking stuff like they did for Sir Edmund Hillary but I do not like ugly tagging.” But just because I recognise that reality does not mean that I have to agree with some of the garbage spoken on this issue by others in this House.  
Yesterday a certain female member of the National Party made a complete ass of herself by trying to link the murders in South Auckland with tagging and gang membership and by suggesting that stopping tagging would stop people joining gangs which would in turn stop people getting murdered. Well I do not mean to sound rude but that is rubbish and I will tell members why. A lot of the kids who tag are the same kids who can be found scribbling in class. They scribble in class because they have been shunted to the back of the class by an education system geared towards suspending and expelling black kids from school faster than anyone else. They scribble in class because they are hoha with schools that do not give a stuff about their future and because they are angry that their teachers do not care about them either. Tagging ain’t a step to murder and anyone who says it is is a blind and lazy fool.  
Tagging is the result of the growing frustration amongst youth with a society concerned more about profit than about people. Tagging is what we get from kids who do not think that anyone cares. Tagging is what we get when our rangatahi want to get attention and the world ain’t interested. Tagging is the reaction of the poor to alienation anger boredom frustration and low self-esteem. We will reduce tagging by reducing the factors that lead to it: poverty poverty and poverty. The last time the House discussed this issue someone said that poverty was not the problem. Well all I have to say to that is that members should open their eyes and take a look around. They should look in all the rich suburbs. Do those kids tag out their towns? No not even. Members should then take a swing through the poor part of town and what would they see? Tagging tagging and tagging. This ain’t rocket science folks; this is as obvious as the blinkers that some politicians seem to have over one eye. Ramping up the penalties will hurt the ones who get caught. But if we want to stop tagging we need to put an end to poverty.  
I do not disagree with the decision to fine people $1500 for selling spray-cans to teenagers. But in the same way that we cannot stop 13-year-olds from smoking cigarettes by passing a law to make it illegal to sell cigarettes to kids under 18 we will not stop tagging by increasing the penalty for people who sell spray-cans to teenagers. I also point out a couple of other facts. Firstly tagging is already illegal and secondly we already have laws in place to deal with property crime. Increasing the penalties may make us feel as though we are doing something but in fact we ain’t. Poor places will still be tagged and rich places will not. That will continue until we start to address the root causes of poverty and do not just sting the poor dumb clucks who sell spray-cans and tag fences.  
To digress ever so slightly I would like to congratulate all of the schools—wharekura kura Maori Maori boarding schools and secondary schools—for making this week so very very special for all of the Maori members of Parliament by sending down all of those dynamite groups for the 2008 National Secondary Schools Kapa Haka competitions over the road at the TSB Bank Arena. More than 1500 dynamic talented explosive performers from all around the country have taken the stage to strut their stuff and show off how good they all are at poi haka waiata mau taiaha and whaikorero. Thirty-six of the best teams from throughout Aotearoa have given their all for their kura their whanau their hapu their iwi and their communities. They have lit up the hall with their confidence their passion and their panache and they have been simply electrifying in their exuberance and their energy. There have been 3 days of power intensity and vigour. I thank all of those rangatahi for the energy they have given to all of us Maori MPs. I thank all of the seriously stressed-out teachers and parents who have been trying to keep tabs on 1500 sets of rampaging hormones I thank the judges for their patience and I even thank Parliamentary Service for politely pointing all the hundreds of stray Maori in the right direction in order to catch up with their MP or with somebody else’s MP if they could not find their own.  
I might be so rude as to ask where on earth the rest of Parliament has been while all this has been going on. It is one thing to slag off our kids when something goes wrong but it is even better when we applaud them when things are going well. That says we care about making a positive statement about our kids’ future it says we recognise the strides that the great majority of them are making to excel in a darkening world it says we care enough to honour them for their efforts and it says we care about them. But this I know: 80 percent of the Pakeha MPs in this House did not even bother to walk across the road to take a look. So to all my fellow Pakeha MPs let me just say that they should not be surprised that nobody cares about what they think is important when they show by their own absence that they do not care about what others think is important.  
So yes tagging is a crime against property and yes tagging sucks. But as Derek Fox the Maori Party candidate for Ikaroa-Rawhiti said to me recently poverty sucks too. Poverty is an even greater crime than tagging because poverty is a crime against humanity. Poverty is a crime against society. When we see the Child Poverty Action Group suing the Government for denying 150000 children an entitlement granted to other children we all know which one of the two crimes should have priority. If this bill at least recognised the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots which exacerbates problems like tagging and offered solutions based on that we would support the bill. But it does not do so. It is punitive and it simply affirms the desperation of the poor and the refusal of this House to recognise their plight.  
Discussion of crime is often grim and tinged with blame and finger-pointing but every now and then we get a message that puts a whole new perspective on things. Here is an email we have had that we would like to share with the House from a guy called Rob Beckett: “Hell. I’m going to rely on the younger generation to care for me when I’m frail and old. Maybe I need to take more notice of them now and listen to their issues and be prepared to make changes before its too late. What can I do? Hey join the real world and ask the kids what they want and look to long term solutions. Together we can achieve.” 
In the same way that we grieve for those who have been killed recently in South Auckland so too do we grieve for the young man killed a few months back for simply tagging. None of those deaths were necessary but what is necessary is that we in this House step forward with realistic options to deal with the causes of crime rather than hope to simply garner votes by just attacking crime.  
In closing I acknowledge Pita Paraone’s comments about me and my mum. Whenever she tells me to jump I am more than happy to say “How high Mum?”. Kia ora tatou.