Flavell Te Ururoa: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — In Committee 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8655] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
Tena koe Madam Speaker. Kia ora tatou katoa. Last night in looking at the amendment placed before the Committee by the Maori Party as set out on Supplementary Order Paper 105 in the name of Dr Pita Sharples the Minister gave some responses to some of the concerns that we put on the table. I want to put some questions back to the Minister to try to seek some clarification from him. In the first instance however I just want to go back over a few things so that it is really clear where I am coming from. 
The first thing is that our Supplementary Order Paper was about the notion of establishing a Maori Immigration Education Council. We based our rationale for that on the view that the Treaty of Waitangi according to a number of experts better than me is the nation’s funding document and the constitutional blueprint for nation-building. So we figured that it was quite a good idea to have some education around the Treaty for people who come to Aotearoa. That is a précis of where we were heading with our Supplementary Order Paper. 
Unfortunately we learnt last night that under Standing Order 319 relating to amendments proposed to be moved in the Committee of the whole House the Government is exercising its right to place a financial veto on the Supplementary Order Paper. We learnt that this sort of action is fairly rare and we also learnt that it means that our Supplementary Order Paper cannot be voted on but can be debated. We ask about the rationale for the Government doing that. The Minister gave some views about that but we obviously still feel disappointed that the Government has moved in that way to basically take away our right to have our Supplementary Order Paper debated on. 
As I said the Minister referred or responded to some of the questions about that. There are a couple of points I want to make. The first one is that the Minister referred to the kaitiaki of tikanga in the Maori caucus. I wonder with no disrespect to the Maori members of the Maori caucus whether the Minister can give us some guide as to whether it is a regular occurrence to refer issues around the Treaty or Maori issues to the kaitiaki of tikanga in the Maori caucus. The second point is to ask whether that referral is to one person or to a group. The third point is to ask whether that is accepted common practice. That is the first issue and I ask the Minister to give a response on that. 
The second issue is in respect of the amount of money. The rationale given for our Supplementary Order Paper being taken off the agenda is that there are some fiscal restraints on the Government and therefore under the Standing Orders it was appropriate that the Government took action last night to use the financial veto. We are talking about apparently $1.5 million per annum. So the first issue for us—as I try to explain the issue from our point of view—is that there was some money in the Budget that could have been removed for the purposes of supporting this initiative. The issue is that the amount of money we are talking about according to the Government is not significant enough to justify the financial veto. 
But the key concern is around where the figure comes from in the sense that $1.5 million per annum has been identified yet we have not discussed the whole notion of how the Maori Education Immigration Council might operate. Yes there are some issues around what it might look like but it seems as though the figure of $1.5 million has been plucked out of the air without any discussion of the actual concept of the council with those of us in the Maori Party who have put the Supplementary Order Paper forward. So I ask the Minister to perhaps respond to that issue. 
The third issue is that last night the Minister provided quite a number of booklets that give some information about the Treaty saying that if the immigrants who come here would just take a little care to read over those booklets then they might actually gain an understanding of the Treaty. In response to that firstly I ask the Minister whether he has read the booklets. I have not. That is the first point—would immigrants take care to read those booklets? The second point is to ask the Minister whether immigrants would understand them. Would immigrants who come here possibly without English as their first language understand the booklets and if not what would be the point of putting the booklets in front of them? The third point stems from being a Treaty educator myself. I know that just simply plonking books in front of people does not actually deal with the issues about the place of tangata whenua and indeed that of the Treaty partners. We want to give immigrants a real appreciation of what we are actually aiming at in this which is not only the education issue but the issue about involvement in decision making. That pretty much made up a large part of my discussion last night. We were looking at those issues so I want to put those points. 
The last point I want to raise was that last night the Minister talked about clauses 32 33 and 34 of the bill where issues around the competency standards are raised. I noted that he looked to the officials while I hope giving a fairly clear lead of a desire to have issues around the Treaty—encompassing I hope a wide range of issues including from perhaps a tangata whenua point of view Maori language Maori culture and so on—included. But I noted in those clauses when I had a quick squiz over them that I did not see competency standards in respect of anything about Te Ao Maori. I am hoping that when the Minister turned round to look at the officials that was a good enough look from him to say to them that that needs to be addressed. I would appreciate some sort of response to that. 
This wraps up our last chance to ask the Minister to reconsider the matter of Standing Order 319 and to allow our Supplementary Order Paper to be voted on or at least to give us a bit more of a clear lead as to how the issues that I have just raised this afternoon might be addressed. Kia ora tatou.