Mapp Wayne: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:616;Page:11863] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 This is the time for the Prime Minister to account. She was asked three simple questions by Dr Nick Smith which were repeated by Gerry Brownlee. Did she get up and answer them? No. She simply refuses to answer the simplest of all possible questions. Will there be Crown title? It is a pretty easy thing to say “yes” or “no” to. When will the legislation be introduced—soon next week tomorrow next year next month? One would at least think that Government members could answer that. Indeed why will the Prime Minister not appear on the  
Holmes 
 show? She is here only because she knows that Dr Brash is on the  
Holmes 
 show. 
These questions can be expanded on. Will there be unreserved Crown ownership? We hear the Prime Minister say these are complicated issues but she cannot tell them how they are complicated or why she abandoned “public domain”. Apparently it is going to Crown ownership but when asked the direct question: “Will there be Crown ownership?” she does not answer it. Also she does not answer this question: “Will that Crown ownership be shared with Maori customary title?” Margaret Wilson said: “Everyone knows in this country that there is Maori customary title from one end of the country to the other.” Why can the Prime Minister not get up and say whether that is true? The Government’s only refuge is: “Wait and see.” 
How long will we have to wait to find out what that is and will it be true that that customary title amounts to co-management? That is what the Hon Parekura Horomia thinks. He thinks—and presumably the Maori votes in the Labour caucus have been obtained on this basis—that there will be co-management. I say to the Prime Minister that she has the opportunity right now to answer those questions. The Prime Minister is sitting in the chair; she needs to take the call and answer those questions. Will there be Crown ownership? When will the legislation be introduced? Will that Crown ownership be shared with Maori customary title? Will it amount to co-management? That is what the nation wants to hear. 
If the Prime Minister is wondering why poll ratings for the Labour Party are declining it is because the Government has not been able to answer those questions. One would think that when the Prime Minister is sitting in the chair she would take the call and answer those questions. Even if she does not take the call one would at least think that she would appear in front of at least a million television viewers tonight and answer those simple questions. We on this side of the Chamber say to the Prime Minister that she should go to the  
Holmes 
 show tonight debate the issues and talk to the citizens of New Zealand. They deserve answers. A million people will be watching  
Holmes  
tonight and the Prime Minister has the choice of whether to appear. 
As the deputy leader of the National Party has quite rightly said those million citizens—those million voters—will be watching Don Brash tonight and there will be an empty chair. That empty chair will have the words “Prime Minister” on it. She is the absent person who is not willing to debate and who will not get up even in this debate and answer the simple straightforward questions: will there be Crown ownership will it be shared with Maori will Maori have co-management of the entire estate and when will the legislation be introduced? Those issues are surely straightforward and able to be answered. After all if the Government can say that this legislation will be introduced pretty soon it must know the answers right now. Surely this is the opportunity to answer them. 
It is all very well for Mr Winston Peters to go on about people speaking but he himself is proving to be in a—