Harawira Hone: AdjournmentText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHarawira Hone: Adjournment[Sitting date: 31 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19826. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]HONE HARAWIRA (Mana—Te Tai Tokerau):Hoi nō hei kōrero tuatahi e Te Kaiwhakawā māku ki a Tariana rāua ko Pita e heke mai ana i ō rāua ake tūranga i tēnei wā i te mea ko rāua ngā tokorua e ārahi i a māua ko Te Ururoa i roto i Te Whare i te tīmatanga o Te Pāti Māori. Nā rāua i awhi i a māua kia tae mai ki tēnei wā. Kua tumuaki a Te Ururoa ki tōna Pāti ko hau anōki. Nō reira mihi atu ki a koe e Tariana kōrua ko Pita. Tua atu ki a Tau e puta atu ana i Te Whare ka mihi atu ā ki a koe nōki e te tuahine e Tōrete ‘hakoa hanga tūkino ana koe i taku pire. Hoi anō he tuahine tonu ki a mātou o te ao Māori nō reira e tika ana kia mihi atu ki a koe. Huri tū ki a tātou anō rā e Te Whare wā tātou kaimahi ‘hakoa ko tēhea pāti ko wai te tangata me mihi atu ki a rātou katoa. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou huri atu huri noa kia ora tātou katoa.[And so the first comment for me Mr Speaker at this point time is to Tariana and Pita who are about to relinquish their leadership roles because they are the two who led Te Ururoa and I into the House when the Māori Party came into existence. Those two nurtured us right up to this stage of our existence. Te Ururoa is now leader of his party and I am leader of mine as well. Therefore I salute you and Pita Tariana. Furthermore I acknowledge you as well Tau who are about to leave this House and you too sister colleague Claudette and regardless of your disparaging remarks about my bill you continue to remain a sister of Māoridom to us so it is right that you are recognised. So I stand to thank us all once again: the House all our staff regardless of which party they are working for who that staff member may be I extend my gratitude to them all. Acknowledgments and good wishes to you all collectively around and throughout and thanks to us all.]It would be nice to be able to say that all the differences between Mana and this National coalition Government in the last 3 years had seen our country come out of the global financial crisis with a positive attitude and an increased capacity to rock and roll but that would be a lie. There have been increases of course but not across the board and not in ways that signal a rebuilding of society and an improvement in opportunity for everyone.Sure there have been increases at the highest echelons of our society; spectacular increases in the levels of wealth accumulated by the richest 1 percent of people in the country. There has been an increase in the salaries earned by chief executives and corporate directors an increase in the gap between the rich and the poor and an increase in funding for National’s holiday highway but there has been a cut in funding for the maintenance of local roads every year for the past 6 years in regional areas like Northland. There has been an increase in extractive and environmentally destructive industries like deep-sea oil and toxic land mining and a lowering of safety standards in primary industries like mining and forestry.But when we look at the wider population Māori Pasifika and more and more often tauiwi as well we are seeing increases in all the wrong places: an increase in unemployment an increase in the number of people earning less than the average wage an increase in the number of people leaving for jobs overseas an increase in inequality an increase in child poverty an increase in homelessness an increase in the numbers of children hospitalised with poverty-related illnesses and diseases an increase in the educational achievement gap between kids in low and high decile schools an increase in the numbers of people in prison—I could go on but you know the story.Such is the carnage for those at the bottom of society and such will be the legacy of this Government and its coalition partners. The truly sad part is that life does not need to be like that not for anyone in this country. We live in the greatest country in the world. We have the talent the resources the time and the space to be world leaders in whatever it is we choose to do. When I say—and I often say it—“Happy are those who dream dreams and are prepared to pay the price to make those dreams come true.” it is because I truly believe that we actually have the capacity to make those dreams come true.The question is: why should feeding the kids be something we dream about? Why should anyone think that living in a warm and decent home is nothing but a dream? Why do people think that full employment is the impossible dream? Mana sees all of those not only as possibilities but as distinct realities. We now have the support of our colleagues in Internet-Mana to ensure that people understand how real those ideals can be. Feeding the kids through a comprehensive food-in-schools programme already has the support of Labour the Greens New Zealand First and the Māori Party. Ten-thousand State houses a year for those on low incomes is our policy but that has already been taken up in part at least by Labour and it dovetails comfortably with some of the more innovative housing ideas from the Greens.There is no reason why we cannot backstop a strong Government-driven home building programme with community jobs for the unemployed all around the country—in hospitals in schools on marae around old people’s homes and anywhere else where we can help rebuild people’s self-esteem while preparing them for jobs in the private sector.We know we have the support of most New Zealanders to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement to repeal the Government Communications Security Bureau legislation and to take back the power by nationalising the electricity companies and making them core assets never to be sold again. We also know that unless we provide a free tertiary education for our kids we will continue to get what we have already got—the loss of all that intellectual capital as our kids head off overseas in pursuit of jobs to pay off their loans meet somebody start a family build a new group of friends and then never come home again.I know you are asking yourselves how we are going to pay for all of those things and I can tell you that somebody in the standing room only audience at our public meeting in Rotorua on Tuesday night also asked that question. It was the richest guy in the room who took the microphone and asked the questions that other seriously rich people are also asking like: why is it that people can make millions on the stock market and pay no tax on it at all? Why are banks not paying a financial transaction tax on the billions of dollars that they transfer from place to place in search of profit? Why do we allow uber-rich people to buy very expensive homes cars helicopters and yachts and not pay a luxury tax for the privilege? Why is the Government spending so much on roads and yacht races and so little on ordinary people?You see our policies are based on the belief that we should be backing ourselves to lift everyone in Aotearoa to a place where we could all be positive contributors to our society where healthy families are the norm where every child can learn because they are all well-fed where free education is normal where warm homes are a standard where jobs are plentiful where everybody pays their share to achieve those goals and where Parliament accepts that the only legislation worth passing is that which passes the test of first being good to our tamariki and our mokopuna. Then and only then will we be able to make those dreams come true.Of course realising those dreams will require more than just Internet-Mana believing we can achieve them. It will mean us working with others as well which we are more than happy to do. But as to whom we would work with after the election? Well as a matter of principle we will not be working with National for the very simple reason that no Government since World War II has created so much inequality so much hardship and so much poverty for so many people in such a short time as this National Government and its coalition partners.Although David Cunliffe says a Cabinet position for the Internet-Mana in a Labour-led Government is unlikely if as John Armstrong of the New Zealand Herald said “With Labour’s woes intensifying and that party’s support bleeding away there is a good chance that Internet Mana could be hovering around the 5 percent level by the time the official campaign gets under way.” believe you me Internet-Mana will be getting a call.While I am talking about other parties here is a short comment for those who have already pulled the race card on Mana: grow up. It is the oldest trick in the book bashing Māori at election time to boost your voter appeal but it is also the ugliest. You do yourselves a disservice by stooping to such levels and you insult the intelligence of the voting public by inviting them to sup from your well of poisonous racism.The fact that Mana actually has more non-Māori candidates than Māori ones has obviously slipped your minds but you know what they say—do not ever let the facts get in the way of a good story especially a good racist story. Mind you the fact that Internet-Mana is playing to packed houses and community halls all around the country while nobody else has the courage to put themselves up there for the public to see and to hear and to challenge is probably the real threat to other parties in the run-up to the election especially those who cannot get enough members even to fill a hall for their annual conferences. I will quote again from last week’s New Zealand Herald which stated: “If any spies from the Labour Green or Māori parties infiltrated yesterday’s Internet Mana rally in West Auckland they would have come away with very worried looks on their faces.”