Newman Muriel: New Zealand Day Bill — First Reading 
Newman Muriel: New Zealand Day Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:624;Page:19665] 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party is pleased to join with other parties in this House to support the bill going to the select committee. I want to congratulate the Hon Peter Dunne because he has achieved what many of us never achieve in our time in Parliament where we have bills debated in the House that never thereafter see the light of day. It sounds as if this bill will go to the select committee. 
I personally have had six members’ bills drawn since I have been in Parliament. One is on the Order Paper at the moment awaiting debate and five have been defeated. Some of those have received some support in the House but all of them have been voted against by Labour. I understand the spirit of MMP to be that any bill that is significant and has merit should be sent to a select committee so that Parliament can have a proper look at it and the country can also put its views forward. In that spirit I am delighted to support this bill on behalf of ACT. 
I agree with other members who have spoken in this debate that New Zealanders do need a day that we can feel proud of. I think many of us who are a bit older worry that there does not seem to be enough Kiwi pride around now. Many of us feel we need to re-energise New Zealand so that everyone can recall what it is to feel good about being a New Zealander. When the Olympic Games are on and people win medals and so on and our national anthem is played we all get a sense of national pride. In a way it would be great if we as Kiwis felt that pride on a more regular basis. 
I am sad to say as a member of Parliament who has been here during the whole time of this Labour Government that the pride many New Zealanders used to feel under previous Governments is now slipping away. I do not know about other members of the House but on a daily basis I get messages from good New Zealanders who say they have just had enough they are going to pack their bags and leave the country because they no longer feel that New Zealand is offering the great life they expected. 
When we think about it we see that national pride is made up of many different factors; our values as a nation how we as a country treat people in need and where we are going as a country—what we can provide for future generations of New Zealanders. It seems to me that when we melt it all down and ask what is really important we find that it is that we as a country retain the fact that we are a free and prosperous nation. 
It worries me greatly that although our prosperity seems on the surface to be high when we go beneath the surface we see families all over the place who are struggling and we realise that in fact we are not doing as well as we should be doing. We can point to high tax rates too much regulation and all those sorts of things as the key reasons. Let us look at the word “free”. Are we a free country? I have to say that the amount of regulation and political correctness that come out of the ninth floor of the Beehive and out of this Chamber mean that in fact every day we are losing some of those freedoms. Then we ask ourselves whether this is a country where citizens can succeed. I think the answer is that we do not succeed as well as we used to in the past. So it is a worry that we do not have that national pride. 
It is also a worry that under the provisions in this bill Waitangi Day will be replaced when what we should really be doing is sorting out the problems with Waitangi Day. It was a day that founded this nation. It has become a day of protest. We have to address the underlying causes of that.