Flavell Te Ururoa: Local Government Law Reform Bill — Second Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Local Government Law Reform Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:3653] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe. Tena tatou katoa i te Whare. Recently across the Tasman the Liberal Party’s comments about Aboriginals migrants asylum seekers and the people on board the  
Tampa  
were described as dog whistling. Prime Minister Howard was accused of “pitching a political message to a group of voters that other voters do not necessarily hear”. On these shores that same accusation was levelled at Dr Don Brash; his Orewa speech represented a similar type of dog whistling that catered to those who are predisposed to prejudice about the Treaty industry and race-based policies. Now in this House over these last few months we have been witness to a curious form of dog whistling that draws on the emotive appeal of our most vulnerable—namely the children. 
The Maori Party will always speak up for and on behalf of the best interests of our tamariki. We are devastated like everyone else by the statistics that revealed that in the 7-year period from 1995 to 2002 2736 visits were made to public hospitals as a result of dog bites the biggest majority of the victims being children under 10. Such figures should not be news to anyone here. The media have capitalised on the public fascination factor with the typecast villains being bull mastiffs American pit bulls bull terrier crosses Staffordshire crosses and German shepherds taking centre stage for their vicious mauling of innocent children. In this context we absolutely accept the Local Government and Environment Committee’s recommendations that dogs classified as menacing or dangerous should be implanted with a microchip. 
We were particularly impressed with the submission from the Gore District Council which described the heavy burden that this bill would place on dog owners and local authorities. The Gore District Council urged us to limit the microchipping law to dogs that have been classified as dangerous or menacing and to exempt rural working dogs from the microchipping requirement. It is a position that we would support. New Zealanders have had enough of the puncture wounds the grazed faces and the stitches and tears that flood our screens. 
But the peculiar form of dog whistling that has accompanied the microchipping debate should not cloud our judgment to the mixture inherent in this omnibus bill. Because once the dogs are called off there is a huge amount of other legislation to consider in this bill: the Rates Rebate Act 1973 the Litter Act 1979 the Local Electoral Act 2001 the Local Government Acts of 1974 and 2002 the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 the Auckland War Memorial Museum Act 1996 and the Land Transport Act 1998. In fact we note with some irony that despite such a wide range of issues the submissions raised even more issues for consideration—things such as waste management and levies and fairness and justice in establishing constituencies and wards. 
We were pleased to see a sensible recommendation from the select committee regarding long-term council community plans which appear in the Local Government Act 2002. The select committee I understand suggested that no long-term council community plan for the period 2006 to 2016 can be rendered invalid on the grounds that it does not comply with any amendments made by this bill. That is a good thing—a long-term vision allowed to progress. It was however disappointing to see National’s comment that it believes the costs of auditing these long-term plans are too high for the added value they bring to the community. The Maori Party has been extremely interested in the local government results of the 2004-05 audits recently released by the Controller and Auditor-General. A key focus of those audits is that ratepayers have to a large extent focused on the consultation and decision-making processes of local government. A key concern in the 2004-05 report was that 12 local authorities had not complied with the requirement to make their summary report available by the statutory time frame and indeed they were urged to lift their game and inform their communities promptly. 
The Maori Party has been raising for quite some time the fact that there are significant issues with regional local authorities and their relationships with mana whenua. We had thought this bill would provide a chance to focus on that. As recently however as last night we had yet another example of the discriminatory effects of council actions or in this case inaction being revealed through the Gisborne District Council (Alfred Cox Park) Validation Bill—a call for validation of illegal actions without so much as a 45c postage stamp being invested in consulting with the mana whenua Rongowhakaata. This bill while making broad changes to improve the effectiveness of regulatory tools does nothing to address the status of council - tangata whenua relationships or to solidify obligations for councils to recognise mana whenua status. In this respect we are greatly disappointed. 
The select committee inserts a new section 356A into the Local Government Act 1974. The new section empowers local councils to remove any abandoned vehicle when that vehicle has no current evidence of vehicle inspection or no current licence label. The Maori Party is acutely aware that motor vehicle traffic crashes are a leading cause of injury mortality and hospitalisation amongst Maori particularly young Maori. Professor Mason Durie has commented that the effect of injury to rangatahi is accentuated by the loss of the benefits that can flow from competent healthy and skilled whanau members. That is a long-term cost that we can ill-afford. Yet there has been little research identifying factors associated with crashes involving Maori and no associated urgency in having available comprehensive crash data on safety measures such as occupant protection and driver’s-licence status. Until that information is available we believe that the recommendation to remove abandoned vehicles or to impound a vehicle simply because it does not have a current vehicle inspection or licence or both is overly heavy-handed. 
It also bears little comparison with the fact that about 20 percent of Maori are below the poverty line and situated in the bottom income bracket. In other words the Maori poverty rate is over 50 percent more than that of non-Maori. On this day International Justice for Cleaners Day it is particularly timely to be considering the context of poverty as we consider the below-poverty wages earned by cleaners around the country—pay rates that keep them trapped in cycles of poverty. Keeping up to date with licensing requirement is virtually impossible when it comes to battling with income employment education and health disparities. 
 There is also a potential issue under section 27 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—the right to natural justice—in that car owners cannot be heard prior to their vehicle being seized. Section 25(c) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act also gives everyone who is charged with an offence the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to the law. The Maori Party believes that the right to natural justice and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty are important principles of justice and require far more consideration than the select committee or the bill has given them. 
There is no denying that the Local Government Law Reform Bill is a right dog’s breakfast. The Maori Party will agree to dangerous menacing and intimidating dogs being microchipped in the interests of children and their safe well-being but our preference would have been for such beasts to be muzzled or restrained. Simply microchipping dogs will never prevent the savage dog attacks that we have seen in the last few years. But there are other great concerns that we have about this bill. The decision to remove abandoned vehicles without giving the owners a right of reply is one; the complete and utter denial of the importance of consultation with mana whenua is the other. The Maori Party will not fall in line with the dog whistling that this Parliament has been subjected to—the pitching of a political message to one group of voters that other voters do not necessarily hear. We want to vote in the interests of all New Zealanders and to really consider the impact of this bill—as with any—and how it achieves genuine progress for Aotearoa. Such a move requires that we will vote against this bill. Kia ora tatou.