Mapp Wayne: Human Rights (One Law For All) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Mapp Wayne: Human Rights (One Law For All) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4054] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 It is extraordinary to hear the last speaker Clayton Cosgrove suggest that equality before the law is somehow mean shallow and nasty. Equality before the law is the most fundamental principle of our democracy and that is the intent of Mr Hide’s bill. 
As Mr Jones said earlier there was a great debate in New Zealand in 2004 and 2005. The debate concerned whether New Zealanders are equal before the law. It was a very deep debate that actually had two sides to it which the opponents of this bill seem fundamentally to fail to recognise. The argument is quite simple and it is this. The law should not provide preferences to any particular group be it on the basis of sex gender or race or for any other reason because of course the law treats us all equally. But there is another side to the coin and I did not hear about this from the Maori Party. I just remind that party—although I should not need to do so—that everyone has the same set of rights. Surely the Maori Party came to this Parliament partly because it said the law did not treat Maori equally in relation to the foreshore and seabed. Its whole kaupapa was that it wanted its case to be heard in the same way as every other citizen is heard—that is with equality before the law. 
Another point is that this law does not suggest that people be denied cultural expression. That right is clearly protected not just in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but also in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. People are of course entitled to their language and culture and to practise it. It is obviously a fundamental truth that Maori culture and language exist essentially in New Zealand. That is why Maori is an official language. That is why there are clearly rights and obligations to protect language and culture. Dr Brash said precisely that in the Orewa speech of 2004. That is recognised very clearly. We would go further and say that the kura kaupapa and the Maori health initiatives were also said to be protected on the basis that people have choice. It springs directly from section 20 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act which states that people have religious ethnic and linguistic rights. Clearly those things are protected. There is nothing in the bill that argues against any of that and that is where the Government and—dare I say it in this instance—New Zealand First have got it wrong. This bill does not argue against those fundamental rights. 
We also heard a great deal about sickle-cell anaemia diabetes HIV and all those sorts of things. Who in this country has argued that people should not be entitled to receive care on the basis of need? Clearly in each of those examples if people have specific needs they deserve specific help. Dr Brash argued that point in the 2004 speech. Actually Labour had to concede he was right on that point and Trevor Mallard’s appointment was precisely for that reason. 
I conclude on the following point. I was involved in the issue of special preferences particularly around admissions to law schools medical schools and so forth. Those programmes were established in the 1980s and indeed I was part of that process. But were those programmes intended to last forever? No they were not. I can say to this House that Mr Shane Jones has publicly stated along with the honourable John Tamihere that those programmes have a finite life and that there is now no need for those kinds of programmes to exist in order to lift people up. People acknowledge that prior to 1980 there were very few Maori lawyers doctors accountants and so forth. Things have fundamentally changed in that regard. Those programmes were not supposed to last forever. They have lasted 20 years now and the imbalance they were intended to correct has been corrected. 
I return to the point that this bill is based on a simple proposition and that is equality before the law. Will parties vote against that fundamental proposition? I ask the people of New Zealand why that would happen.