Gudgeon Bill: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Gudgeon Bill: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:21266] 
BILL GUDGEON (NZ First) 
: 
 The Grow Up Free From Poverty report was commissioned last January and nobody knew just how many people were falling through the gaps in international aid. Major charities wanted to know how children often the worst casualties of poverty saw their own situations. Children in 18 developing countries reported that they did not see enough of their parents. Stigmatised by AIDS or disability many knew that their best hope of living was in the sex trade. The biggest problem was their parents’ alcoholism and according to the report that was at the top of the agenda. 
What is happening in New Zealand—a developed nation supposedly? We have an accident and emergency department without a hospital or it could be the other way around; we have a hospital without an accident and emergency department. We have families who are suffering children without parental guidance and Government departments unskilled to carry out the responsibilities placed before them. 
I quote from the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 of 12 June: “CYF alerted before baby died. Family nurses lawyers and a doctor raised concerns about the treatment of 7-month-old Kathleen Harris-Talivai.” There has been famine and poverty in many parts of the world but here in New Zealand it is becoming all too common that physical abuse beyond description is part of what happens every day. How can a Child Youth and Family Services worker advise that the child in question would be better off with his or her parents when there is evidence before the worker that the child is being physically abused? Why does it have to be like this? 
The social policies of this Government have a part to play in what is happening in our communities. In speaking to a high-profile identity of the Ngati Porou iwi it was stated that many of our people have lost the work ethic and along with that have come the negative results of idleness. Family as we understand it—father mother and children—are starting to become an issue that is fading into the sunset and other agendas are coming to the fore. The reason why there is instability in our society is that there is a lack of good parenting skills and the social engineering of this Government has contributed much to that agenda. 
The elderly have been neglected especially those who have served our nation in the armed forces. This Government will give aid offshore but no consideration will be given to 35 servicemen in the Montecillo Veterans Home and Hospital in Dunedin. The Agent Orange debacle is still unclear and there is still no result as to what compensation should be given. The last words I heard from the Montecillo veteran were these: “Remind the Governments”—and that includes National and Labour—“of their promises that they made to us when we returned from the war.” What were those promises? They were that the veterans would be taken care of. 
Let me remind this Government again: $10 billion given to the armed forces works out at less than 1 percent and we still have a skeleton armed forces programme running. How can that be when defence should at the top of the agenda for any country and every country especially the democratic nations?