Flavell Te Ururoa: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Flavell Te Ururoa: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 19 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5375. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Tena koe Mr Speaker. Kia ora tatou katoa. I want to take a bit of time in the general debate this afternoon to talk about the closure of one of the two Norske Skog mills—confirmed in Kawerau—thereby halving the production of that particular mill. At its peak that mill had 2000 workers employed every day. I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Could we just stop our clock to allow those who are moving out just to vacate the premises? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I think the member—and if the member would not mind resuming his seat for a moment—makes a perfectly fair point. I would ask members who are moving out of the Chamber to please to do it quietly. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! That is just discourteous to the member with the call. 
TE URUROA FLAVELL 
: Thank you Mr Speaker. That is appreciated. As I was saying the mill at its peak a few years ago had 2000 employees and now it employs 290 workers and it is estimated that with the closure of one of these mills there will be about 120 jobs lost. That follows in the wake of 120 redundancies at Solid Energy’s Huntly mine. I was up there about a week ago and 400 jobs are under threat at Spring Creek Mine and another 100 jobs are on the line at Tiwai Point aluminium smelter. So these are tough times especially for the smaller towns that have already been through more than their fair share of difficulties over the years. Kawerau is no different. But the difference in Kawerau is that it means a hell of a lot more and it is not just about the loss of jobs. 
Many will remember the large lay-offs in the 1990s. What we know from the time is that the Government needed to give support and respond appropriately in order to alleviate the burden on that particular community. My plea is that we have nothing less than that for the township of Kawerau. In Kawerau the mill is the major employer and as with every sort of major recession small towns with one major employer are hugely impacted upon. It creates huge issues for the community. The local community is heavily reliant on the mill and the losses are going to have a massive effect on Kawerau. We need definitely to protect local jobs and keep our people at home not just joining the flight of people heading overseas to Australia and we need a high-wage economy. The Government needs to take a more active role I believe to build on the assets in the town. 
The predominance of Maori in these types of small towns is very typical—Kawerau the likes of Murupara and so on—and it happens for two reasons. The first one is cheaper and more affordable housing and in this case an ability for people to own their own homes. Secondly people are able to live in their own tribal rohe and their own tribal boundaries. Without a major employer to support the very fabric of the community these small towns become pretty much a waiting time bomb when recession and other economic effects start to bite. They eat at the very heart of the community and it is pretty much a straight recipe for disaster. 
With now over 19000 Maori unemployed nationally of whom over a quarter are Maori youth we have to think about Kawerau as both a crisis—yes absolutely—and our greatest opportunity to do something. It is pretty good to hear the Minister for Economic Development Steven Joyce talk about creating new opportunities through the concept of a Primary Growth Partnership. We can either think about the downstream effects such as the heightened sense of poverty more welfare dependency and the lack of opportunities or on the other hand we can provide opportunities and some solutions within that community and that is why the Maori Party has been very much looking at the development of a marae central business district as a way forward. 
I will not deliver too much about that but the general focus is to aim to support marae to support their whanau hapu and iwi to undertake their aspirations with a particular focus on employment and education and possibly into housing. It is about conceiving of developmental opportunities that are based around marae as focal points for their communities. We want to see pathways to employment be the focus of the agenda of every marae and every board meeting right up through to the Cabinet table. But Maori need to take a leadership role in looking at finding our own solutions to employment along with obviously other stakeholders. 
The role of Government could be to facilitate and to enable joint ventures to focus on increasing employment opportunities with Maori collectives incorporations and other enterprises and we hope that that will happen. We also know that the knock-on effect of job losses and the announcements flow into other industries that support Norse Skog in the wider Eastern Bay of Plenty region. That is going to be huge and we need to consider that. For example the demand for pulp from Carter Holt Harvey will force a reduction in revenue and ultimately jobs with them as well. Thank you.