Okeroa Mahara: Address in Reply 
Okeroa Mahara: Address in Reply 
[Volume:628;Page:438] 
Hon MAHARA OKEROA (Minister of State) 
: 
 A ka tu mai ahau ki te mihi i toku nei mihi tuatahi ki te tahu korero o tenei pouwhare tawhito nei. Mihi hoki ana au ki nga mema hou i tukuna atu o ratou nei whaikorero te tuatahi me o ratau nei hinengaro whakaaro hoki no reira tena tatau tena tatau kia ora mai tatau katoa. 
[An interpretation in English was given to the House.] 
[ 
I rise to make my first address before the speaking-perch of this ancient pillar. I also acknowledge the maiden speeches by the new members and their aspirations so greetings greetings and thank you to all of us 
.]  
It has been my great fate or misfortune to follow a speech more notable for its volume than for any sense. But I want to be fair because I have taken a sampling of some wisdom from the Opposition. Bill English said: “The new voters will be young and brown. If we’re not getting their vote we’re not going to get into Parliament.” 
Now here is a statement from Doug Graham the elder statesman whom we acknowledged previously in the National Party: “I make a plea to all New Zealanders Maori and non-Maori alike. Let us see this settlement as a demonstration to the rest of the world that we in this country have pride in our cultural diversity; that with goodwill we can correct past errors; and that our vision of justice fair play and generosity of spirit one to the other still beckons us forward.” Let me quote again that elder statesman from the Opposition when he was talking about the Waikato-Tainui raupatu claim settlement bill at its third reading in October 1995: “What does the settlement mean to all New Zealanders? It means the ability of each one of us and our children and our grandchildren to enjoy harmonious race relations is enhanced. It means that cultural differences can and must be respected. It means that where generosity of spirit exists no obstacle need be insurmountable.” 
Then along came Dr Brash and National’s journey backwards began. National has cut all ties with Maori in a game of cheap political point-scoring based on a campaign dedicated to greed and race relationships. [ 
Interruption 
] Gerry Brownleee will never be a Minister of State. He will never ever be a Minister of Maori Affairs. Gerry Brownlee should sit there as a loser and take his sorrow elsewhere. So what has National committed itself to do? It has committed itself not only to abolish the Maori electorate seats—[ 
Interruption 
] What is the member laughing for? I know he went to Duntroon—not the best place to go. But National is also against the establishment of Maori wards. National in fact feels that the logic behind Maori seats is skimpy. 
Let me quote Dr Brash again: “We will remove the anachronism of the Maori seats in Parliament.” There is only one anachronism here; he is just not in the House at this time. We know who that is. Dr Brash said that in National’s view we no longer need special Maori representation in Parliament and that there can be no basis for separate Maori electorates. He also said: “There can be … no basis for government funding based on race no basis for introducing Maori wards in local authority elections and no obligation for local governments to consult Maori in preference to other New Zealanders.”—he reckons. How pitiful! 
When asked a question about Maori Television in an interview Don Brash said: “I think there is an obligation on the ground to support the Maori language. The question is is Maori Television an effective way of doing that? I think that what we have seen so far is not encouraging about this being an effective or efficient way of encouraging Maori language. I suspect that it might have been very much more efficient to provide more Maori language school books or books in general.” Hey we have been there! “I think the way they have gone about it is very expensive and rather inefficient.” he said. When asked whether that meant he was not sure his response was: “I’m not sure.” 
People who have engaged themselves in the renaissance of the Maori language—or of any language whatsoever—know that television is not only the strongest medium to encourage the revival of a language but also the fundamental building block for Maori language development. Let me give this old adage: “Ignorance is bliss; tikanga Maori is a virtue”. Kia ora tatou katoa. 
We have had a kind of SIS presence: a PC eradicator an annihilator of diverse and ethnic cultural needs and identifications. Why did the member Mr Mapp get that job? Dr Brash told TV3 that one of Dr Mapp’s qualifications—I ask members to listen to this—for this new post was the fact that he was “married to a Maori person”. It is not clear from that who that Maori person is. It may not be a female according to that. Surely Dr Brash is not suggesting that the ethnicity of an MP’s spouse has any bearing on the MP’s fitness to hold a position as a merit-based shadow Minister? Now I ask members to listen to this. I bring to the attention of the House an excerpt from Wayne Mapp’s maiden speech: “The liberating experience of education led me to develop equity admission programmes at the University of Auckland for Maori and Polynesian students undertaking commerce degrees”—[ 
Interruption 
] Unlike that member I do not have to eat it; I am a bit more discerning than that. 
I ask members to imagine a person who has gone through three different political reincarnations and who now sits in the National Party a party that is committed to the abolition of the Maori seats. The member represented Te Tai Tokerau in the Maori seat and in the second term he represented Te Tai Tokerau again and was a Minister of Maori Affairs to boot. There can be only one reason for that. The man has had a classic metamorphosis in shape colour and code. That is the kind of consistency that is sitting on the Opposition benches. The member’s name of course is the Hon Tau Henare. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Has this taken all day to put together? 
Hon MAHARA OKEROA 
: No not at all. Not all of us are slow learners. Some of us have an intellectual capacity that even surpasses that member’s capacity. 
This morning’s  
New Zealand Herald  
had a comment made by Chris Tremain. It is an excellent statement and I was moved by it. He acknowledged Maori as the “first tangata whenua” and acknowledged the “beautiful language” te reo the customs nga tikanga and the treasures—taonga. He said: “While by no means am I fluent in te reo I am learning Maori because I believe that it is the founding language of this country and that it should never be lost.” However unfortunately I am confused. If a member of the National caucus is saying that in total opposition to what the leadership of the National Party is saying then I have a problem. Yes I have a problem but at least that member has the mana and the strength to espouse something that is in total contradiction to what the leadership of the National Party is saying about our future in New Zealand in terms of our race relations. 
No reira pai hoki te mihi ki a tatau. Tena koutou tena koutou ka mutu. 
[ 
It is good to acknowledge ourselves. Greetings to you collectively and thank you. I end here 
.]  
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 First of all tonight I would like to acknowledge the kind words of all those members who have made mention of Rod Donald in their speeches in this debate. On behalf of my colleagues here in the House the Green Party more generally and Rod’s family I thank them again for remembering Rod for the larger-than-life person that he was and for the tremendous contribution he made to this Parliament during his time here and to our evolving parliamentary system. I would also like to thank members of Parliament more broadly too for the presence of so many at Rod’s funeral in Christchurch and at his memorial service here on Monday this week and for their general kind understanding about how it has been for us over this period—and still is. We do appreciate their thoughtfulness and support at this time. 
Turning now to the Speech from the Throne I would like particularly to pick up on comments made about our country’s social welfare system. Although I welcome the assurance that the Government intends to “continue to provide a base of security for all New Zealanders alongside the provision of opportunities for work” I have considerable apprehension about what lies behind those nice words. The Government states its intention to take further action to “encourage and support those on sickness and invalids benefits to participate in the workforce.” Although on the face of it that could be construed as an entirely laudable goal when those words are allied with recommendations in the briefing paper from the Ministry of Social Development to the incoming Minister my sense of foreboding increases exponentially. 
The relevant briefing paper—part of what the Hon David Benson Pope called a “social encyclopaedia” when it was released last week—talks about eligibility for sickness and invalids benefits moving to a similar basis to the way that the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) administers its support for claimants. If the Government takes that up it would be the next step in a logical process which started in the Government’s last term of more stringent work-testing and the increasing use of accredited doctors as the department moves to push people off those benefits and into either paid work of any sort or on to the unemployment benefit which is tested much more punitively. 
The Green Party has no problem whatsoever with this or any other Government pledging to do more to help sickness and invalids beneficiaries to seek careers advice paid employment or training. But we are concerned about the current apparent strengthening of the ideological drive that says that ultimately almost all sick injured and disabled people should be in the paid workforce at almost any cost and behind that about the use of the administration of the social welfare bureaucracy to help make that happen. There are many accident compensation claimants around the country who tell their stories of the hell their lives have been reduced to through a system that focuses on getting people off income-related compensation as soon as possible rather than on fully rehabilitating people and getting them into jobs they really want to do leaving them often enough to languish on the dole on the sickness or invalids benefit or on nothing at all. In fact it is clear that one of the reasons we have an increasing proportion of sickness and invalids beneficiaries is that a number of them are people who have been driven off accident compensation and have nowhere else to turn. It will be a miserable thing if this Labour Government chooses to side with the doctrines of the right and intensifies its systemic harassment of the very people who are already suffering ill-health and impairment. 
The Government also needs to realise that despite record low unemployment figures and labour shortages in a number of geographical and industrial areas there are still hundreds of thousands of able-bodied people who want work and cannot get it or who cannot get enough of it to survive financially. Until and unless the problem of unemployment among the able-bodied and well population is solved I do not see any reason why sickness and invalids beneficiaries should soon be the subject of things like the notorious ACC work capacity tests or a global accredited doctor scheme. The Government should also acknowledge that many people on those benefits would love to have paid jobs but that the barriers to their gaining employment remain in many cases enormous. The Disability Strategy is great on paper but the reality of life for many people with or recovering from severe mental illness major physical sickness or injury and/or intellectual impairment is that there are still massive barriers to acceptance by employers and funding for support services remains far lower than the existing need—much less any future need driven up by those new policies that might come in. 
The second area of concern for the Green Party is the recommendation in the briefing paper from the Ministry of Social Development that states: “Consideration should be given to a part-time work test for sole parents strengthening the current planning approach.” Why is the much-vaunted personal development and employment planning process not good enough now? As I quoted in the House earlier today the Hon Steve Maharey in 2002 commented: “The vast majority of people currently receiving the widow’s benefit or the domestic purposes benefit are highly motivated to move into work and do not need to be shoehorned into any job going and the new rules recognise that raising healthy successful children is important. Being a good parent must come first.” Great stuff Mr Maharey! I wonder whether Mr Maharey has changed his mind or whether the new Minister has some new ideas that are actually based on the Jenny Shipley – Margaret Bazley thinking of the 1990s which was all about getting solo parents—mainly mums—out to work at almost any cost. 
The Labour Government of the last 6 years has had the decency to recognise that bringing up children on one’s own is and can be a worthy full-time job and that when children are young when there are many of them or when they are sick or disabled that job becomes even more difficult—not just when the children are under 5 or under 7. The current personal development and employment plan regime is a finely tuned balance between helping sole parents to plan ahead for training education and paid work which at the same time avoids forcing people into the paid workforce when the time is not right for either parent or children. I hope that the Minister and his colleagues will not cave in to the advice from the Ministry of Social Development or to pressure from their partners on the right. However I am worried by the fact that when I asked the Minister the Hon David Benson Pope at question time today whether he could assure the House and the public that he would not be taking up that ministry advice on sole parents and invalid and sickness beneficiaries he gave no such assurance. Instead he avoided that part of my question and wandered off into the realm of disability payments. 
The Green Party will be watching the Government’s next moves on the benefit system very closely. We will not get a high-wage high-skill full-employment economy by following the advice of officials who seem sadly to be held in the thrall of 1990s Treasury economists. Nor will we get it by cutting the special benefit and plunging the next generation of beneficiaries into deeper despair degradation and debt after the middle of next year. It ill behoves the Labour Government to turn back to the days of beneficiary-bashing social welfare reform during a term of Parliament when it is likely sadly to see rising unemployment again and more rather than fewer people forced into reliance on the benefit system. 
Alongside unemployed workers of course are their fellows who are fortunate enough to be on wages and in paid employment. Again the Government is dragging the chain totally unnecessarily. The Green Party went into the recent election calling for an immediate rise in the minimum wage to $12 an hour. Some other political parties and the union movement also supported that call yet sadly Labour seems determined to put that off for at least another 3 years. Even then it is not making a definite commitment. Nor is Labour doing anything about getting rid of the iniquitous youth minimum wage for 16 and 17-year-olds which sees them on a base rate of $7.60 an hour. I congratulate the Unite! trade union members who today launched their “Supersize my pay!” campaign with a groundbreaking strike and picket at an Auckland Starbucks Coffee outlet. 
Starbucks Coffee workers are typical of those who have been left to languish on wages that are far too low for anyone to live on much less people who live in Auckland. The Working for Families package and accommodation supplement continue to provide massive subsidies to employers like Starbucks Coffee and to others who have no scruples about paying their staff as little as they can get away with at the expense of the taxpayer. Three years is far too long for workers like those to wait and I wish Unite! all the best for its campaign alongside similar moves from other unions that are happening at present. 
Hopelessly low wages and a dysfunctional inadequate benefit system underpin the ongoing high rates of child poverty in this country. The same Ministry of Social Development briefing that I referred to earlier states that in 2003-04 94000 children in sole parent families and 120000 children in two-parent families were living in poverty or below what the social report likes to call the “low-income threshold”. I doubt that those numbers are much different today. That is a disgrace in a developed country like ours. A Labour Government in its third term should be doing everything it possibly can to end poverty. It should not compound it by continuing the structural discrimination against beneficiaries by further harassment of beneficiaries or by persisting with unbelievably low minimum wages. 
Over the next 3 years we in the Green Party will be doing everything we can to hold this Government to account. We would love to see a Labour Government that this time round sticks to principles of fairness and equity for all its citizens and does not get suckered into further attacks on low-wage workers unemployed people and beneficiaries and their children.