Mapp Wayne: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading 
Mapp Wayne: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:624;Page:19612] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I would like to take the opportunity to look at some of the things that are buried within the heart of this bill as I read it but that speak a great deal about the values of this current Government. I refer the House to schedules 5 and 6 which are buried deep in the bill. It is not surprising that those schedules are buried deep in the bill because in them we find statutory references to myth and legend. We are incorporating into the law of the land that these are a legally legitimised world view. It is an issue not of personal religious belief or iwi history but of incorporating into the law that kind of approach. For instance we find in schedule 5 a specific reference to Te Whakakau Ariki last being seen by elders in 1950 while they were setting an eel trap. We are incorporating the idea of a ghost—a spirit being—as part of the law of the land. We find the same again in schedule 6 which refers to Rakeimarama who with his incantations and powers through his karakia caused an island in the lake of Rotoma to disappear. That is in the law of the land. 
I say that that is political correctness taken to absurdity. It is the cancer at the very heart of this Government. The Labour Government has a fringe agenda driven by people in this Parliament and by their henchmen and henchwomen in the bureaucracy. That agenda is being forced on mainstream New Zealand through the law. The Government has to ask why there is such an incredible ferment about the article containing the interview with Mr John Tamihere. It is not only about the criticisms of particular individuals. It is not about whether certain people are tossers and others are smarmy and so forth. Those are the issues of excitable political headlines. Deeper within the core of that article is a question of values. It is that aspect of the interview that has struck such a chord with the New Zealand public. That is why the media has focused on it. What John Tamihere has revealed is the secret heart of the Labour leadership—the secret agenda that it wants to foist upon New Zealanders. One finds that agenda buried in legislation never near the beginning of the legislation. It is buried in the schedules but it is there nevertheless. 
Those kinds of recitations those references within our legislation to the spirit world and pagan religion did not exist in earlier settlements. There was no need for them because they are not actually what settlements are about. If a Government wants to change the way people think—if a Government wants to have an agenda that states that certain modes of thought are correct and other modes are incorrect—then it will start to insert those kinds of references into legislation and to stack various commissions and bodies with people who think only one way and demand that other New Zealanders think the same way. One has only to think about the reaction of Joris de Bres to Dr Brash’s speech in 2004. He said that New Zealanders were not permitted to raise those questions. He said that it was dangerous. That is the mark of the politically correct. They want to bury debate and to stifle the mainstream views of New Zealanders. 
So I ask myself why we even find references in our law to Maori myths and legends. I am one of those who take a certain amount of pride in those myths and legends. They are part of the history of our country. They are not part of the law of the land and they should not be. The law of the land is supposed to apply to all New Zealanders without fear or favour and without reference to religion. So why are those myths and legends included? Is it an example of guilt—is it guilt that causes those things to be represented? Is it as Winston Peters would say sickly white liberalism? Is it an example of extreme political correctness? Or is it a blend of all of those three things? I believe that this approach sets a dangerous pattern for our future. We are supposed to be a country moving forward into the 21st century. We are supposed to be a country that in the words of Shane Jones a Labour list candidate is putting the grievance and the consistent and constant reference to culture behind us. But in fact we are seeing those things ever more deeply inserted into our law. 
 I believe that that is precisely why Mr Tamihere’s speech has struck such a deep chord. He has revealed to the country what beats at the heart of the Labour Party. Members sitting in this Chamber know the truth of that. They know that there is a group of people in the Labour Party who do not represent the mainstream of this country. Their values are essentially those of the fringe and of the minority and they have no respect for the values that have been at the heart of this nation for more than a century. These references in schedules 5 and 6 will ultimately be the downfall of this Government. They will be the reason why New Zealanders ultimately reject this Government. New Zealanders will know as is revealed buried deep in this legislation that they have a Government whose values are alien to mainstream New Zealanders—values that distort and pervert our history values that have no place in a modern forward-looking New Zealand and values that do not unite people but only serve to remind people of difference not of unity.