Henare Tau: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Henare Tau: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 14 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6594. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 I was intrigued by the talk this afternoon by David Parker about unemployment. I wanted to maybe flick the House a few observations of my own. One of those observations is particularly about Maori unemployment which is not 20 percent as Mr Parker said in this House. It is unfortunately 15 percent. One of the reasons why we do have and always have had a very very large and shameful Maori unemployment rate is that we are actually very very young. Our youth population is very very large and it is one of the reasons why we have such a high unemployment rate and such other high rates of low educational standards. 
But I want to say that when people have a go at us on this side of the House for our so-called appalling 7.3 percent unemployment rate I want to reply by saying that Argentina the UK Sweden the Philippines Peru Paraguay Israel Greenland and Finland are all between 7 percent and 7.9 percent unemployment. I am not saying that it is great to have a 7 percent unemployment rate but I am saying that what people need to do is actually look very seriously at the world economy and at what effect that has had on our country and others around the world. Spain has 25 percent unemployment Greece has 25 percent unemployment Portugal has 15 percent unemployment and Ireland has 15 percent unemployment. Those figures show that the world economy did tank and it has taken a while to get back on track. 
New Zealand is no different from any other country in the world. We have our struggles. I know that there are other parties and I respect what they say in terms of where they want to go in terms of where they want to print money and do whatever. But at the end of the day we are the Government and we have to make some calls on what we do. I am absolutely glad that we do have a National Government in charge of the economy because the National Government the National Party are the only ones that have shown in the past that when there are bad times out there who do you call? Not ghostbusters of course but you call on the National Party because it has experience in running the country and in running the country in bad times. 
I want to also make this point quite clear. It is another completely different issue. There are those of my culture who continue to shout at the top of their voices that we do not recognise the white man’s law and in the same breath in court they use that excuse for their own criminality such as the growing and the supplying of cannabis to our community. This is a growing concern of mine that people—our people Maori people—are standing up in court and saying: “I don’t recognise the Pakeha law. I don’t recognise the white man’s law.” and it is because they are using their culture as an excuse for their own criminality. I am really really concerned about those people. These are people who supposedly say they are leaders in our community. My message to those people who are no more than just petty criminals—that is all they are—is to get off this bandwagon and stop using our culture which is a beautiful culture which is a magnificent culture for your own criminality. Kia ora.