Harawira Hone: Succession (Homicide) Bill — First Reading 
Harawira Hone: Succession (Homicide) Bill — First Reading 
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HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. Tena tatou te Whare. I would like to start my korero today by referring to some comments made by both the Labour Party and National Party speakers on this bill all of whom referred to the “settled principle” or the “established and accepted practice” that people should not be able to profit from their wrongdoings. I have to ask if that is so then how come Governments in the 21st century in this country are still making millions and millions of dollars off the resources that have been stolen from Maori people for the last 180 years continuing with the foreshore and seabed and are likely to continue with the theft of the water as well? I think if we are going to start throwing out those kinds of phrases then perhaps people need to be thinking about making them stick to reality in this House. 
The Succession (Homicide) Bill brings with it a heavy burden for the Maori Party because of the huge and gut-wrenching impact homicide—murder—has on Maori. Murder breaks the sanctity of whakapapa which is one of the foundation blocks of a healthy Maori society. Everything has a mauri a life essence and every human life is a precious and revered gift. So homicide is the severing of whakapapa. It is more than just the destruction of an individual; it is also about the shattering of whanau of hapu and of iwi. I regret to add that recent studies confirm that those adults most at risk from homicide are Maori men aged 20 to 24. Even more alarming is the fact that those most at risk from child homicide are Maori baby boys. 
This bill is supposed to stop people who kill somebody from benefiting from their victim’s death whether it is through insurance inheritance or other means. In general terms I can say that the Maori Party supports the intention of this bill to clarify the law preventing murderers from benefiting from their victim’s death to reduce the number of disputes referred to the courts which is often costly complex and lengthy and to clarify the principle that nobody should profit from the murder of another or from their own wrongdoing. 
As we debate this issue I note that there are still many other major questions about the trends in homicide that warrant further inquiry. One of the most obvious is that while most of the other rich nations have reduced their child homicide rate over the last 20 years New Zealand’s has increased. I am not trying to score points; this is too serious for that. But in the whole of the OECD New Zealand is the third-worst for child homicide and within that Maori children are twice as likely to be killed as any other. It seems that for all our good intentions we are failing ourselves and even more important we are failing our future generations. 
There are heaps of theories about why homicide is on the rise in Aotearoa. Professor Eru Pomare in his 1995 report  
Hauora: Maori Standards of Health 
 said that increasing homicide rates amongst Maori “indicate a classic pattern of a population undergoing an upturn in unemployment and hardship”. His statement is backed up by the US experience which shows that a 1 percent rise in unemployment leads to a 6 percent rise in homicide rates. 
Another explanation for rising homicide trends is the impact of alcohol. In Australia homicide rates have gone up in line with higher per capita alcohol consumption and in New Zealand alcohol abuse has also been identified as one of the major risk factors in our annual average of 71 homicides. Again drawing on international experience and our own statistics we see that domestic violence and homicides are increasingly associated with problem gambling. Studies show that many gamblers are becoming even more reliant on loan sharks and more desperate to keep their heads above water—and indeed on their own shoulders. In this week Mental Health Awareness Week I would just like to point out that contrary to popular misconception only a small number of homicides are committed by people with severe mental illnesses. 
I do not mention these arguments to detract in any way from the brutality of murder or to try to lessen the numbing sense of loss for those families who have suffered a loss by homicide. I raise them because they highlight a number of areas where we as a nation can and should be taking concrete steps to reduce our murder statistics. Most murders in Aotearoa are committed by people who are closely related to the victim but perhaps the most chilling analysis applies to child homicide which shows that nearly every child killed is killed by someone within his or her immediate family circle. Our kids are being killed by parents step-parents grandparents de facto partners brothers sisters or other relatives. Our kids are being killed by us and for me the most chilling aspect of that analysis is that nearly half of those kids are being killed by Maori. 
I said earlier that the Maori Party was apprehensive about this bill because Maori live every day with the profile of those who die from homicide; indeed we live with the profile of those who commit homicide as well for both the perpetrators and the victims are disproportionately Maori. It is because of that and because of our knowledge of the impact that this bill will have on future generations that I signal here a number of concerns about the effect this bill may have on denying a person’s whakapapa because of an act they will regret for the rest of their life the possibility of denying a person’s descendants their inheritance and the ready acceptance by society of a Maori profile when homicides are committed but the denial of tikanga Maori as a way of dealing with many of the factors that lead to homicide. The Maori Party will be watching carefully to ensure that convicting someone of homicide does not disenfranchise his or her mokopuna from their rights to their whakapapa their whanau and their whenua. 
We also notice that there are still some critical issues that need to be defined in this bill in terms of how we deal with people who whether intentionally or recklessly unlawfully kill another person. These are questions like: if the person who kills is prevented from receiving property then who should receive it? What if all parties affected by a homicide feel that denial of inheritance should not apply? What about the succession to and disposal of Maori land which is dealt with under the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act of 1993 if the bill details only the relationship of the Land Transfer Act? What about the provisions regarding Maori freehold land or Maori land interests that are not properly covered by this bill but that have huge implications for Maori? 
I return to some of the key issues I raised during this korero. Of course there is already a huge body of research about many of the factors critical to the understanding of homicide such as alcohol consumption the availability of weapons gambling poverty stress unemployment and hardship. We know that most of these factors can be positively addressed through well-understood and clearly targeted policy intervention. That they are not suggests a massive and abysmal failure in the Government’s ability to manage the transition between hard data positive policy-making and effective intervention. This bill may be specific to one aspect of homicide but any time is a good time to speak to the factors contributing to this problem and what value we truly place on the right to life liberty and security. 
In closing I wish to mention something my co-leader is noted for having said about the death of the Kahui twins. When asked whether they looked peaceful he said: “No they looked dead.” We need to restore hope and pride in the people of this nation. Just as we as a Maori people need to look beyond the beauty the traditions and the highlights of our own history and take up the challenge of dealing with the unacceptable levels of murder within our own whanau hapu and iwi so too do we as a nation need to look beyond the romanticism of death and deal with the reality of homicide and the factors that contribute to this blight on our society. Kia ora Mr Speaker.