Harawira Hone: Sports Anti-Doping Bill — Third Reading 
Harawira Hone: Sports Anti-Doping Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:634;Page:6199] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker; kia ora tatou te Whare. In picking up on what the previous speaker said I note that if the country was going to reward success through Sport and Recreation New Zealand funding waka ama would probably get millions and rugby would not get anywhere near as much as it does because for all of its relative support from sponsors and from the Government its success at the highest level has yet to be achieved. 
We know that Aotearoa is a world leader in promoting and supporting drug-free sport. We are a founding member of the World Anti-Doping Agency and we were one of the first countries to introduce domestic sports drug-testing. So the Maori Party is happy to congratulate the New Zealand Sports Drug Agency on its excellent work in providing drug-free sports education to our national sporting bodies and other key agencies in providing effective drug-testing procedures and in providing educational and research programmes to underline our commitment as a nation to fair play in sport. 
 We also see this bill as an opportunity for this Parliament to take note of other values that we can draw on from our nation’s athletes: values such as integrity honesty justice morality and fairness—values that Mr Shane Jones assures me are likely to be unfamiliar to many in this House but that exist in abundance in the Maori Party caucus. 
This bill also gives the Sports Tribunal of New Zealand greater power to obtain evidence and conduct hearings on doping cases in sport. But it raises the question of whether a sports ban is a sufficient penalty particularly given that in Italy drug cheats are prosecuted as criminals whereas in Aotearoa it remains a civil rather than a criminal offence. 
I would also like to mention another key player that is promoting this bill and that is Sport and Recreation New Zealand which through its credibility and expertise right across the sporting world has played a big role in bringing together comments and opinion from national sports organisations athletes and other key stakeholders on draft anti-doping rules. Within Sport and Recreation New Zealand there is also a national network of Maori organisers that have operated under the banner of He OrangaPoutama since 1988. It is a great example of an initiative to develop healthier more active lifestyles for Maori people. It is also due to the hard work of both the New Zealand Sports Drug Agency and Sport and Recreation New Zealand that Aotearoa has been at the forefront of the fight against doping and the Maori Party is happy to record its gratitude to those two bodies for their efforts to protect an athlete’s fundamental right to participate in drug-free sport. 
In closing I would like to mention one of the key stakeholders in the Sport and Recreation New Zealand structure one Dallas Seymour a former New Zealand Sevens representative and All Black who along with Eric Rush was one of the most talented sevens players in the world. He was highly respected for the energy and thinking he brought to the game and for the school he attended St Stephen’s College. And of course his wife Julie after bringing three little Seymours into the world revitalised her own netball career and was selected for the New Zealand netball team that recently played against the Australians. In the Seymour family we see all the values that we want to promote in sport and some of the positive aspects we want to see in our athletes. In fact I was reading a blurb about Dallas the other day where he said: “I’m Maori. I’m passionately proud of our country. It’s always been an enormous privilege for me to pull on the black jersey with the silver fern—in sixteen years of representing New Zealand I never took that moment for granted. For me the jersey was motivating—each time I wore it I was deeply aware of its history and meaning which meant I knew I could perform to the best of my abilities.” 
This House can learn a lot from the leadership that our athletes exhibit. The Maori Party will support the Sports Anti-Doping Bill and we do so because of the motivation that people like Dallas Seymour give us to honour the spirit and the history of Aotearoa. Kia ora tatou. 
Bill read a third time.