Dunne Peter: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Dunne Peter: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:615;Page:10803] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 When this House resumed a few hours ago it was perhaps appropriate that the first action we took was to pass a resolution congratulating both the New Zealand softball team and the New Zealand rugby sevens team on their successes at the weekend. Anyone who watched both those encounters would have observed that as the triumph was unfolding for both the softballers and the rugby sevens team the reaction of the crowd was one of joy and excitement because this was a New Zealand triumph—all of us were in it together. In the same way when Keisha Castle-Hughes was nominated for an Oscar we all took pride in that achievement—as we do in the nomination of Peter Jackson and the 14 others associated with  
The Lord of the Rings 
 trilogy. 
When we contrast that sense of general uplift satisfaction and pride in achievement with what happened at Waitangi last week one has to wonder about the continued relevance of that celebration. It may well be that it was hijacked by extremists. It may well be that the agenda being promoted by those extremists was not of the mainstream. But whatever the circumstances it is intolerable that both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition whoever they might be are subject to such discourtesy such downright rudeness and such violence. I do not believe it is appropriate for either to return to Waitangi while no guarantee can be given for their safety or security on that occasion. 
I further believe that the Waitangi celebrations we saw this year almost exceeding the efforts of previous years to be boorish and narrow cannot continue in the same way as they have previously. This is supposed to be the day on which we celebrate our nationhood as New Zealanders. Year on year we are subject to a spectacle of argument about exclusion about division about bitterness and about who can and cannot be there. Year after year many many more New Zealanders simply turn away and decide that Waitangi Day is a good day to dig the garden have a lie-in or just go to the beach. We cannot profess to have any sense of nationhood while our national day is demeaned in this way. 
I believe very strongly in the words of Norman Kirk at Waitangi in 1974. On that occasion I am sure we all remember when hand in hand with the little boy he strode across the marae. Waitangi Day is a day for all New Zealanders to celebrate the unique gift we possess by virtue of the fact that we are New Zealanders. I think it is time to rekindle that spirit he spoke of. For that reason I am resuscitating the New Zealand Day Bill that I moved unsuccessfully in this House a couple of years ago. I believe it is time for New Zealanders to celebrate being New Zealanders and not forever to parade the divisions and bitterness we see around us. 
Moving on from that the real issue that lies at the core of some of the comments made in debate this afternoon about the issues surrounding the foreshore and seabed and other matters is that there is no clear sense in this country of what being a New Zealander is all about. We are many strands from many different cultures. The intermixing of those strands makes the modern New Zealander and that is our uniqueness. For a long time this country was a starkly bicultural society but the change in our population mix over the last 20 years has us on the verge of becoming the world’s first truly great multicultural nation. The challenge we face and must be prepared to address is whether we are prepared to embrace that possibility and work towards making it a reality—or shrink from it and with that ensure we remain whether it be through positive discrimination policies or their abrupt termination divided one against the other. 
While we are divided for whatever reason or purpose we have no prospect of building a nation. While we are a country where there are winners and losers and they are identified as such our nationhood takes second place. The lessons of history are many and profound about the failure of States to be able to build coherently on division amongst their peoples. So I think the challenge that faces this Parliament this Government and other political parties is to start to address fundamentally the issue of our identity. 
That has other consequences that we have to be prepared to face up to as well. We are seeing constitutional change occurring in New Zealand—not by any deliberate strategy but at the moment by stealth. Whatever the reasons for the abolition of the right of appeal to the Privy Council whatever the reasons for the various other mini constitutional changes that have occurred over recent years they have not been made clear. New Zealanders have been left with a very clear sense that an agenda is being run that is systematically seeing profound change occur of which they have no real part. If we are going to build the foundation of a cohesive inclusive nation then we need to start by saying that those things that are the pillars upon which this nation is built—our constitutional and legal provisions—are changed only by the consent of and with the understanding of the people of this country. 
In my view we need to come back to having as a starting point a wide-ranging constitutional review so that all the issues that get picked at and tossed into the argument from time to time can be placed on the table at once—to be discussed argued about and have positions formed around. While we do not do that the suspicion animosity division and bitterness we see portrayed from time to time on a range of issues will continue and we will continue to be not one nation and not even many strands of one nation. We will continue to be a group of people living on these islands far from anyone else that is soulless and lacks identity and purpose. All of our economic objectives and all the pious hopes that can ring around the walls of this House about what we might aim to achieve will fail if we as a nation lack a sense of our national purpose. 
So as this House resumes its sittings for 2004 the real issue we need to confront is how we restore that sense of national purpose and identity. At the moment we are in the fortunate position where the proceeds of a very strong economy are obvious and the Government is indicating a willingness to seek to return the benefit of some of those proceeds to the people of New Zealand. One might argue as some have that that is a cynical political move. Others might say that this is after all what the process of Government is about—that is to create the opportunities that it can then return to the public. Either view is limited. The reality is that if we are to start to see more inclusion generated by Government action in terms of better health and education outcomes and better opportunities in other areas then they too need to be advanced in a context of what it is our society is about. 
The United Future party has a very clear view of that process. We start from the position that the family is the building block of a society. A society is communities towns cities and suburbs within cities but the family is the starting building block. If we are in a position to get that first building block right then so many others will follow. If one thinks about it in abstraction there is absolutely no point in any Government anywhere following good sound economic policies or promoting free and open international trade or doing any other range of things just for itself. The only point is that Governments deliver benefit back to the group that is at the core of society—that is the families upon which our nation is built. 
I heard some sneering comments earlier on about the Families Commission that were inaccurate as well as ill considered. One of the reasons we have been so strong and determined in promoting that commission is because it is going to the core of what it is to construct the type of society about which I am speaking. One cannot talk about a commitment to family or a recognition of the role of parents or the desirability of children being brought up in a stable loving two-parent environment if one does not then do what can be done to put in place not so much the building blocks but the reassurances to enable that process to occur. 
I find it extraordinary that up and down New Zealand one can go into any retail outlet in the country to buy any item of hardware and one is loaded down with warranties instruction books and every other explanatory tool about how to make the confounded thing work. But when one becomes a parent in New Zealand one is absolutely on one’s own. One is assumed to have inherited the knowledge—and thankfully many have—and know how to apply it. But if parents run into difficulty the way our society works at the moment is that it is their problem; they have obviously failed. So parents do not put up their hands when they need help and children suffer and dysfunction occurs. We have to start to change that climate. That is one of the things that we as a party are very strongly and unashamedly in favour of. 
That is why we think for instance that the current structure of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services is beyond repair. It cannot be rebuilt yet again. We need to take a zero-up approach and start to put in place a structure that not only will meet the need in terms of being able to deal with the caseload but also the needs of the children and the parents. 
While I think that parenting is a virtue and a skill that does not receive the recognition that it ought to I also think it is an awesome responsibility. We should not be ashamed to say to parents that they are responsible and accountable for the actions of their children and we will hold them so. We have had appalling circumstances in this country in the not too distant past of gross family dysfunction where Government agency after Government agency fell over itself trying to determine which one of them was responsible and where the one element that was somehow relieved of any responsibility were the parents of the child or children concerned. In a responsible society we cannot continue that situation—so well captured by a Tom Scott cartoon of a young thug coming from a vandalised house and saying: “Boy wait till I find the Government department responsible for this.” We have to make parents in this country fundamentally responsible as part of their accountability. 
One of the things we also need to do—and it is a priority that this party will be focusing on during the course of this year—is to look at how we deal with the concerns of the next generation—specifically the mounting student loan debt burden. It is time to start to move away from the current arrangements where we have this 25-year determination that somehow a child is the responsibility of its parents until that age. That is absurd. I had been married many years at the age of 25 and I think my parents would have been horrified to think that they were still responsible for me at that time. We need to look at how we move away from that towards a more universalised system. We also need to look at bringing in bonding as a way to pay off some of the debt incurred through years of service. Otherwise all we are doing is setting up the most elaborate and expensive training operation here for our young people to go overseas often never to return. 
We also need to be doing a lot more to recognise the work in our community of the people who keep it going—that is our volunteers. Up and down New Zealand many social agencies operate solely because of the goodwill of volunteers. We rely on them. Indeed we take them for granted. If they were not there Meals on Wheels Citizens Advice Bureaux and many of the voluntary agencies that people go to when they need help simply would cease to operate. As part of the dividend we are talking about restoring to people this year I think we ought to look at a modest community volunteers rebate to recognise the contribution of our community volunteers. Many people donate to charity and I see that a charities bill is in the programme this year. However many others who are not in a financial position to do so donate their time and we ought to recognise that in the same way that we recognise their financial contribution. 
We ought to get tough on the gangs again. We know the scourge of methamphetamine up and down the country. I suspect that as a nation we are almost sick and tired of hearing that yet again a crime was P-induced. We need to be bold about reversing the onus of proof where the manufacturers of P are concerned so that we can deprive them of their assets and help to shut down their operations. We ought to follow the steps taken by Labour Governments in Western Australia QueenslandSouth Australia and Great Britain in that regard and I do not think that we should be bashful. 
Finally given the property boom and the sort of crisis we saw on the North Shore of Auckland last year—which we will see repeated elsewhere as property prices continue to rise—one of the priority areas for action is to lift the burden of the “tax on the tax” which is GST on rates. Effectively that would be a 12.5 percent cut in the mounting rates burden of many people and many households. For people on fixed incomes it would have a huge advantage. For people struggling to raise a family it might be the equivalent of another couple of pairs of shoes for the kids. However it is an important signal in terms of priorities. It is about saying that the building block of our society is our families. In addition to recognising that we need to start to take some practical steps to give effect to that commitment. 
Then moving on from there we need to be much more focused on the wider environment of our nation in terms of how we bring the diverse strands together how we recognise the equality of all before the law and how we ensure that our national day—the apogee of our celebration of nationhood—is one we become proud of and not one that we start to hide our head in shame at the prospect of. 
 This year Waitangi Day was a wake-up call in that respect and I believe that this Parliament as it deals with all the issues outlined in the Prime Minister’s statement and in the other speeches we have heard so far ought to be mindful of this: the ultimate test in the eyes of our people and the wider world and of our purpose and unity as a nation is how we portray ourselves. If the image of how we portray ourselves is what we saw at Waitangi last week then it is a pretty sad story. I think we can do better and I am confident that with goodwill and determination this Parliament and the people of New Zealand can work to achieve that better outcome.