Cosgrove Clayton: General Debates 
Cosgrove Clayton: General Debates 
[Volume:616;Page:12454] 
CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I just want to say one thing to the buffoon from the National Party and the member from ACT who have just spoken. They challenge our Maori members to stand up. I say to Simon Power that John Tamihere the Associate Minister of Maori Affairs has already got up but I ask members opposite where Georgina te Heuheu is and where Donna Awatere Huata is. Are they going to reel them out; are they going to let them speak? Oh no they will not because each of those parties has dealt to them. I say that from that speech from the ACT member—that sort of doomsaying—he should be in the National Party because all we have heard from the National Party today is division. There is nothing about nation building. They try to fire up the race issue. Today they have fired the best bullet they have in their gun—the race issue. Now the gun is empty and the people know it. 
I can tell members that today is a historic day because today we actually continue to build a nation. Today the Government has put forward a positive solution—the positive solution—for the seabed and foreshore issue. What did we hear from Wayne Mapp and his cronies? Zip! Nothing! They had no policy and no solution. It was just “scratch the scab” racial division. Tomorrow the legislation is tabled in the House and as Michael Cullen has said publicly it delivers four-square on our promises—that is protecting public access and guaranteeing public ownership. It delivers four-square on those promises and it enshrines the four principles that we went out as a Government to consult on—access regulation protection and certainty. 
Today we have a choice. The choice today is between those who want to build a nation by providing solutions and constructive policies and those who want to engage in the squalid politics of self-interest self-indulgence and political expediency—on all sides. The people of New Zealand have given this Parliament and this Government a clear message: they want this issue sorted and they want it sorted soon. We have got the message and that is why this legislation will create certainty for all Kiwis; certainty that the rights that as the Prime Minister said they had a year ago and generations ago will be preserved for future generations. These proposals do that. The choice today is between those who want to implement these constructive solutions—that is us the Government—or those who are self-indulgent who pit Kiwi against Kiwi and that is the National Party which uses slogans and rhetoric to fire people up on the race issue; or equally those in other places who call on people of non-Maori descent to go back to their ancestral homelands and leave this country. I say the people of New Zealand have rejected the two latter points and they have accepted our solution—that is to deal with this issue in a fair-minded way because Kiwis are fair-minded. They have rejected the slogans from those opposite. They want substance. They want the promise of a viable future. 
It is now time for a mature examination of the legislation. I am not bound by collective responsibility but I am bound like every member of Parliament to do what is right; not to do what is politically expedient not to do what is self-indulgent but to do what is right so that I can look myself in the mirror every morning and front up. I say that the kids in the playpen opposite have had their day. The kids in the playpen across the aisle have had their day. It is now time—and it starts tomorrow—for the adults to take back the debate. When the legislation is tabled tomorrow the adults will indeed take back that debate and we will get on with the job of building a nation. We will get on with the job of delivering for all Kiwis the guarantee that they wanted and the guarantee that the Prime Minister gave them—to protect public access and to protect public ownership. That is enshrined in the bill. 
I challenge the National Party and the bovver boys from ACT and some—I do not say all; some of those members are much respected over here—of the trendies from the Green Party who will vote against this legislation to put up or shut up. They should put up their legislative solution put a draft on the Table so that we can read it—because we will put up our solution tomorrow and they will be able to read it—and then we can have the debate. I will go out with pride to my constituency with pride and no fear because I know that Kiwis will support this legislation. I know they will support Crown ownership and they will support certainty and we will get on with building a nation.