Wilson Margaret: General Debates 
Wilson Margaret: General Debates 
[Volume:606;Page:3790] 
Hon MARGARET WILSON (Attorney-General) 
: 
 The previous speaker Ron Mark exhibited what a short memory he has. His party was part of a Government that brought in the Employment Contracts Act which enabled those sorts of practices by removing all restrictions on hours of work. I do not think his comments sit too well if one wants to give his party any credibility in terms of consistency. Again it just shows a cynical use of people’s situations by someone who is not at all concerned about their well-being. 
However I wish to refer to what we have seen in this past week. It is another example of the Leader of the Opposition—or I suppose the “Leader of Opportunity”—making an attempt to assert his leadership. He has done that yet again through an attack on the Treaty of Waitangi. He has done it in such a way as to try to characterise the treaty as something we as a people should fear. He has also done it in a way that says that he as the Leader of the Opposition does not accept that New Zealand is a place in which all peoples can live together in mutual cooperation and harmony. Through his attacks on the treaty he is trying to discredit the document that gave us the legitimacy for colonisation in this country. 
From reading his comments particularly those around the fourth article—which he is probably one of the last people in New Zealand to discover—I have seen him exhibit an abysmal lack of understanding of the history of the country that he presumes to think he should be able to lead. If one goes through his comments one sees that he has no understanding of the circumstances that surrounded the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. It was a treaty that ensured that two peoples would come together in mutual agreement not through the conquest of one by the other. It enabled us to develop a society in which all peoples are respected. Hobson was sent here by the English Colonial Office to ensure that the people who inhabited New Zealand at that time gave their consent to those Europeans who wished to settle in this country. We were not settled as a country by conquest. It seems to me that that is a major major achievement for it provided for the foundation of a country that was based on mutual recognition that this is a place where we can all live in peace and harmony without one people having to dominate another people. 
It is cause for great concern that a person who puts himself up for leadership of this country should start to run his campaign on the basis of splits and divisions between the people and in particular the exclusion of the indigenous people of this country. Instead of celebrating the fact that we as a country were founded on respect for the rights of others we now find that a person who holds himself up to be a leader in this country is denying the very legitimacy of the basis upon which this country was founded. One has to ask oneself why he is trying to rewrite history at this stage. I am sure he does know something about the history of his own country so the only answer can be that he is doing it solely for cynical political benefit. 
He called the fourth article the phantom article but he is the only one who seems to think it is a phantom article. Anyone who has any understanding of the whole history and development of the treaty knows that it is an issue that has been constantly raised and referred to. It is a matter of record that the whole question of religious freedom was raised at the time that the treaty was signed. Why on earth can we not see that as a cause for celebration? Right from the founding of our country we have been prepared to accept freedom of religion whereas we now have the Leader of the Opposition casting doubt on whether there should be freedom of religion for the indigenous people of this country. He may not think that but by raising this issue in the way he has he has cast serious doubt upon whether he has the capability to lead a country in which he has to represent the interests of all people not just those whom he finds convenient.