Turei Metiria: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:17099] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 I urge the Committee to support the Green Party’s amendments to Part 4. A number of the Opposition parties have joined the Greens in criticising it for being unnecessary a smokescreen raising expectations on the part of the community that will not be able to be met and in effect a fallacy. I hope those other parties will support the amendments of the Green Party to delete the provisions in Part 4 from the bill. 
In an earlier call I raised the issue of the white crosses on the highways which have recently come into the news because of Transit New Zealand wanting to take them down. Of course the Greens joined the community in expressing outrage about that because we recognise the significance of those crosses. We understand why it is important for people to have a physical manifestation to remind them of what happened in those places; we understand that those manifestations—those crosses—are an emotional and spiritual expression of what happened there. They are significant to the community. The practice of placing crosses on the highway has become common in the whole of our country by the whole of our community. That common practice needs to be acknowledged and protected and there need to be ways of making sure that the needs of the people are protected in some form. It needs to be recognised that those crosses on the highway form an important community function in terms of safety in terms of reminding us as we drive around that lives are put at risk. That is extremely important. 
If New Zealand First’s clauses made a difference to those white crosses—if they protected them—then this part might be useful. But there is no way that Part 4 will protect those white crosses because unless something has been a common practice since 1840 it has no protection under the bill. Part 4 provides nothing for the community because Dail Jones has the very strange idea that the best way to protect the values that people place on things like those white crosses is to apply some strange blanket rule across everything. He thinks that everything will then fall into its place and be protected equally. 
He has failed to come up with any examples other than the Auckland regatta. Even in the select committee when he and the officials were asked for other examples he was never able to come up with a single other example of what these clauses would protect yet on something as significant as valued as spiritual and as emotional as the white crosses Dail Jones’ amendments fail. They fail the community. They raise expectations that things like that will be protected but we know that in fact they will not be. So these clauses are a fallacy. They are deceptive. They distort the beliefs the understandings and the values that are held by our community. They raise expectations; the community thinks its values will be protected but they will not be. They are absolutely unnecessary. 
Some of us here who try to be good lawmakers take the point of view that we are in a privileged position here in this House and that we are required as part of our service to the community to make sure that when we enact law it is good law it has a good effect for the people of our communities and it makes a positive contribution to their lives. None of us should be supporting this ridiculous part. It is just one of a number of fallacies in the bill but none of us should support it. It is not good law. Even Labour members including Russell Fairbrother have made it very clear that Labour acknowledges that it has no use whatsoever. It is so simplistic that it will have no effect whatsoever anyway. I guess in part that is why those members do not mind putting it in the bill—because it has no effect. But this is law and one does not mess around with it. It is a privilege to be in this House. We need to make sure that what we pass here is good law that it does protect our citizens and that it does provide them with some positive outcomes. Yet here we are debating a whole part of a bill that is meaningless.