Hague Kevin: General Debate 
Hague Kevin: General Debate 
[Volume:673;Page:19381] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 Before I begin I join the Hon Simon Power in expressing my deepest sympathy for the people of Christchurch in this really trying time. I was in Christchurch on Monday when the big earthquakes hit and it was a pretty unsettling experience. But today I want to speak about the follow-up from Pink Shirt Day. I notice that the Hon Simon Power is again wearing pink and it really states his commitment to stamping out bullying wherever it should occur. Members from most parties joined me in April in wearing pink shirts to take a stand against bullying wherever it should occur. But I am particularly concerned about the experience of young gay lesbian and transsexual people particularly in schools. The Youth’07 survey a major survey of the health status of young people in this country found that that group of young people was three times more likely than their heterosexual peers to experience bullying. Recently two organisations Rainbow Youth and Q-Youth took the initiative of encouraging young people especially to write to the Prime Minister about their experience of bullying or to express their concern about the issue. As a number of them copied their letters to the Prime Minister to me I know that that some of those letters were extremely good. 
Over 3000 letters were sent to John Key and I express my thanks and appreciation to the Prime Minister for his subsequent action of agreeing to meet with representatives of those two organisations to hear their follow-up concerns about the issues. I have been heartened by that and was particularly pleased by the comments of those organisations that they felt that they had a good hearing from the Prime Minister. 
As an adult gay man and someone who came out early in the 1970s my observation would be that my life in these days now is immeasurably better than the life I would have led as an adult gay man in the 1970s. But recently I have been saying that for the young person the 14-year-old boy who is just starting to realise his difference now that person’s experience is not greatly different from the experience I had in the 1970s. When I think about it that young person that 14-year-old still lives with expectations from all around them—from their family from their school from wider society from their friends—that they will in fact be heterosexual. 
That experience is still pretty tough and when I speak to young gay lesbian and transsexual people nowadays and ask them where their role models are actually there are precious few. They can name for me Ellen DeGeneres the TV show host. There is a character in the television programme  
Glee 
. Every now and again  
Shortland Street 
 has a gay or lesbian character. Usually they are in the story for a little while and then they get killed off at the end of the season or move away to Australia or something like that. The role models that are accessible and available to those young people are pretty few and far between as well. 
It is simply not good enough. The reality is that the feelings of fear and isolation experienced by those young people lead in turn to damaged self-esteem and that psychosocial risk factor itself leads to a real risk of plenty of health concerns and other consequences. It underpins for example drug and alcohol abuse it underpins the risk of depression and it underpins the risk of suicide. That same survey Youth’07 found that the rates of suicide attempts amongst gay and bisexual young people were five times those of their peers. That is simply unacceptable and I am certainly looking forward to the Prime Minister’s programme of change to counter those issues.