Hughes Darren: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Hughes Darren: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:606;Page:3387] 
There are a few things I want to say about that. I was amazed that on a day when we had the best news about employment rates in 15 years the  
Southland Times 
 managed to find a negative comment. 
Darren Hughes 
: Really? 
MARK PECK 
: It did. I talked to the person who provided it with the copy—Mr Richard Hay the chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce. He is a nice guy; I know him and I like him. I said to him that I did not particularly care what his views were about Labour’s policy on the Health and Safety in Employment Act and so on. I said he was entitled to those views and that was fine but I told him not to say that the figures were rubbish and cooked up. He asked me why not and I said because the source was the household labour force survey which is probably one of the most statistically empiric of any set of studies the Government does. He accepted—[ 
Interruption 
] I say to Mr Prebble who is interjecting that Richard Hay has considerably more intelligence than he does on these matters. Mr Hay accepted that that was right. He said that when the reporter rang him the reporter did not tell him that those were the figures. I asked him whether the reporter had told him that the rate had gone up from 3.7 to 3.9? No he did not know that either. I asked him whether the reporter had also told him that the figures for jobs compared with the September quarter had gone up from 44200 people employed to 48500 people employed. No he did not know that either. I asked him what the figures told him and he said “4300 new jobs”. That was exactly right and I told him that that was something we had to celebrate. It told me one other thing—the population in Invercargill is increasing too in a way that we can now actually measure. Now Mr Hay thought that was good news. It so happens that I put a statement out about that but it was totally ignored. That is all right. It is good news and let us not worry about good news being reported.  
I thought I would use that to illustrate the fact that Mr English has some particular problems. This is an editorial from the same newspaper on 8 February entitled “Right you go then.” It makes these comments—and Mr English can interject if he thinks I am not making the point correctly. Does Mr English think that is right? Yes he is agreeing. The editorial says: “In its weakened electoral state National has started working on the principle that right is might. The middle ground has become a wasteland for National’s ambitions so its leaders have begun to veer so far to the right in their rhetoric that some ACT party members may be feeling crowded on their holy ground … In some ways National is belatedly following a familiar pattern. When political parties take a hiding in the polls after holding power for a long time they do tend to go radical.”  
Let me also say that National’s themes are not new. Anybody who was around in the early seventies will know that the themes go this way: “Bash the unions”; “Bash the blacks”; and “Bash the solo mothers”. That is exactly what we had over the holiday break. We had “Bash the solo mothers” from Katherine Rich. Her recipe for solo mothers is to penalise the poorest of them if their kids are not inoculated. When she stands up in the House and says that she does not want kids to have Third World diseases I say to her that we only saw a re-emergence of those Third World diseases after the benefits were cut. That is when we saw them come back—and Katherine Rich wants to visit that again on the mothers of this country. There was a very interesting cartoon of Ruth Richardson going around saying: “Good news! Under National solo mothers can work again.” I suggest that Katherine Rich have a look at it because the only thing soft about her on this matter is her teeth.  
Then we had “Bash the blacks”. I want to read something else that was in my paper today which I thought was very insightful. One of Mr English’s constituents sent me an email before Waitangi Day as he was outraged that mainstream media had been banned from Waitangi. As a result he was planning to go down to Te Rau Aroha Marae in Bluff and protest. Well he kept his word. He decided he would go down to protest but the leaders of Ngai Tahu contacted him and said: “Come and join us in our celebrations.” This is what the newspaper said: “Mr Richards a former cardboard recycler was annoyed when he heard mainstream media had been banned from some events at Waitangi” and so on but instead of being brushed off he was invited to join the celebrations. “Mr Richards accepted the invitation and took his 2-year-old son with him to join Awarua runaka in celebrating the opening of their new meeting house on Saturday”—a magnificent occasion at which the Prime Minister was greeted very favourably indeed. After shaking her hand little children went away saying they would never wash their hands again—at the same time that Bill English was being booed at the Sevens.  
Mr Richards went on to say that “he felt a lot better within himself for visiting the marae. He had not visited a marae before but had been to a tangi where sadly a fight had broken out and he had not been left with pleasant memories.” These next words are important and I ask Mr English to listen carefully and let me know whether he thinks that there is not a message in them. Mr Richards said he was speaking out in the hope that others with racist feelings or anger might see his story and start to question their own hatred. He said: “I feel a lot better about myself. I had had so many years of hate and misunderstanding”. I rang that man today and congratulated him on making those comments going on to the marae in the way he did and being prepared to challenge his own prejudices. That takes bravery and I want to recognise it. I also congratulate the leaders of Ngai Tahu on dealing with the matter in a diplomatic way.  
New Zealand has changed. Not only Maori were at the opening of Te Rau Aroha Marae in Bluff; Southland society were there too. Mr English needs to know that redneck politics will no longer do. Those days are gone. The people of this country are entitled to some vision about how two peoples will live together and grow together. Ngai Tahu mean business and they will entertain Mr Richards any time—and any others like him who want to have a say.  
I finish on this note: I come from a country that never addressed its racial problems. Its founding document is the Declaration of Independence and throughout that document the drafters forgot the indigenous people of their nation. The country now suffers for that. New Zealand is the stronger. Let us celebrate our diversity and our national days.