Brownlee Gerry: General Debates 
Brownlee Gerry: General Debates 
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GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. If ever there was a week when the death knell began to sound for the Helen Clark Labour-led Government this was it. This was the week when the bell started to toll. One Minister went overboard one member is teetering on the brink of following her one Minister went to sleep at an inappropriate time and failed to sign a trade agreement and the Prime Minister herself told Maori that she would much rather talk with sheep than with them. This was a week when the posse came to town to put the heat on the Maori members of this House. Ten thousand people are standing out there wanting those Maori members to listen to their concerns and they are not being taken account of one iota. 
I cannot help asking whether the Prime Minister still feels that she is simply a victim of her own success. What a week it has been for the Labour Government and what a week it has been for New Zealand. For the first time in many months the smell of an election—the smell of a change of Government—is well and truly in the nostrils of the voting populace. Earlier in the week the Government narrowly survived a confidence vote. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member and I will certainly not take this off his time. There is too much loud conversation. Members can have that outside. If members have select committees to go to they can. I will give the member an extra half a minute. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Thank you Mr Speaker. Those murmurings were the nervous chatterings of the members who are about to lose their seats—the nervous chatterings of Martin Gallagher who may as well go and pack up his bags right now and the nervous chatterings of Stevie Chadwick who wonders about the great experience she will have to leave behind. There is David Parker sitting up the back the man who will be first to go. We understand that he is already casting his CV around the south of the South Island hoping to pick up where he left off in 1999. 
Earlier this week the Government survived a confidence vote narrowly and only because United Future the party that came to this Parliament to protect family values decided to retain in office the party that has done the most to damage family values in this country. I say to United Future that along with Labour it will pay the price for that foolish mistake. I ask Parliament why the Prime Minister has not gone down to talk to those in the hikoi who have assembled out the front. The National Party has made it very clear. We will not vote for this legislation but for very different reasons from the reasons of those who are standing on the forecourt today. So there is no need for us to talk to them but Helen Clark should have done a lot of explaining to those people. 
I ask Labour members of Parliament how they can expect to survive when they are doing something that their people are so patently opposed to. I ask Labour members of Parliament why there is so much confusion about this bill. I can empathise quite strongly with everybody who is standing on that forecourt protesting right now. I can empathise because like a lot of New Zealanders we think we are losing something. Maori think they are losing something and so do the rest of the population. 
The Government has the problem that although Maori will be able to claim ancestral connection to the coastline of this country non-Maori cannot. So we have fifth sixth seventh and eighth generation New Zealanders who are not Maori and who apparently—according to this law when it is passed—can never feel the same affinity for the land or love of the whenua as someone who can claim some Maori whakapapa. If the Labour Party needs to know why people are so upset over this then it needs to get in touch with that very point. It is not possible for any Government to survive if it sets out to divide and marginalise. 
The sad thing is that this Government is saying to the vast majority of New Zealanders that any connection people thought they had to the coastline around this country cannot be recognised in any way at all. But the Government is telling Maori New Zealanders to go along to the Maori Land Court and under their tikanga explain their connection and have it recognised and that a bundle of rights will flow from that; compensation will flow from that. Those who have no connection and cannot have a connection will be required to compensate those who have. That is a recipe for ongoing treaty grievance and that will be the legacy of this outgoing Labour Government. Labour members may sit over there chewing their lollies now trying to ignore the seriousness of the situation but Helen Clark will be remembered as the Prime Minister who split this country down the middle.