Flavell Te Ururoa: Protection of Personal and Property Rights  Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Protection of Personal and Property Rights  Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 September 2007. Volume:642;Page:11757. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tatou katoa i tenei po. Few bills that come before the House reflect as perfectly our desire to live according to kaupapa handed down by our ancestors as the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Amendment Bill. This bill is ultimately about enhancing the protection and promotion of the personal and property rights of people who find themselves in a vulnerable position. In its provisions to strengthen the legislation we see this bill as an awesome opportunity to apply kaupapa tuku iho—that is those values that provide for the well-being of all. Uppermost in the bill’s intentions is the capacity for manaakitanga—the opportunity to create an environment where the personal care and welfare of others is important. 
The bill makes explicit the obligation of the attorney to act in the donor’s best interests. By way of some sort of explanation manaakitanga is behaviour that acknowledges the mana of others as having equal or greater importance than one’s own. We know that an enduring power of attorney must be established before it is required before a person becomes incapacitated. We would expect from this requirement that people are able to choose someone they can implicitly trust to act in their interests. 
The opportunity to appoint someone with an enduring power of attorney to make decisions on one’s behalf is an expression of rangatiratanga. What is rangatiratanga? The concept of rangatiratanga equates to oversight responsibility authority control and sovereignty. The onus therefore in ensuring that this legislation has validity is to ensure that regardless of any provision to create an enduring power of attorney the attorney has an obligation to encourage the donor to exercise his or her own competence. This bill establishes that as a requirement. 
In the most basic of terms the idea of getting someone to sign cheques on our behalf to deal with all our accounts policies and possessions that have meaning in our life is I would think a pretty scary prospect. The responsibility of signing over one’s enduring power of attorney is therefore a massive milestone in one’s life. In the Maori Party we understand this best through making that ultimate connection to this concept of rangatiratanga—in other words to respect the capacity for self-determination by Maori which is in keeping with the rights defined by mana atua mana tupuna and mana whenua. Within Maori world views we believe that the concepts of cultural resilience of spiritual and ancestral dimensions and of genealogical importance—concepts such as these—are best addressed by the whanau. 
This issue is of very personal relevance to our whanau having recently lost my sister Hine about 2 weeks ago. Towards the end of my sister’s life her health was compromised as she battled with the effects of not one stroke but three of them. Over these last few years we cared for my sister at our home. My wife was placed with the responsibility of her day-to-day care and support while I was here in Wellington. Although my sister Hine never got to the point of signing over powers of attorney my wife did have the financial authority to be able to act on her behalf as the situation required. It was a responsibility that my wife took extremely seriously. She was conscious of the privileged position that my sister Hine had placed her under. It was also a responsibility that as a whanau we knew had to be protected and respected in order to protect and respect my sister. 
It was through that experience that we truly came to know that the exercise of authority on behalf of another must be safeguarded at all times that we must make sure never to lose sight of the person who entrusts that confidence in us. It is absolutely about the essence of being whanau and of honouring whanaungatanga—relationships—as the fundamental organisation of our community. By this we mean that the rights and reciprocal obligations consistent with being part of a whanau collective are paramount in determining and caring for the personal welfare and rights of its members. 
 As such there are two particular concerns that the legislation has raised. The first significant change is the need to go to a lawyer or a trustee incorporation before an enduring power of attorney is granted. The second change is the need in a number of situations to go to a doctor before being able to use those powers. We consider that both of these changes reduce the accessibility and versatility of the enduring power of attorney. 
This is where we face the greatest conflict for although we support the need for strengthening accountability through the new witnessing requirements we hope that the procedures are as the Law Commission put it “as swift inexpensive informal and lawyer free as possible”. We endorse the comments made by the National Council of Women which warned that the legislation must not make the process so cumbersome that whanau members—family members—avoid it and the benefits it provides. We agree with the council that a review of the provisions should take place in 5 years to really test its effectiveness. 
But in the trade-off between reducing bureaucracy and unnecessary paperwork we would be reluctant to act in any way to open up situations of misuse of enduring powers of attorney. Again the Law Commission described such misuse as including some of the following. There is outright embezzlement which is sometimes rationalised by the attorney as “borrowing”; it is something like “I am sure if mum understood she wouldn’t mind.”—that sort of stuff. Other incidents that the Law Commission talked about were the attorneys helping themselves to the donors’ belongings; failure to support the donors going to an appropriate residence when that is clearly necessary or conversely prematurely institutionalising the donors to suit the attorneys’ lifestyle; and in the worst-case scenario selling the donors’ home without their knowledge or consent. 
Such actions are an outright breach of the spiritual and cultural guardianship derived from whakapapa. Kaitiakitanga demands that attorneys would take on active exercise of responsibility in a manner beneficial to the welfare of the whanau. Yet tragically all of the evidence is telling us that men and women of all ages and of all ethnicities are experiencing elder abuse and neglect although it appears to be most common amongst those in their 70s and early 80s. And so we—reluctantly it must be said—accept that the legal professionals and authorised officers who are engaged independently of the attorney are a vital means of providing an extra safeguard against undue influence. 
I want to refer to the principle of kotahitanga as the expression of unity of purpose and direction. In the interests of kotahitanga I believe that it is incumbent upon the Government and the Minister to ensure that full and informed dialogue and information sharing takes place amongst our communities about the procedures for creating enduring powers of attorney. The House would be shocked by the  
New Zealand Medical Journal  
article entitled “Doctors elder abuse and enduring powers of attorney” which described widespread ignorance amongst doctors and other professionals dealing with incapacitated patients of the scope and nature of the powers granted when an enduring power of attorney is donated. I want to share with the House one of the warnings of the article and I quote: “The Enduring Powers of Attorney properly used should act as a shelter for the elderly from the vicissitudes of life”— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: That’s easy for the member to say! 
TE URUROA FLAVELL 
: —yes and it is not even Maori—“not as a weapon in the hands of the unscrupulous attorney.” There is a strong message there—if members actually understood what I said—and it is that those who are not fully able to manage their own affairs must be protected and respected. This bill is the key way of doing that. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Say it again with feeling. 
TE URUROA FLAVELL 
: I will say it at the end. 
Finally I am aware of the report from Age Concern New Zealand in April 2004 that no Maori clients were recorded as having enduring powers of attorney for property and that in general Maori have been less likely to appoint someone to hold this role. And so the question for us the Maori Party is that given that the provision of enduring powers of attorney can if used responsibly be such a powerful means of supporting our whanau we would hope that every effort is put into ensuring that the policy is promoted throughout Maori communities. We are happy to support the second reading of the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Amendment Bill and in the 2 minutes that I have left I will try to pronounce that word properly—“vicissitudes”. I rest my case. Kia ora tatou.