Dunne Peter: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Dunne Peter: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
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Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 The Prime Minister properly spoke earlier this afternoon of his aspirations for New Zealand and he couched them in very positive tones. But the reality is that this country today—like many others around the world—is in the doldrums. This country is feeling buffeted by all of the consequences of the hugest international economic recession since the 1930s. Right around the world jobs have been shed. Right around the world debt has increased. People have struggled to overcome adversity. In Australia we have seen huge natural disasters. We have seen the Christchurch earthquake and the Pike River tragedy in this country. All of those impact on the ability of this country to pull itself up and move forward for the future. When we start to hear people offer easy solutions—more of the same: borrow and hope and tax more—we condemn New Zealanders today who are feeling uneasy to more uncertainty to more unease and to a greater lack of confidence in the future. That is the distinction to be drawn from the two opening speeches today. 
When we look at what is happening in other countries as they face the same range of problems we face we are starting to see some extreme reactions occur. Sadly the usual trend is for people to become set against one another to try to find a scapegoat within and blame that as being the cause of all our problems. To some extent we are seeing that in this country today with aspects of debate on the foreshore and seabed. It is a tragedy in that New Zealand we are starting to see division created amongst the people of this country for political ends. If we go and talk to people over their barbecues at summertime and speak to our neighbours friends and associates we learn what people actually want and that their aspirations are unfailingly positive for the country for themselves and for their children. They line up with the sort of thing the Prime Minister is talking about but they want to see an opportunity for them to have some say at the national table about the things that are of concern to them. They want a reassertion of a sense of nationhood and national unity because the continuation of either the ignoring of their situation or the setting of one against the other simply feeds national disharmony and prevents a stable cohesive and enduring recovery from occurring. 
It is against that background that I think it is important that New Zealand takes the opportunities provided this year to start to focus again on the sort of country we wish to become. In recent days the issue of our national day has come back on to the national agenda. People want to be involved they want to be included and they want to have the opportunity to celebrate what being a New Zealander means to them. We have seen too much of the division too much of the sideshows and too much of the capture by certain interests of particular parts of our nationhood. What in fact the people of New Zealand are saying is that we are all by force of history and nature in these islands. We are all by those same forces part of the solution not part of the problem. We all have an opportunity and a right to contribute. What New Zealand really lacks is that sense of purpose and national unity. 
We look across the Tasman. In the depth of the despair caused by the Queensland floods and the fires in Western Australia that country came together on 26 January to celebrate being Australian and to celebrate what being an Australian means to the various peoples who make up Australia. Why can we in New Zealand not have a similar enduring national opportunity where all of us—whatever our particular heritage and lineage—talk about why we are proud to be Kiwis where we bring our particular features to the national table and where the country benefits from the collective goodness that endures from that? What we have instead if one believes the polls is either a sense of vast indifference to the fact that a national day is occurring or a sense of betrayal and alienation and a feeling that a series of meetings and occasions are being captured by a particular vested interest. It is not good enough. A country set against itself is one that will not endure and will not survive. New Zealand is proud externally to portray a certain image. But why as New Zealanders can we not start the process of working with each other celebrating the cultures and backgrounds that make this country the unique place it is putting those on display and sharing them and learning from each other rather than what we have seen to an extensive and unacceptable degree over the last weekend? 
New Zealand does face some very difficult challenges. There are going to be some hard debates this year about aspects of economic and social policy and some choices will need to be made that inevitably create the argument about winners and losers as we come out of a recession and position this economy for the future. Those debates and choices can occur positively only if they do so against the backdrop of a real sense of identity and purpose about what it is to be a New Zealander today. Why can we not approach this subject with the same boldness that in so many other areas we have lauded individual New Zealanders for demonstrating? Why in talking about our nationhood can we not show the spirit and indomitability that Hillary showed in conquering Everest? Why can we not show the sense of innovation of Peter Jackson or Paul Callaghan in terms of looking at the sense of our national purpose and our national identity? Why can we not bring these strands together to say to all New Zealanders that these remarkable individuals for instance whom we laud as being our great achievers did not do that necessarily by their own dint that there was something in their national psyche that as New Zealanders made it possible for them to be so innovative and successful? Why can we not nurture that feeling in terms of taking this country forward? 
Alongside the opportunities that events like the Rugby World Cup 2011 and other similar spectacles provide the opportunity to take forward New Zealanders’ abilities and to carve and forge a new sense of nationhood based around the unique potential of everyone in this country is one we cannot afford to lose sight of. As the world comes out of economic crisis and as the world starts to reposition itself for the first half of the 21st century that sense of identity will be far more powerful and far more important to demonstrate than ever before. 
I say that as this Parliament resumes its business for 2011 alongside the particular matters that will be on the Government’s agenda and will be debated the issue of nationhood the issue of our identity as a people and the issue of ensuring that we proceed united and cohesive and do not succumb to the sorts of divisions we are starting to see occur in similar jurisdictions elsewhere that are facing the same pressures will be important and powerful issues for all of us to focus on. As this year unfolds I want to see New Zealanders not only feel better economically but also perhaps far more important feel better in themselves about who they are what they can contribute to their country and what their country means to them.