Mahuta Nanaia: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mahuta Nanaia: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 18 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3632. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato) 
: 
 What a strange day it is indeed when in Parliament a Government Minister gets up in this House and quotes Dr Seuss. Unbelievable! She did not even make a proper quote. That type of start to a debate speech requires a response from Bugs Bunny who said “That’s all folks!”. That is all it is going to take for this Government to continue to head on the train track to a crash because it is on the wrong track.  
Time after time in this term of Parliament we have seen this Government make decisions that are fundamental errors and are eroding the confidence of New Zealanders throughout the country. Mining in national parks! Who would have believed it? Well actually everyone believed that National would do it but who would have believed that against opposition in many small communities like Coromandel the Government would pursue its desire to mine national parks and cut up the heritage that people believe is really important. In the Coromandel it is trying to put schedule 4 lands on the block to carve it up—no good. People throughout the communities did not want it. This is a really important issue to many people in communities like the Coromandel. What did National do? It closed its ears.  
Then we have things like a convention centre funded by more pokies when all the evidence suggests that in disadvantaged small communities more pokie machines mean more problem gambling for those most disadvantaged whom that Government purports to make the best decisions for. A convention centre funded by pokies—really? Is that what New Zealand wants? I do not think so. People know that we need a convention centre in Auckland but not one that is funded by pokies. For the Prime Minister to kind of imply that this is a preference deal by not ensuring that an open tender process takes place I think erodes confidence in the Government. 
 The ACC bungle. Well this was a case where one green bottle was followed by another green bottle followed by another green bottle that kept falling off the shelf. People are leaving the board of ACC because the previous Minister for ACC had to acknowledge that this was a bungle of epic proportions. Unbelievable!  
The sale of State-owned assets. Again against a huge broad mandate of many Kiwis throughout the country who did not want to see State assets sold headed by groups like Grey Power the Government continues on its train that is heading for a wreck because nobody wants to see those State-owned assets sold. There is a petition that is currently going around—in many communities it has been signed up to in droves—to caution the Government about this.  
Well if that is not enough now Maori have taken the step through the New Zealand Maori Council of getting the Waitangi Tribunal to hear the nature of the interest that Maori have in water as a means to further caution the Government that it has made a fundamental error. It is at that point that I think the Maori Party should be held to account. I applaud the speech by the previous speaker Te Ururoa Flavell who said that Te Reo Maori should be promoted ambitiously throughout this country but we cannot get away from the fact that the Maori Party is propping up National to continue its programme of action which is severely hurting many New Zealanders around the country. The sale of State-owned assets is just one part of it.  
The New Zealand Maori Council is testing the nature of the interest that Maori have in water before the Waitangi Tribunal. The Prime Minister is rubbishing the tribunal process and is implicitly rubbishing the leadership of the New Zealand Maori Council headed by former High Court judge Sir Eddie Durie. That is unbelievable at a time when the Government should be considering very carefully the nature of the interest that Maori currently have in water.  
I would argue that actually National needs the Maori Party and I suspect that the Maori Party will not leave at all. But I heard this morning from a friend who caught a plane from Auckland that there were members of the Maori Party coming down on the plane to join its members of Parliament in the 8 o’clock meeting tonight. They are trying to ensure that pressure is put on this Government— 
Hon Parekura Horomia 
: They won’t go. 
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA 
: No they will not go. They will not go and I will tell you why they will not go: they cannot go. They cannot go because they do not want to go. But the real issue here is that the Maori Party is trying to caution the Government to taihoa he kupu Maori tenei—taihoa just hold tight on selling State-owned assets—because there are too many important issues on the table. I suspect the Maori Party will not go. It should go but it will not go and it needs to reconsider its coalition deal with National.