Harawira Hone: Aviation Crimes Amendment Bill Civil Aviation Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Readings 
Harawira Hone: Aviation Crimes Amendment Bill Civil Aviation Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Readings 
[Volume:642;Page:11963] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tenatatou katoa i te Whare. Last week was the anniversary of 9/11 and last week was also the anniversary of the death of Steve Biko. He was born on 18 December 1946 and died on 12 September 1977. Steve Biko was a noted anti-apartheid activist in South Africa. He was arrested under the Terrorism Act of South Africa on 18 August 1977. He was brutally treated and eventually he died on 12 September. Although the police claimed his death was due to an extended hunger strike an autopsy showed that he died from massive injuries to the head consistent with the torture commonly practised by the apartheid police of the time. Coincidentally 12 September is also the 26th anniversary of the last test of the 1981 Springbok Tour during which a squad was specifically named after the anti-apartheid hero Steve Biko. 
More important for Aotearoa last week was also the birth of probably the most important piece of international legislation ever for Maori. Thursday 13 September 2007 will be forever remembered by indigenous people all around the world as the day on which the United Nations General Assembly after 25 years of effort by indigenous people the world over voted to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. As we consider these bills today on security and seizures and on human rights I ask us to note that Thursday 13 September 2007 will also be forever remembered by Maori people all around the world as the day on which a select group of Maori MPs—namely the Maori Party caucus of Tariana Turia Dr Pita Sharples Te Ururoa Flavell and myself—along with MetiriaTurei of the Green Party expressed their full and formal support for the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 
Thursday 13 September 2007 will also be forever remembered by Maori people all around the world as the day on which another select group of Maori people—namely the Labour Maori caucus of Parekura Horomia Dover Samuels Nanaia Mahuta Mahara Okeroa Mita Ririnui and Shane Jones—stood alongside the Government in opposing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Yes it is hard to believe but it is true. While the Maori Party was registering its support for the declaration Labour’s Maori caucus was not only voting against it but was laughing and making snide remarks about it while a Maori Party speaker was recording support in this House for the declaration. Yes that vote of opposition by the Labour Maori caucus and the disrespect it showed in this House will be forever remembered in the years ahead as a breach of respect for international indigenous rights. 
But I come back to the attacks of 9/11 which are very much part of the context of these two bills before the House today to provide enhanced security measures for aviation in New Zealand. As we consider these proposals on search and seizure the screening and searching of staff and other measures I want us also to be thinking more broadly about the whole context of political war. I refer the House to a comment made by David Horowitz a strategist who said: “Political war is about evoking emotions that favour one’s goals. It is the ability to manipulate the public’s feelings in support of your agenda. In this war the most potent weapons were anger fear and resentment.” That quote says a lot about the ways in which the doctrine of a war on terror and the deliberate build-up of fear and hostility drive the passage of policy and the way in which that doctrine forces us to react through the passage of bills such as these two the Aviation Crimes Amendment Bill and the Civil Aviation Amendment Bill (No 2). 
I note that the majority of public submissions presented to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee were mainly about prohibited items review processes devices or aids for searches and imaging technology. So it is timely for me to share some notes of my recent overseas trips which may be of value to this debate. The first was a trip I took to further my knowledge as a member of Parliament for an indigenous electorate Te Tai Tokerau. I decided to visit what would have been my electorate if I had been an Australian MP the Northern Territory. Visiting the Northern Territory to highlight the dangerous consequences and the inherent racism of the Australian Prime Minister’s plans to solve child abuse and alcoholism in Aboriginal communities by getting his filthy little hands on their lands for 99 years was never going to be a particularly difficult task. 
I could have been arrested for carrying a copy of Howard’s racist intervention plan which many people have described as “a weapon of mass destruction targeted against the indigenous people of the Northern Territory” on an internal flight from Melbourne to Alice Springs. That I chose not to do so says more for my intelligence than it does for the scant effort that went into producing that 500-page document. It was supposed to be based on the findings of the  
Little Children Are Sacred 
 report but it chose to completely and utterly ignore the 98 recommendations that are part of the report itself in the interests of a series of proposals designed to maximise Howard’s visibility prior to the Australian general election and to change legislation to open up the Northern Territory to mining companies liquor companies gambling companies and other enterprises which his plan was supposedly going to put an end to. 
John Howard’s racist intervention plan was deemed to be so dangerous to race relations in Australia that he had a clause inserted into the bill exempting the plan from prosecution under the Racial Discrimination Act. It was a clear demonstration that the authors of the bill intended that it would be racist so they covered themselves against any prosecution later on. If that bill is not a description of a dangerous weapon then I am not sure what is. 
Another somewhat less dramatic but equally relevant situation played out for me on my same break-out to Alice Springs—a report of which can be found on my website www.tokerau.co.nz which every member of this House received; it is entitled  
A Walkabout with Alice 
—[ 
Interruption 
] I say to Mr Donnelly that this one cost me $1100. One of the organisations I visited was the headquarters of the local tribal authority for the area the LhereAretepe where I was presented with two beautifully hand-painted boomerangs. These were not those quaint little ones that one throws and they come back. No no. These were the bigger ones with one arm longer than the other—the ones that do not come back. They are the ones thrown with the specific intention of hitting the target. They do not come back. I mention these boomerangs because although I had no intention of using them on the plane I have no doubt that if I had wanted to I could have caused considerable damage with them. 
When it came time to fly back home security refused to let me take them on the plane. “Sorry guys” I said “I ain't letting them go so you’re going to have to come up with a solution to this problem because they’re travelling with me.” Security staff called the Qantas security representative who called his head honcho. To my pleasant surprise the head honcho came up with the line: “Qantas does not consider boomerangs to be dangerous weapons. Let the man keep them.” 
That incident got me thinking about just what exactly gets through the system. I must say I was astonished to realise that a very dangerous weapon slips past everyone on every single flight that I have been on since 9/11—that is all those carry-on bags with collapsible metal handles which with very quick and relatively minor readjustment can be very quickly turned into extremely dangerous weapons. It made me realise that for all of the fuss that is made about terrorism—bottles of clear liquid plastic knives and forks nail clippers and having to put one’s shoes through the X-ray machine—current airport security is allowing carry-on luggage on to flights that poses a far greater danger than Mahara Okeroa’s long-suffering socks. 
I know that this bill is supposed to have serious implications but I really do have difficulty understanding why we have to restructure refinance and realign upwards the prices of flights within Aotearoa every time someone wants to take a shot at the United States for its war-mongering resource-raiding activities across the globe. The Maori Party accepts that the world is becoming a dangerous place to live and to travel especially for Americans and everybody else caught up in the American invasion of Iraq. Although we are supporting this bill we urge the citizens and indeed the governing authorities in Aotearoa to begin exercising far more independence and discretion in the way in which they view dangers in our world. Tena koe. Tenatatou katoa.