Roy Heather: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Roy Heather: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
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HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 Speeches are frequently more telling not in what they say but in what they do not. The address by the Prime Minister yesterday illustrates that very point. She spoke smugly of her perceived achievements but she arrogantly avoided the subject that all of New Zealand is talking about—showing how out of touch the Labour Government has become. The Prime Minister does not want to debate “one law for all”. She does not want to talk about colour-blind laws. She does not want to discuss equity for all New Zealanders before the law. She is avoiding the subject. 
When we on this side of the House talk about one law for all we are accused by the Deputy Prime Minister of being racist. We are accused by the Prime Minister of encouraging separatism and of being divisive and her MPs and Ministers join in the chorus. What we have in this country are race-based policies. Today Richard Prebble asked the Prime Minister to concede that one law for all is a policy that unites the country. She avoided the question—not once not twice but repeatedly. The  
Holmes 
 poll last night showed that 90 percent of the 35000 people who called in to give their opinion agreed with Don Brash’s “one standard of citizenship” message but the Prime Minister wants to avoid the topic completely. 
Of course the most talked-about speech recently has been Don Brash’s speech in Orewa. In that he asked what sort of nation we want to build: “Is it to be a modern democratic society embodying the essential notion of one rule for all in a single nation state? Or is it the racially divided nation with two sets of laws and two standards of citizenship that the present Labour Government is moving us steadily towards?” The responses in this House over the last 2 days show exactly where people stand. 
If we look back on what people have said over the last 6 months or so with regard to the “one law for all” policy we see that it is very revealing. I refer to my own area—that of health. We are seeing not one law for all at all but two streams of funding two standards of care for New Zealanders and two standards of accountability. Tariana Turia wrote an article entitled “Tribal health policy in New Zealand” which was published in the  
British Medical Journal 
 last August. In it she explains that conventional Western medicine has been unable to close the disparities in mortality and health revealed in official statistics. She goes on to justify the Labour Government’s “for Maori by Maori” health policy based on Dr Papaarangi Reid’s type of analysis. I will come to Dr Reid’s comments in a moment. 
What we are seeing here is two streams of funding and two standards of care—one for Maori; one for other New Zealanders. But the killers contributing to today’s mortality figures are cancers heart disease and obesity and those are problems for all New Zealanders not just Maori or Pacific peoples. The rates may be down for Pakeha but those conditions are still the most common causes of death. The answer to closing the gaps—the words we are not supposed to utter anymore—is not separating the races but targeting those big killers and tackling them disease by disease for the benefit of all. New Zealanders must have health services based on need not on race or location. Isolating Maori from the scientific Western tradition of medicine puts their health gravely at risk. 
Dr Papaarangi Reid made some comments last year of which I will remind members. She was complaining on National Radio that life expectancy in New Zealand had increased 6 7 or maybe even 8 years. In essence what she was saying was that Pakeha life expectancy had increased but Maori life expectancy had not. She said that Pakeha had stolen the life expectancy of Maori. Quite how one steals anybody else’s life expectancy is beyond me but she is head of the Maori unit of the University of Otago Wellington School of Medicine so I suppose she must know. 
Gerrard Eckhoff 
: Paid for by the taxpayer. 
HEATHER ROY 
: That is right. Dr Reid’s implication was that the gap between Maori and Pakeha life expectancy has increased but in fact if one takes a careful look at the statistics one sees it has reduced over the last 50 years from 16 years’ difference to 8 years’ difference. That was quoted in a 1999 Ministry of Health report as being a spectacular improvement. 
I come back to health and two streams of funding. If we look at the Government’s new population-based funding formula we can see that it is based again on race. Some district health boards get only $585 for a 40-year-old white male while other boards get $1536 for a 40-year-old Maori or Pacific Island male on the same income but living in a poorer area. If we look at the funding for primary health organisations we see that a sole-parent beneficiary living in a middle-class area will get 20 percent less assistance than a sole-parent beneficiary on exactly the same income in a poor area unless that person is Maori or a Pacific Islander. There is a 20 percent discrepancy. Where is the fairness in that? 
I come to two standards of accountability. Last year I brought to the attention of the House the Te Whare Whakapikiora o te Rangimarie Trust. It was found that Mr Apera Clark the man in charge of the trust who had received $800000 over a period of 6 years had decided that half of the money was actually his: “Half for me” he stated in a newspaper report “and half for the trust.” He spent his half on rates rent a gardener and cases of muttonbirds. Who missed out? Some people would say it was the taxpayer but the people who really missed out in that case were the Maori people who were supposed to be getting health care as a result of that funding. 
I would also like to draw to the attention of the House today my concern about a misappropriation of health moneys through the Tihi Ora Maori health provider. That is a central Auckland organisation that is supposed to contract local Maori providers to provide services for their local communities. It receives about $1 million per year from the Ministry of Health. The Ngati Whatua have recently contracted a private investigator Mr Michael Crawford of Advanced Investigations to investigate Tihi Ora’s Chief Executive Officer Mr Kere Cookson-Ua who is currently on sick leave and has been for many months. In fact he is still on the payroll but no one can find him. He is not on the phone. It seems that $250000 of taxpayer money has gone missing. The problem for the private investigator Mr Crawford is that he is receiving absolutely no cooperation from the people in a position to help him. For some time now Mr Kere Cookson-Ua—who cannot be contacted—has refused to release two laptop computers that are owned by Tihi Ora. Mr Crawford believes that there is compelling and incriminating evidence on those laptops. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: What did the Minister of Health do? 
HEATHER ROY 
: Nothing. She has known about this since October last year and the ministry is conducting “internal investigations”. Ngati Whatua’s concerns are about the money. There is sufficient concern to contract a private investigator who believes that there has been serious misappropriation of funds. Most important the police have not been called in. No search warrant has been executed to secure the incriminating evidence. Why have the police not been called in? We do not know. Why can they not be called in now? 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Two laws. 
HEATHER ROY 
: That is right. There are two streams of funding in health and two streams of accountability. 
I ask the Government why Maori should miss out—because they are the losers in this story. It is Maori who are missing out and I challenge any member of the Government—one member on the other side of the House—to stand up and tell me what is acceptable about that situation. In health there are two types of funding two types of care for New Zealanders and two types of accountability. What we need in this country in order to give Maori and New Zealanders top-quality health-care is one law for all.