Sharples Pita: General Debate 
Sharples Pita: General Debate 
[Volume:636;Page:6937] 
Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 Last month has reminded the nation of the supreme importance of a game of football. In fact it would seem so important that even a coup can be put on hold while rugby is played. The Government was so focused on the football of the future that it was prepared to reach up to $1 billion for a white elephant on the waterfront but all the time disregarding the inevitable blowout that would be carried by city ratepayers or taxpayers for years to come; the potential for environmental damage; or the injurious damage endured by Ngati Whatua through tokenistic consultation. 
I am the first to be there at the kick-off cheering our boys along but no one can stand in this House without recognising the “game of two halves” being played out in this land today. For now that hype and hoopla has subsided. The Government has indicated that most of the cost of the stadium infrastructure will be carried by Auckland ratepayers. As the member for Tamaki Makaurau I know that the children of our poorest suburbs will be the ones faced with the bills for the upkeep and maintenance of facilities they will probably never go and visit and that money going into rates or into higher prices for goods and services as higher rates get absorbed is money that is not available for schools medical treatment or improved public transport or housing. 
Martin Luther King once said: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” The Maori Party will never be silent about the grip of poverty that has seized our people. It is a poverty of material means; our poorest families are being left behind. The proportion of all children in severe and significant hardship in New Zealand has increased from 18 percent to 26 percent since 2000. But it is also a poverty of spirit a poverty of relationships where opportunity and access to support is stifled by fear shame and social exclusion. It is a poverty where one’s mauri or toiora is out of kilter. Mauri is achieving that balance between the wairua spiritual well-being; hinengaro intellectual well-being; ngakau emotional well-being; and tinana physical well-being. That is demonstrated through the experience of te ihi te wehi te wana—the absolute joy of being; the delight of being alive. 
When mauri is disrupted it creates dis-ease and imbalance leading to a void of meaning and purposeless lives that are stuck in a rut from which there is no way out. Understanding the crippling impacts of poverty of spirit is understanding that misery is about much more than money poverty unemployment and social exclusion. They breed despair and when one is sunk in despair it is nigh impossible to find opportunities for change. 
But the politics of aspiration and the politics of poverty are two sides of the same coin and we in the Maori Party know that there are strategies and solutions that can create genuine progress. Progress can be achieved in caring for our communities caring for our environment and caring for our world. We know that this nation can lead the world in facing up to its failures and in drawing on the courage of our convictions to change those unjust structures that made possible the foreshore and seabed legislation. More than any other Act in Parliament that Act divided the nation into two halves—not Maori and Pakeha as some commentators would like to believe but a nation divided by myths and prejudice perpetuated by a political force that sought power at all costs. 
The nation was misled into believing the propaganda of a party machinery that sought to paint tangata whenua as a negative life—party spin that implied that we Maori would put up fences and gates and that we would greedily deny and deprive other New Zealanders of the right to go on the beach. It was the ultimate affront to crush the spirit of a people who live by a kaupapa in which generosity is expressed the environment is protected and treasured and where the call for kotahitanga—that is unity—comes through diversity and is a lifelong commitment. 
We know too well the risk of being consumed by gloom and we also know the passion that comes when the fire is reignited—when the vital spark for life is invested with new energy. We believe that the repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act will burn a flame of hope that we can use to bring this nation back to a foundation of justice a climate of respect for each other and an ever-brimming optimism for the possibilities that lie ahead. Let us bring it on! Thank you.