Cullen Michael: Human Rights (One Law For All) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Cullen Michael: Human Rights (One Law For All) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4043] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 Rodney Hide’s speech was full of rhetoric sound and nonsense signifying very little indeed. He asked a question—it was the right question in a way—which was: which side of the fence do we stand on? From his perspective the problem is that it is a white picket fence. It is a white picket fence that actually distinguishes those who are privileged from those who are not. He says he stands on the side of the privileged and wants to make sure the fence is high enough and sharp enough to keep the rest of the population out. The situation might be slightly more credible if ACT’s former leader were not now acting as the lawyer for Greek groups seeking Treaty negotiations with the Government which no doubt he would also condemn as a similar kind of policy. But then of course that is the ACT party in all its glory. 
Rodney Hide’s speech was a truly casuistical speech; that is the only way one could possibly describe it. It reminded me of the electoral laws in the southern states from reconstruction through to the 1960s. Those laws were not race-based at all. They did not ever state black people could not vote; they did not state black people could not go on the electoral rolls. They just provided for some kinds of educational and residency tests. White people had a simple set of questions to answer such as what their name and their grandfathers’ names were and black people had to answer such questions as who the President of France was in 1886. Not surprisingly not many of them knew the answer to that so they did not qualify to go on the electoral roll. 
Dr Richard Worth 
: What is the answer? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I do not have a clue. Luckily in New Zealand we do not have to know that which probably upsets Dr Richard Worth no end because he probably spends his life waking up and thinking about who the President of France was in 1886—in the same way that Mr Key wakes up in the morning and thinks about what has happened to his Merrill Lynch shares overnight. 
Martin Luther King stood for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He said he looked forward to the day when it would not be necessary for him to take action in the way that he did but in the meantime action had to be taken. We have not reached a stage in this country when no action needs to be taken. Rodney Hide says that even when action is justifiable it must be banned. 
The shoddiness of the thinking in this bill is evidenced in its explanatory note. Members should look at this stuff: “Recent history has seen examples of ordinary New Zealanders being taken to task for perceived discriminatory acts such as golf clubs being censured for having married golf competitions or hairdressers offering cheaper hair cuts for male pensioners.” Does this bill ban discrimination on the grounds of sex or hair length? From Mr Hide’s perspective thank goodness it does not. What do race and ethnicity have to do with married golf competitions for example? The explanatory note bears no relationship to the content of the bill. The bill is put together as a cheap way of trying to appeal to certain instincts. It is a classic example of the fact that one cannot see the truth if one sticks a bumper sticker over one’s eyes. That is what the member continues to do on those kinds of matters. He sticks a bumper sticker over his eyes and says he sees the truth clearly—even when we know some examples where there are clearly issues where we need to make differences in order to achieve outcomes if we are to achieve equality. 
Rodney Hide said that when we were young—I assume he means people of my and his age; people of around that kind of age because he is not very far off my age going by his dancing skills—we were encouraged to disregard the colour of people’s skin. But the funny thing is that there were practically no Maori lawyers doctors or managers. Maori had manual occupations and that was it. They did not appear in our elite schools at all. Some Maori were allowed to play sport and we thought they were very good at it. But there was no notion that there was equality. When I grew up in Christchurch precisely 99.0 percent of the population was of European extraction. It was easy to disregard people who were a different colour—there were not many of them to find when one looked around Christchurch in the mid-1950s. 
New Zealand is very different today. We cannot ignore the problems this country faces. We cannot wish them away and say that as long as we do not— 
Rodney Hide 
: That’s a boy who went to Christ’s College. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Yes and I went there on a scholarship as the member well knows. I enjoyed myself and I am very grateful for the experience. But I think there was one Maori boy at Christ’s College in the time I was there. That gives members a pretty good indication of how effective policies are that totally ignore the colour of people’s skin. Of course sitting in Epsom as Rodney Hide does he wants to have a society that looks like that again. He finds it inconvenient to have to recognise equality amongst people who do not come from the same ethnic background that he comes from. That is the reality; he wants to pander to those kinds of feelings. 
The fact is that this bill would not even do what it is intended to do. It is so badly drafted that it would not achieve its actual ambitions because it misses out— 
Dianne Yates 
: It’s a pamphlet. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: It is not even a pamphlet. Goodness me! I think it would be flattering to say it is a pamphlet. It is a slightly extended bumper sticker but not more than that. After all it really has only one clause clause 5 that is slightly longer than the average bumper sticker. At the moment the Government is not able to have a special exemption to discriminate on the grounds of race colour or ethnic or national origin; it is unlawful for the Government or public bodies to discriminate on those grounds as set out in the Human Rights Act. But what the Government can do is to provide assistance to groups in order for them to achieve substantial equality with groups of other races colours or ethnic or national origins that are not disadvantaged. 
Let us take an example of that—let us take an American example so that we do not embarrass the member. There are some diseases that Black Americans are much more prone to than other Americans—sickle-cell anaemia is the classic example. For decades no research was done on sickle-cell anaemia. 
Dianne Yates 
: Howard University—a black university. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Howard University which is a black university did some research on sickle-cell anaemia. Of course later people finally said it was actually discriminatory that research was being done on all the diseases that afflicted white people but was not being done on the things that particularly afflicted black people. So it became important to do that research. 
If we want to achieve our ambitions in terms of reducing smoking— particularly amongst Maori women who have an incredibly high smoking rate compared with the Pakeha population—we have to gear programmes specifically in that direction. To have a bunch of poncy middle-class Pakeha trying to explain to Maori women the dangers of smoking will not work. Mr Tony Ryall’s limply waving his wrist at Maori women will not persuade them to give up smoking whatever he does. A bunch of middle-class Pakeha National Party women holding up placards and yelling across the House—which is their favourite occupation these days and thank God it is because the placards hide them from us—and saying that Maori women should give up smoking will not achieve that. [ 
Interruption 
] Of course the member who is interjecting Jackie Blue does not want to prevent disease because she is one of the people who have made their money out of people having diseases rather than by preventing diseases. We want to prevent those kinds of things from happening and having watched my father die of emphysema I want to do what I can to stop that happening to Maori women because it is an awful awful way to die. 
That member’s bill says the Government could not take any action in areas such as that because if it does that could be a matter of discrimination. It says we cannot discriminate in terms of any kind of funding formula. Even if we demonstrate that independent of all other variables ethnicity is related to some aspect of social deprivation this bill says we cannot provide funding on an ethnically targeted basis. That is wrong. It is right to review those provisions and to make sure that in fact the particular aspect is ethnically related. But if one arrives at the conclusion that there is an ethnic element that is not determined by other socio-economic factors then it is nonsensical to say the Government should be precluded from intervening by targeting the funding in that respect. What precluding that does is to ensure unequal outcomes. What precluding that does is to ensure discrimination. What precluding that does is to ensure unfairness in our society. Some people in that member’s electorate may sleep more easily at night because other people may miss out on education or die or whatever else as a consequence of precluding targeted funding. I am not worried about that. 
Rodney Hide 
: That man is a racist. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: He can call me whatever he likes but I say that is wrong. It is simply wrong and it is not the New Zealand way. New Zealanders do not want to have a debate about how to “out-racist” each other. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Did Mr Hide in his speech indicate which select committee he would like the bill to go to?