Flavell Te Ururoa: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and  Validation) Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and  Validation) Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6376] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
Kia ora Madam Speaker. Kia ora tatou katoa. As we do when we are in Parliament I try to get to grips with the bills that we consider. For this one I started with the term “subordinate”. It is an interesting word. It can mean to “belong to a lower or inferior class or rank” and to be “subject to the authority or control of another”. The Maori Party a party that—I think—prides itself on its commitment to upholding due access to justice and to defending and protecting human rights is immediately interested in any legislation which unashamedly sets out to create hierarchies of power and control. 
 Here we turn to this bill to confirm and validate the deliberate minimising of power and control as it relates to biosecurity to road-user charges to tariffs and to nashi—Asian pears. What do we do with a long list of regulatory changes literally apples and oranges oysters and alcohol all blended in with the odd lump-sum payment here and there? The suite of subordinate legislation proposals raises the fundamental question about the rapid path of regulation that this Government is following—government by regulation. The major concern we see with this bill is the reality of so much regulation that escapes the scrutiny of Parliament. The detail and the scope of the significant regulatory proposals identified in this bill warn us as to the obvious likelihood that similar proposals may sit within the Regulations Review Committee and never make it here to the House. 
As to the points of detail in this bill the Maori Party has considered four significant issues that prevent us from supporting the package in its entirety. The excise and excise-equivalent duties clash front on with our intentions as a party to introduce a member’s bill to make the production manufacture and sale of tobacco products illegal. The Maori Party was really heartened by the TV3 poll in April this year which reported that 52 percent of New Zealanders are also in favour of getting tobacco out of Aotearoa. Our aim is to eliminate tobacco from Aotearoa by 10 December 2010 6 years after bars and restaurants went smoke-free. With this aim in mind we therefore strongly oppose the amendment in the bill relating to the indexation of tobacco products. 
The second area is the Social Security (Rates of Benefits and Allowances) Order. The Government needs to read its own reports. If it did priority would be placed on immediate action to address the increase that has been identified in the proportion of the population experiencing severe hardship. Page after page of the Government’s  
Social Report 2006 
 released in August revealed that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The 2006 report described the proportion of the population with low incomes as substantially higher in 2004 than in 1998. Nineteen percent of that population is now living below the 60 percent poverty threshold compared with 12 percent in 1998. 
In light of this the Maori Party recommends that the rates of benefits and allowances order needs amendment rather than validation and confirmation of what we consider to be basically invalid payments in the greater scheme of whanau well-being. What is the point of a fat budget surplus of $11.5 billion if it is not being gainfully applied to support the most vulnerable members of our society? 
The third area of concern is in relation to the contentious issues around tariff. When we think about tariff we think it could be useful to apply some analysis against the genuine progress index. If one measures any progress against a full range of social economic ecological and environmental indicators we are likely to achieve a more comprehensive and accurate assessment than current measures based on GDP. Under such an analysis the Maori Party will support fair trade agreements rather than agreements that position Aotearoa as a market for cheap goods made by companies that exploit workers the environment and indigenous lands and people. If the recent fascination by both Labour and National with climate change is anything to go by one would think they would be open to possibilities of doing things differently. We cannot address climate change if the rampant consumerism and consumption that is part and parcel of tariff reductions is not addressed. 
The fourth significant area of concern relates to the War Pensions (Rates of Pensions Lump Sum Payments and Allowances) Order. The Maori Party has consistently been raising issues in this House about the legitimate and longstanding grievances of Viet Nam veterans. We have risen in this House to alert our colleagues to the need to support Viet Nam veterans who were exposed to dangerous levels of dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange; the need to respond to the call for those veterans to receive the full medical treatment and monitoring they deserve; the right for the families of those affected by Agent Orange to access free and suitable health-care for their children and grandchildren for at least seven generations; the differences in pension payments and compensation under the War Pensions Act and the Accident Compensation Corporation clearly disadvantage former servicemen; and indeed the call for justice for all. 
Bruce Isbister in his work on the tortuous processes of Veterans Affairs New Zealand summed it all up when he described the case of veterans in the following way: “Their earning capacity has been taken from them by their service to country consigned to an income akin to poverty line and exacerbated by blatant discrimination. Many veteran pensioners have to sell family assets to stay afloat causing huge disruption to themselves and their families.” Sixty percent of Viet Nam veterans are Maori yet to add insult to injury in spite of the disadvantages of and obstacles to their rehabilitation that I have just referred to the simple wish that Maori veterans raised to hold a hui on marae was rejected outright by the independent joint working party. 
There is no excuse for the rights of Viet Nam veterans not to be heard. We know now tragically that Agent Orange contains dioxin which has been found to have serious health side-effects including cancers and birth defects. Just 2 days ago the Government admitted that in-the-field support for children of Viet Nam veterans is inadequate. The Minister of Veterans’ Affairs Mr Rick Barker declared in this House that veterans and their families do not have the extent of field support that they should and the Government wants to address that. Well here is the perfect opportunity to do just that and the Government is choosing not to do so. The War Pensions (Rates of Pensions Lump Sum Payments and Allowances) Order could have been amended to assess the discriminatory impact of the differences in pension payments and compensation available for injured soldiers under the War Pensions Act. 
There are some positive passages in this bill. The Maori Party supports the recommendation to confirm the Road User Charges (Rates) Order as we support the concept behind road-use charges and would further recommend that they be spent on transport issues rather than going into the consolidated account. We are also very supportive of the changes made to confirm the Biosecurity (Risk Screening Levy) Order and the Biosecurity (Shipping Container Levy) Order. But those positive initiatives are overshadowed by the substantive concerns we have with the four areas I described previously. 
Unfortunately it would appear that the concept of subordinate as meaning a lower or inferior class or rank has been applied in this bill to the detriment of our Viet Nam veterans and to our most impoverished children and families. We envisage a pool of cheap overseas labour subject to the authority or control of the Labour Government let in through the new tariff laws and we witness more moves to let the health of New Zealanders just go up in smoke. As a result of such significant misgivings the Maori Party will not support this bill.