Collins Judith: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Collins Judith: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:615;Page:10850] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I support Don Brash’s motion of no confidence in this Government. There are two issues that above all else are the most important issues that New Zealand is facing. The first issue is racism and the second issue is families. 
I despise racism and I despise racists. Let me tell this House that not all racists are white. How can I tell a racist? It is quite easy really. They are the people who believe that based on the colour of someone’s skin on where he or she was born on his or her parents’ colour and on what shape his or her eyes are that person’s level of achievement is predetermined. There are many many racists in this country. Some of them are brown some of them are beige and some of them are white. The one thing they share is a belief that the colour of someone’s skin must and will determine that person’s achievements. That view is wrong. It is wrong! It is wrong! Because we live in this politically correct country where Alice of  
Alice in Wonderland 
 would feel very much at home those racists have worked out a way to make their racism look like kindness. To them it is kindness to tell someone that his or her school marks because of the colour of that person’s skin do not have to be as good as someone else’s in order to get into university. To them it is kindness to tell someone that he or she can get the job because of the colour of his or her skin not because of that person’s achievements. 
The National Party leader Don Brash has called for an end to special rights based on race. The National Party believes that funding and special treatment must be based on need not on race. Despite the ravings of State television’s interviewer Kim Hill—and I will not even try to do the facial expressions or the hand movements—race does not equal need. The Labour Party likes to quote figures. There are lies there are damn lies and there are statistics and that is what Labour is quoting. It likes to quote Maori health statistics. It likes to quote education statistics. It forgets to mention that a whole heap of the Maori included in those statistics happen to be more non-Maori than Maori. It happens to forget that there is a heap of non-Maori at the bottom of the statistics for education and health. But the Government does not care about them. 
This week following on from what Annette King was saying I went to see a Maori health provider in my electorate—in Papakura. There I was met by people who unanimously supported Don Brash. They said they do not want to be treated differently from everyone else. They do not want everything they want to do have to go through the marae. The reason is that the marae is based on unelected born-to-rule people. They do not want to be subject to the rules of people they did not elect. They want democracy. They said to me that Don Brash would do more for Maori than any other politician and they are right. It is time that non-Maori New Zealanders stopped patronising Maori. It is time that the New Zealand Government stopped whipping the New Zealand taxpayer in order to win Maori seats. It is time for Maori and non-Maori to say “No” to the Government’s divisive funding and it is time for Maori and non-Maori to say that the biggest determinant of child poverty in this country is not race or gender but family breakdown. 
I want all children in New Zealand to grow up knowing that they can achieve anything they want to. Yes they will have to work hard. Yes they will have to make sacrifices and more sacrifices after that. But no New Zealand child should ever think that he or she cannot achieve and children should certainly not think that based on their race. No New Zealand child should ever grow up learning to rort the welfare system before he or she is old enough to read. 
Yesterday I met a young woman who worried me greatly. I will mention that she happened to be a white New Zealander. She proudly told me that she had five children by five different fathers. I can tell members that she is still in her 20s. There could well be another five—or more—in the future. She also told me she was proud that she had “done it all herself”—whatever that may mean. She was not coming to complain about the woeful wait for tubal ligations in the Counties Manukau district. She was not coming to thank the people of New Zealand for indulging her behaviour and lack of responsibility. She was coming to complain because someone at the Department of Child Youth and Family Services was doing his job. The department had removed one child and—using not her words but my own—it had really mucked up her benefit. That had forced her to take on some part-time work and now she thought that she might even have to get the father of her last child to move in—that she might as well. That woman seemed quite intelligent and highly articulate. She certainly knew her rights and her way around the welfare system. I thought that one day she could even make it as a Labour list MP. What she did not grasp is that children should not be used as a source of income. 
Brian Connell 
: She might know too much. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: That is true. She did not grasp that children are entitled to be wanted by both their parents. She did not grasp that she is breeding a family that is costing and will for ever cost this country millions of dollars not only in benefits but also in the time of lawyers psychologists social workers the police and the youth justice system. They are already doing that and in time no doubt they will also do so in jail one day. 
What does the Government say to those children? What does Steve Maharey say to those children? They say that they will pay that mother to be irresponsible. Steve Maharey has told the House that he does not see any difference in outcomes for one-parent or two-parent households. He has clearly not been down to the Department of Child Youth and Family Services lately. I invite him to come down to the department offices in Papakura and have a look with me. It needs to be acknowledged that many people on the domestic purposes benefit get off it again as soon as they can and many people use it just to get themselves through a tough time. But of the others they are not the ones to blame are they when there is a Minister of the Crown who is so blind that he cannot see that fathers are important. When we have a Minister who is so removed from reality that he does not know what children really need why should we blame the recipients? 
I am a conservative. By that I mean I want to conserve what is good. Unlike the wimpy white academics on the other side of the House I know that there are some things that are just and there are some things that are unjust. I know that it is unjust to treat people differently based on their race rather than on their need. I know that there are some things that are right and there are some things that are wrong. It is right to nurture children. It is right for parents to put their children first and their own wants second. It is wrong for a child to be used as an asset. It is wrong for any father to walk away from his responsibilities and it is wrong for a mother to deny a child his or her parent. There are certain things that are universal truths. Children need parents. They need good parents. They need health and education regardless of race. Children need to be loved and they need to be wanted. 
The Labour Party in the 1970s started down the track of systematically destroying the New Zealand family. Every time it has been in Government since then it has put more and more effort into destroying that family. What disgusts me as a woman is that it is the female members of the Labour Party who are the worst offenders. The men in the Labour Party have allowed themselves to get so neutered that they cannot even stand up for men for families or even for women who believe that men are OK. I am proud to be a New Zealander and I am proud of Don Brash.