Turei Metiria: General Debates 
Turei Metiria: General Debates 
[Volume:615;Page:11105] 
Every time I hear Mr Brash repeat his “one people” and “needs not race” slogans I am reminded of the bellman in this little “Snark” poem. I am reminded of the desperate urge to make something happen by sheer political advantage rather than by considered deliberate action. I am reminded of the wilful selective amnesia where facts and truth come second to the desire for and the exercise of power. 
 This is where I believe Mr Brash is at in this debate. He has an urgent desire to take the public by the hair—not by their hearts and minds—to seek a return to a nostalgic colonial fantasy that has never existed in this country. Mr Brash is unconscionably feeding on the misunderstanding in the public mind in order to increase fear and create division in our community. To do that Mr Brash is purposely confusing two different but very important issues. 
The first is the issue of the Treaty of Waitangi. This nation has been working through a very difficult process of untangling different perspectives to try to get at the heart of what the treaty meant in 1840 and what it can mean now in the 21st century. But most New Zealanders have not had access to information or education on the history of our country. That has been a serious and ongoing failure that unfortunately no Government in our history—including present company—has dealt with or given the priority it deserves. 
That has left open the opportunity for Mr Brash to take advantage of our communities as he has. The urgent repetition of Mr Brash’s mantra is nothing more than an attempt to convince both himself and the public that if said over and over again the nostalgic colonial fantasy of equality will—as if by magic—appear. Although it is true that colonial New Zealand was partly built on the dream of equality history tells us that that dream imagined a community of equality for some and not for others. One need only traverse the history of the pension or the widows benefit or the multitude of other legislation to see the race-based application of the law in our collective past. 
Equality that denies the reality of one of the parties to the treaty—born of an attitude of supremacy misunderstanding and fear—is not just not fair and not equality. Learning about our collective past is not for the purpose of making people feel guilty but it is absolutely essential if we choose not to repeat the dangerous mistakes of our past the mistakes that Mr Brash and the National Party are perpetuating. 
The second issue is that it is an important aspect of our democracy that social inequities should be addressed in a manner that facilitates a just outcome for those in need. Mr Brash talks about needs not race. He criticises any targeted programmes for Maori and argues for the elimination of that targeted funding but his is actually a race-based analysis because he is opposed to targeted funding for Maori but fine with targeted funding for everyone else. 
His mantra should really be “for everyone but Maori” because there is a wide range of targeted programmes to address the identified needs of particular ethnic groups in this country. For example the Problem Gambling Committee a well-known radical organisation funds a race-based specialist service that targets special assistance to people of Asian descent. There are counsellors who speak Mandarin Cantonese and Korean along with an Asian phone helpline. The service is predominantly provided by Asian people for Asian people and it is essential because this group has a specific need around problem gambling that can be best addressed by targeting their needs with specialist services.