te Heuheu Georgina: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
te Heuheu Georgina: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:645;Page:14141] 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) 
: 
 I have to ask if Helen Clark and the Labour Government are the answer I wonder what the question was. I have some questions that I will be asking but I think basically New Zealanders have given up trying to find the answer to that question. They are leaving New Zealand in their droves and those who are not leaving are looking for a National Government to come into office in November. I support the motion moved by John Key: “That this House has no confidence in the Helen Clark - led Government because it has failed to make significant improvement in the areas of real importance to New Zealanders because it lacks ambition because it is tired and bereft of ideas”—and as much as Labour members clapped this afternoon they looked tired and worn out. The Government has lost touch with the ordinary New Zealanders who put Labour in power but who have now had a stomachful of them. 
As time goes on Labour has concentrated more and more on its own survival and we see that in some of the recent Treaty agreements in principle that Labour has put out and I will come to that in a minute. Labour has squandered New Zealand’s economic inheritance by failing to build on the strong foundations it inherited in 1999. It has squandered the economic strength that was there when it came into Government. I say shame on it. These are the questions that Kiwi people are really asking: “Why after 8 years of a Labour-led Government are we paying the second-highest interest rates in the developed world?”; “Why under Labour is the gap between our wages and wages in Australia and other parts of the world getting bigger and bigger?”; and “Why under Labour do we get a tax cut only in election year?”. New Zealanders really needed and really deserved a tax cut at least 4 years ago but were promised only a “chewing gum” tax cut 2 years ago and now in election year Michael Cullen is making all these noises about a tax cut but we know and more important New Zealanders know that he does not really want to give it and they do not give a damn they are not going to wait for his tax cut anyway. 
Why cannot our hard-working young men and women afford to buy their own house? The Minister of Housing comes into the Chamber and talks about all the things that Labour is going to do. This is the last year that it has a chance to do it. It did not do it in 8 years. Why is one in every five Kiwi children leaving school with grossly inadequate literacy and numeracy skills? If Kiwi children are leaving school with that lack of skills which they are we can double that for Maori children. I say shame on a Labour Government that for over 70 years until 2005 enjoyed almost the wholehearted support of Maori people. Well Labour is paying for it now. 
Why has the health system not improved when billions of extra dollars have been poured into it? There is a quick answer to that as well. This Government has spent more dollars on bureaucrats and buildings mostly here in Wellington and little on the services that New Zealanders really need. 
I want to refer to some of the points that Helen Clark made in her speech this afternoon relative to Maori. The average Maori unemployment rate in the year to December 1999 was 16.6 percent she said. She forgets that in 1990 when National came into power the unemployment rate for Maori was running at 29 percent. So let us face it: good economic times are not necessarily the work of the Labour Government. It inherited good economic conditions and unemployment should go down. The reality is there might be more jobs for Maori but actually they are leaving New Zealand too. They are going across the ditch to Australia as well. I have nephews who have moved to Australia because their hope for better prosperity and a better life is greater there than it has been for the last 8 years under this Labour-led Government. 
Then we turn to the other comments about Treaty settlements. Of course Helen Clark says and has said for the last 8 years that critical to New Zealand moving forward is the completion of Treaty settlements. I might be right in saying and my colleague has already said in this House before that this Government has taken only one Treaty settlement from go to whoa—only one. All the other settlements that have been completed in this House in the last 8 years were started by Doug Graham in the 1990s. Shame on a Government that speaks as if it does so much for Maori people yet when one actually measures it in the cold hard light it is not what it says it is. 
Recently the Government has signed the Waikato River deal with Tainui and that is fine. It has also just signed the NgatiPorou foreshore agreement. It is interesting is it not that those two agreements are in Maori electorates where this Government is under threat. I guess if we take the Te Atiawa settlement which was signed before Christmas then that is the third area where the Government is under threat of losing a seat. Of the seven Maori seats four have gone to the Maori Party and there are three more to go. This Government has the cheek to stand up and try to kid Maori people—try to hoodwink them—that the Government had done so much for them. Well it has not. After 70 years of enjoying Maori support Labour’s delivery to Maori has been abysmal and they are paying for it. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: What did National do for Maori people? 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: We started Treaty settlements. The member asks about National. I will tell her about National. We started Treaty settlements in the 1990s. We established Maori television. We set it up; it was under a different name but we laid the foundations for Maori television. Kohanga reo came in under Robert Muldoon—match that! That is one of the developments that Maori value most. Kura kaupapa Maori came in under Lockwood Smith—beat that! We even developed the basis for wananga in the 1990s. If the member wants to know what National did for Maori we did a lot. We have done more than the Labour Government has ever done. Why do we do it? We do it because we believe in Maori people exercising tino rangatiratanga knowing what to do; achieving self-determination. So we have done Treaty settlements kohanga reo kura kaupapa Maori wananga and even laid the foundations for Maori television. So there you are! 
That Government knows and those members know they are under threat. As I said earlier they might stand and clap but if Helen Clark is the answer why was she not a lot more buoyant today? Why was she not absolutely confident about what it was she was saying? She was not. We saw her giving her speech and for a person who says she is so proud of her record and of her record for Maori it certainly did not show. 
We look forward to the election this year. We look forward to the whole of this year. Everywhere we go New Zealanders say they are tired of this Labour-led Government. Maori are tired of this Labour-led Government. They know who delivers self-determination; it is not this Government. It is not a Government that keeps the hard-earned taxes of New Zealanders and thinks it knows how to spend them best and that pretends it will give a tax cut this year. Members can talk about Working for Families but that is not a tax cut. As I say we look forward to coming into power at the end of the year. We look forward to concluding Treaty settlements—robust Treaty settlements—in a way that respects other interests in any particular settlement. And we look forward to seeing this Government out of power and into the abyss where it belongs.