Ross Meurant Maiden Speech
New Zealand Parliamentary Debate,
Tuesday, October 06, 1987.
Mr ROSS MEURANT (Hobson): I extend the good wishes of the people of Hobson to the Governor-General, Sir Paul Reeves, and to Lady Reeves, and I pledge my loyalty to the Queen. I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your ascension to your office. I have listened to members speaking in the Chamber with interest, and I have tried to work out the style that I shall adopt when speaking. Contrary to the expectations of many, I have a quiet speaking manner. I am not given to the courtroom melodramatics that I have seen in the Chamber. I believe that it is not how loudly one speaks but what one says that counts. My style is to research what I wish to say, and then to deliver my case rationally and calmly, and I shall strive to do that in the House. As Teddy Roosevelt said: ``Speak softly, and carry a big stick.’’ I shall also strive to attack the idea, not the individual. I concur with the sentiments expressed by the member for New Plymouth and the member for Invercargill in their maiden speeches, when they condemned the behaviour of previous Parliaments.
I won Hobson not because I was Ross Meurant but because I stood for the greatest political party in the country in an electorate that has traditionally been loyal to the National Party. My success was also due to a particularly hard-working and loyal group of party workers. This afternoon I say to them all, ``Thank you.’’ Hobson is a very large geographical area extending from the mouth of the Kaipara Harbour on the west coast, north to the magnificent Waipoua forest, across to Kawakawa in the Bay of Islands, and down to the Whangarei Heads. It takes in Marsden Point, and then extends back across to Dargaville. It will be with some pride and satisfaction that Dargaville High School will be able to boast that three of its former pupils are present members of Parliament---the member for Tauranga, the member for East Coast Bays, and myself.
My return to the province of my birth reintroduced me to the quality of life and the type of people that provide the foundation of this great nation of ours. However, I found that those people were hurting in a manner that I had not fully understood as a police inspector in Auckland. Hundreds of families have been forced to their knees by the callous application of a simplistic monetarist economic policy that has denied the traditional foreign exchange earners of the nation a fair return for their exports and that has imposed intolerable costs on people in farming and service towns. There is no joy in being with a farmer and his wife and children as they try to comprehend that 20 years of farming, and their way of life, are down the drain---not because they were undercapitalised, or because they were poor farmers, but because the Labour Government has pursued an economic strategy that has seen the country tumble from a nation with a real gross domestic product growth of 8.5 percent in 1984 to a nation with negligible growth in 1987. The more I become involved in the tragedy that faces rural New Zealand, the more I realise that my career in Parliament will not be confined to pursuing my principal interest of law and order.
Several years ago the Hobson electorate had a slightly larger boundary. Logan Sloane was the National Party member for that electorate. He was a steady and reliable member who served his constituency well. He is fondly and respectfully remembered in Hobson. However, he once said that he would never achieve a high rank in a National Party caucus because, unlike the member for Tamaki, he did not have the killer instinct. I tell members that they should make no mistake---I have that killer instinct. They are the targets. I ask no quarter from them, and they should expect none from me.
Members of the Government may have duped the nation with their free-market economy rhetoric but I, for one, do not believe that they are the champions of private enterprise---far from it. Their corporatisation strategy contains the seeds of the destruction of private enterprise, and their economic dabbling in proportional representation, the increased number of parliamentary electorates, the Bill of Rights, and the abolition of the Privy Council are the embryo of an entirely new constitutional format for our nation. Oh no, a leopard never changes its spots, and the old socialist brigade still lurks in the shadows waiting to pounce. Stalin collectivised Russia under the barrel of a gun; in our country, the Labour Government stands accused of using economic warfare to achieve the same result.
Some 6000 farmers at this moment face the reality of being forced off their land. There are no young or new farmers to take their places. Who can afford to borrow the capital required to buy a farm at today’s interest rates? However, Landcorp or big business can buy those farms. I am mindful of the Labour candidate for Bay of Islands, who said during the election campaign that the day of the family farm was finished. The future, said that Labour Party representative, lay in large farming corporations.
However, corporation takeover does not stop at the farm gate. For instance, consider the way the Railways Corporation is moving in on private school-bus contractors. In a specific case in my electorate a private school-bus operator tendered for a bus run at $2.02 a kilometre. The Railways Corporation tendered at $1.62 a kilometre, and it got the run. Expert transport operators have told me that at that rate the corporation is covering fuel, road tax, and wages only at today’s costs, yet the contract is for 6 years. The silly thing about that is that the Railways Corporation is now committed to run at a loss over the next 6 years; the sad thing is that a young family man is now left with a 45-seater bus and no work; and the dangerous thing is that the Big Brother corporation has moved in and squeezed out private enterprise. Corporatisation is not ``privatisation’’, but unfortunately too many people confuse the two. Corporatisation is simply another word for Government ownership and State control. The Labour Government is committed to State monopoly; it always has been, and that is the crucial difference between the socialists and the National Party, which is committed to the freedom of the individual and to private enterprise.
I now turn to law and order. An alarming increase in our crime rate over the past few years concerns us all. The past 5 years have seen an 81 percent increase in violent crime alone. Law and order should be a matter that the Government and the Opposition can fight on a bipartisan front, but, unfortunately, too often the Labour Government’s actions have not matched its rhetoric of ``Labour will be tough on crime.’’ Before the election campaign, the police had been crying out for a computer attachment worth $2 million to process fingerprints. By overseas standards, that piece of equipment would increase apprehensions by fingerprints by 200 percent in the first year, and by up to 900 percent in the second year. The police were denied that money, yet the Labour Government spent probably half of that amount on the ``Rub out the crim’’ advertisement, which had absolutely no effect on reducing crime, but every effect on improving the Labour Party’s visibility during the election period.
In my view, our crime rate could be reduced by 50 percent---perhaps more---virtually overnight. More police, more powers, and increased penalties are not the answer. The answer lies in our courts using the penalties at present on our criminal statutes in a way that will deter and punish. We are not a nation with an inordinately high percentage of our population involved in rapes, robberies, and serious violence. In fact, we have a total prison population for all crimes of only about 3000. Why then, one might ask, do we have such a high crime rate? The answer quite simply is that the police catch the offenders with monotonous regularity, and the courts let them go with nauseous regularity. Consider the case of a rapist sentenced to 6 years of imprisonment for the rape of a west Auckland schoolgirl in 1983. The Labour Government let him out of prison after 3 years. Within 6 months he had committed a copycat rape of the first one. That is how our crime rate increases.
Take another example. I was working as a police inspector on night shift one Monday night in Auckland when a person on my section apprehended a burglar in Herne Bay. The offender had seven active charges at that time. He was bailed from the court next day, in spite of police objections. On Friday night of the same week we caught him committing another house burglary, this time in Remuera. If we had had more police, we might well have caught him on the Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, but that success would have done nothing to reduce the crime rate. No matter how many police we have, crime statistics will continue to increase while we have a court system that allows offenders in the serious crime category to be let out of prison on bail so that they may reoffend, and that imposes sentences of short duration.
Since 1961, consecutive parliaments have endorsed 14 years’ imprisonment as fair maximum penalty for rape, robbery, and serious assaults, but when do we hear of those sentences being imposed? If the rape of a 5-year-old girl or an 85-year-old grandmother is not deserving of the maximum penalty, I will eat my helmet. We do not need more police; the police do not need more powers; we do not need longer sentences; we do not need the death penalty; and we do not need to arm the police as a general policy. We do need courts that will keep the very small percentage of New Zealanders who commit serious crimes out of circulation for extended periods by using the penalties that are at present available. I do not hold out that longer sentences will cure the criminal propensity of those people, but such a practice would result in a reduction in the crime rate. First and foremost, my aim is to protect the law-abider.
I now wish to speak briefly about the advent of racial terrorism. They say that until an alcoholic acknowledges that he has a problem there is no hope for a cure or a remedy; I say that until we are able to admit that we have a problem with our race relations they will steadily deteriorate. When white middle-class New Zealanders turn on the television they see radical nationalist Maoris demanding land and compulsory Maori language in schools; insulting white New Zealanders; swearing that white man’s blood will run in the streets; and threatening the rest of the country with armed revolution. White New Zealand hears calls for absolute Maori control of our country, sees Maori gangs involved in shocking crimes---and white New Zealand turns off. The backlash has begun.
What is happening in our country? Large numbers of unemployed Maori youths are moving to the cities from rural areas. Looking specifically at Auckland, young Maori boys are arriving from Northland, Waikato, the Thames Valley, the Bay of Plenty, and the King Country. They drift into gangs such as the Black Power, the Mongrel Mob, the Headhunters, and the Stormtroopers. The gangs are big---the suggestion in the Roper report that there are only 2000 gang members in the country astounds me. The gangs are brutal; they are involved in shocking violence. Gangs are major distributors of drugs. They are involved in bank robberies, and they indulge in intimidation and extortion. Gang members make up 80 percent of all prison inmates. Those gangs are now setting up in legitimate businesses to launder their ill-gotten gains. They have million-dollar investments. Those gangs are dangerous, and they are being infiltrated and influenced by political activists---people with a higher education who would exploit the underprivileged of their own race to achieve their nationalistic and political goals at the expense of 99 percent of the population. I say that it is time for this country to have the courage to say that we have serious racial problems. I also believe that we are in a strong position to stop the deterioration.
Last year I coached the navy rugby seniors, half of whose players were police and the other half navy personnel. Two-thirds of the team were Maori. When one contrasts the calibre of the young Maori people whom I coached and the Maori people with whom I have rubbed shoulders in the services over the past 21 years with those in the gangs and those involved in nationalist politics, one becomes acutely aware of the vast differences in attitudes among Maori people. Having spoken to many older Maori people in my electorate and elsewhere, I am aware that the impact that Maori radicals have on white New Zealanders is just as disturbing---if not more disturbing---to most Maori people. It has been a saddening experience as a senior police officer to see so many young Maori men take a path of absolute waste. It has concerned me greatly to see those young people emerge as pawns in the political anarchists’ hands.
Steps that I believe need to be taken when considering the problems include stimulating greater respect amongst Caucasian and Maori New Zealanders for the Treaty of Waitangi as it relates to New Zealand today, and encouraging the Maori to rebuild their culture. A strong case can be made that Maori culture has lost its strength---particularly among the under-30 age group. I believe that the loss of cultural strength is a significant cause of the high degree of deviance among Maori people. Compare that degree of deviance for a moment with the degree of deviance that occurs among people of Chinese, Indian, Yugoslav, or even Samoan ethnicity whose cultural identity is still very strong.
In stimulating a Maori renaissance we must avoid the trend of today of forcing Maoritanga on all New Zealanders. I, for one, do not want my children to learn the Maori language at school. Thousands of other Kiwi parents---from Caucasian to Samoan ethnicity---do not want the Maori language or Maori culture forced on them. It is the Maori themselves who need the revival, and the revival must come from the heart of the Maori people. Demands for State funding for the revival of Maori culture seriously damage the relationship between the Maori people and the rest of New Zealand. Using Maori land as collateral to finance that revival may be an option, but the Maori people must find a way to regain their cultural strength without alienating the rest of New Zealand.
More attention must be paid to the successes of Maori families. In my electorate, names that quickly come to mind include the Going, Simons, Peters, and Tito families, all of whom have succeeded in twentieth-century New Zealand in sport, academia, farming, politics, and business. Some people must be taught that the tangata whenua include all those born in this land, and not only a select group whose ancestors happened to arrive in New Zealand before an arbitrary date in the eighteenth century.
We must also maintain our vigilance against extremist elements in our society that would exploit our racial difficulties and that advocate the overthrow of the New Zealand Government by armed force and the removal of white New Zealanders. Who are the people who want total Maori control of New Zealand? They are Maori radicals who espouse a philosophy of nationalism, yet accept assistance from communist States and training in Third World countries. Those people include Atareta Poananga, Titewhai Harawira, Hinewhare Harawira, Rebecca Evans, Donna Awatere, Hilda Halkyard Harawira, and Emily Karaka, who are the principal cell of the Maori nationalist movement in New Zealand. They call the shots. Males are regarded as inferior, and sit in the second row. They include Arthur Harawira, Hone Harawira, Mangu Awarau, Benny Dalton, Dr Pat Hohepa, Eru Potaka-Dewes, Norman Te Whata, Syd Jackson, and Haami Piripi. Those people operate under several organisational labels---the Waitangi Action Committee appears to be the umbrella group, with PENAK, NFIP, MLPA, Rangitahi Action Group, and Te Ahi Kaa some of the subsidiary groups.
As an inspector of the New Zealand Police, I---along with others---watched the movement grow. Those people were first seen at Bastion Point in 1978; they then moved to Waitangi, and turned our national day into an annual battle between police and protestors. In 1981 New Zealanders experienced unprecedented violence in the streets as members of the group recruited, organised, mobilised, and motivated gang members across the nation, from the Mongrel Mob to the Headhunters, to clash with the police. They have moved underground, and they are now a greater danger; they now plan to overthrow the New Zealand Government. Poananga stated: ``We want all the land back, every inch of it.’’ She also said that they will resort to the barrel of a gun to achieve their goal. That group will never succeed with its objective, but---as with the Black September movement in the United States---it will cause a lot of misery and turmoil, and the danger it presents to the nation must not be underestimated.
What are those people doing now? They have even moved inside the system. Rebecca Evans, for example, has taken a job in broadcasting. Goebbels understood the importance of the news media. Others have taken up a variety of welfare positions, particularly within the mental health field. The group is now ensconced at Carrington Hospital in Auckland, and uses that hospital’s telephone, stationery, and office space. At one secret meeting they had with Abu Laghood, a Palestine Liberation Organisation representative, the principal question asked of Laghood was: ``How do we get firearms and explosives from the PLO?’’
The group has become so powerful at Carrington Hospital that it is able to effect the channelling of hospital funds away from projects given priority by hospital management into the dubious area of Maori mental health. Maori mental health includes the indoctrination of young Maori gang members with the concept that they are in prison or discriminated against because of the white man, and that their salvation lies in revolution. The group at Carrington Hospital now controls a Maori ward. Access to that ward is only on the authority of Titewhai Harawira---even the doctors must get Harawira’s permission before they enter the ward. I say that that is an outrage---an outrage that has happened only under the Labour Government, and that is happening at this moment. The group has become so powerful that a hospital superintendent spoke out publicly about their actions earlier this year. He was not exaggerating about the group’s influence, because, unfortunately, when the issue was forced again last month it was Dr Radcliffe, the hospital superintendent---not the radical social workers---who was put off the hospital staff. I put this outrage before the nation as an issue that demands an immediate and independent inquiry now.
Those Maori nationalists form a network throughout the country. Hone Harawira is the principal trustee for the Aupouri Ngati Kahu Te Rarawa Trust in Northland, which has received $1.5 million from the training assistance programme, the Access programme, and the Department of Maori Affairs in the past 3 years. Haami Piripi, who is chairman of the Aupouri trust, is also head of the Rangitahi Action Group, which is subservient to the Waitangi Action Group. The Aupouri trust administers some 14 training groups, one of those being Whakakoro Kohanga Reo---language nest---which is administered by Hilda Halkyard Harawira. Another of those groups is the Ani Wha Niwa in Kaitaia, which is administered by Hone Harawira. The Taumata Kohanga Reo spent its initial setting-up grant of $5,000 on the purchase of a vehicle. The accountability of the Aupouri trust for the moneys it receives is questionable, at best, with the opportunity for misappropriation being considerable. I share the concerns of intelligence-gathering agencies that the political activities of the Waitangi Action Committee are funded by moneys stolen from grants made to the trust or other welfare sources.
Group members have extensive contacts abroad. In 1978 Awatere, Evans, and seven Socialist Unity Party members went to Cuba, where Awatere and Evans met with the Palestine Liberation Organisation leadership for the first time. Evans says that she learnt there that 400 000 Maori people could take on 3 000 000 whites. Awatere and Hilda Halkyard Harawira went to the Vanuatu celebrations, and in 1980, together with Hone Harawira, they participated in the boycott of the Brisbane Commonwealth Games. On 4 April 1987, Awarau and Dalton and two others booked to fly to Libya, and recently Hilda Halkyard Harawira went to Denmark to receive a communist-supported peace prize. As recently as last month, Poananga, Harawira, and Hohepa went to Fiji to seek Colonel Rabuka’s help to overthrow the New Zealand Government by armed force.
I place this information before the nation, which also demands an inquiry into the distribution of $1.5 million through the hands of those terrorists. Those people are dangerous; they are growing in strength, and in confidence, and we must move to put into place the State machinery to deal with them. The police are neither equipped nor trained to deal with terrorists. A terrorist has a totally different psyche from the everyday criminal. As a nation, we must look at setting up a Government unit to maintain surveillance of and to infiltrate that kind of terrorist group.
Up until now, the country has relied on the Security Intelligence Service to fulfil that type of role, but I believe that that service is in need of a major overhaul. The effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of the Security Intelligence Service over the past 24 months may be due not so much to its ability to do the job as to the Lange Labour Government directing the Security Intelligence Service not to infiltrate or maintain surveillance of Maori radical gangs. ``Do not spy on our terrorists’’, it was told. That action by the Labour Government was a danger to national security.
Finally, I should like to address the issue of illegal union activity in our country. At this moment, in Dargaville, a small bridge-building contractor from Rangiora has been brought to his knees by the unlawful activity of a group of militant unionists in relation to the construction of a $4 million bridge across the Northern Wairoa River. The contractor was presented with a demand to employ three riggers from a register of riggers run by the notorious John Doran and Ray Bianchi. That register is a splinter group from the labourers’ union. It has no lawful status; it is merely a group of men who have paid Doran between $100 and several hundred dollars to join a cartel. Doran then chooses an industrial site, and demands that his cartel be employed or he will ``black’’ the site. He uses that industrial muscle to blackmail developers into paying him large sums of money to allow industrial peace on a site. Doran’s tactics include threatening to kill, as well as the financial loss that follows the ``blacking’’ of a site. He also pockets the levy paid by those who want to join the register. Such unlawful gangsterism also demands a public inquiry.
That small contractor in Dargaville has tremendous fortitude, and the backing of his employees and the support of the town. He is prepared to fight that tyranny; but unless the courts come to his aid he will fold. He could survive and finish the bridge without the help of the courts, but to do that he would need to have the support of his big suppliers such as Winstone Concrete, which supplies readymix concrete. Lamentably, the readymix supplier does not have the same courage as that small contractor, and has capitulated to the blackmail of the riggers’ register. I say “Shame on Winstone’s”.
I see across the Chamber a Government that has tried to deny members their speaking rights by closing off the address in reply debate early; that has interfered with the Security Intelligence Service but will not interfere with the unions that are systematically destroying the productive base of the economy. It is a Government that seeks to obliterate the private sector and to completely rewrite our nation’s constitution. I see a socialist Government that is a total anathema to the philosophy of private enterprise and freedom of the individual that underpins the National Opposition, and I will have no bar of it. I pledge to work very hard in this Parliament for the people of Hobson, irrespective of their political party, and to bring in a National Government in 1990.