NZ Youth Parliament Day 1

Mr SPEAKER: I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all members to the Youth Parliament and also all of those who are doing assistant work, and to welcome my other parliamentary colleagues.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers

Packaging—Legislation

1. LUCY FORGIE (Palmerston North) to the Minister for the Environment: Has the Government considered drafting stricter legislation on what are acceptable amounts of packaging?

Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Minister for the Environment): Yes, we have considered stricter legislation, but there are some difficulties. We have agreed in the newly signed Packaging Accord that if the goals are not met, then legislation may be introduced. However, there are some problems. Firstly, we import 50 percent of goods already packaged, and this must be addressed the hard way by market rejection of packaging as we cannot legislate how the Japanese or the Americans package their products; and, secondly, packaging is a problem if it cannot be reused or recycled. Therefore, in respect of the member’s question, I would like to know how she defines “acceptable”.

Lucy Forgie: How does the Minister propose to deal with packaging such as polystyrene that is used for packaging many of the electronic goods that we import from Asia and Europe when it is not biodegradable?

Hon MARIAN HOBBS: One of the benefits of doing the voluntary Packaging Accord is that we have gathered inside that accord importers and brand-name retailers. They are also aware that they have to meet certain targets, whether the goods are imported or packaged internally, to reduce the amount of things like polystyrene foam.

Schools—Māori Boarding Schools

2. TAHAU THOMPSON (Northcote) to the Minister of Education: Does the Government want to phase out Māori boarding schools?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education)), on behalf of the Minister of Education: No. The Government has actively supported boarding schools. Recently, the Ministry of Education has formed a partnership with Paerangi Ltd, a body set up to lift educational achievement in Māori boarding schools. The ministry and Paerangi Ltd have been working together to develop a business plan to position the schools for sustainable educational and financial success.

Māori boarding schools have made real educational progress. Māori boarding school education is capable of producing student achievement results better than equivalent decile averages. Since the year 2000, all of the Māori boarding schools have participated in a new initiative around information and communications technology. For example, students have access to computers, videoconferencing, laptops for teachers, and associated training and technical support—all of this to increase subject options available to senior-year levels. Research commissioned by the Ministry of Education suggests that this initiative is increasing student engagement and motivation, and has been successful in increasing subject options.

Tahau Thompson: How did the Minister justify the closure of Hato Tipene and Wikitōria in 2001, based on his previous answer?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: While we acknowledge that Māori boarding schools can do very well, and do have the ability to achieve above equivalent decile averages, we do take into account what goes on in the school, the behaviour of the school, and the general scene that ensures that people have access to good-quality education. It was on those grounds that we made those decisions.

Jordan Williams: Why then is the Ministry of Education proposing legislation—and I will seek leave to table the discussion document—allowing it to suspend and cancel hostel licences on the spot if hostels are not up to scratch, thereby not allowing those Māori boarding schools to rectify any problems and suddenly cutting off any revenue that they receive?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The welfare of students is, of course, the major issue for this Government. We wish to ensure that students are in situations where they are cared for properly and properly educated. The Ministry of Education’s paper therefore rightly raises this issue, and the Government will be considering it carefully on the grounds of the welfare of students.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Education—Free Youth Education

3. EMMA COLLINS (List) to the Minister of Education: When, if ever, will New Zealand youth receive a free education?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education)): If we cover the three areas of education in the country we can point out that the Government has made a commitment to 20 hours of free education in community-based early childhood services from 1 July 2007. In the school sector, section 3 of the Education Act provides that every young person is entitled to free enrolment and education at any State school from the age of 5 through to the year that he or she turns 19. Under its international obligations the Government has a commitment to make higher education progressively more accessible on the basis of capacity. To ensure that tertiary education remains affordable and accessible for all New Zealanders the Government has increased its financial support to tertiary education, increased student allowances, established tertiary-fee freezes, and now regulates those fees.

Tuku Kururangi: In that case, what about the interest that has accumulated on the student loans that are acquired at tertiary levels?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: This was a major issue in the 1999 election. Straight after that election the Government, within a matter of weeks, moved to take interest off student loans while students were studying. At the same time the Government also changed the way that students repay their loan. For the majority of students that means that the real interest rate on a loan now is about 3.5 percent, with a very small number of students paying the full charge of around 7 percent. That makes the rate of interest on a student loan in this country comparable with student loan systems all around the world.

Elizabeth Lewer: Why is it, then, that some high schools are able to restrict the activities of people who do not pay their “voluntary fees”?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: They are not. They pay—as the member quite rightly points out, using quotation marks—“voluntary fees”; they can pay a donation to the school. However, if this fee is charged, if it is made mandatory by the school, and if students are unable to access services provided by the school because they do not pay it, it is something we would like to hear about.

Pamela Mills: Has the Minister taken into account extra-curricular activities, which can be just as nourishing as academic education to students?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: Yes, we have. During the term of this Government, every year operational grants have been increased for schools because we believe these days, of course, that students need a wider range of experience if they are to be fully equipped to move into the new economy and society that we are seeing take shape. So, yes, we do, and that is why these grants have been increased each year.

Local Government—Youth Involvement

4. PAMELA MILLS (Mt Roskill) to the Minister of Local Government: Is anything being done to involve youth in local government?

Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Local Government): Lots of interesting and exciting activities are happening. These include the operation of successful local youth councils, an excellent example being in my own city of Waitakere. Some councils hold youth forums and others have working groups with youth participation on particular issues, such as boy racers. Councils and Local Government New Zealand have websites that are interactive for youth. Finally, there is a biennial youth and local government conference, which I believe is a social highlight for some young people.

Pamela Mills: Has the Minister considered making the operation of youth councils compulsory for all cities?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: Although that is certainly a very attractive proposition, we do allow local decision-making. However, I am encouraging councils to have youth councils, ethnic councils, and councils representing iwi and other minority groups within the community. I am developing a new website, which all councils will be required to be on, and prominently on each entry will be information as to whether the council has a youth council. Hopefully, those that do not will be embarrassed into having one.

Conrad Reyners: Has the Minister considered that many youth councils come across as condescending and patronising?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: I guess that depends on the quality of the people going on to them. I would like to say that in west Auckland the young people who are represented on the youth council are fantastic. I have not detected any negative attitudes or any sense of condescension from them, but they are, of course, “westies”, so one would expect them to be good.

Standard of Living—Australian Comparisons

5. MICHELLE NICOL (List) to the Minister of Finance: What specific policies has the Government implemented so that we can once again have a standard of living comparable with Australia’s?

CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri), on behalf of the Minister of Finance: Since 1999 we have implemented a range of policies to support growth. The Government’s growth and innovation framework—GIF—is designed to deliver the long-term sustainable growth necessary to improve the quality of life for all New Zealanders. This year’s Budget alone includes more than $500 million worth of initiatives designed to strengthen and deepen New Zealand’s ability to compete in the world economy. The growth and innovation package covers four key elements: international connection, innovation, skills and talents, and infrastructure.

Jordan King: Has the Government thought of lowering taxes as an obvious solution?

CLAYTON COSGROVE: That is a debate that is continually raised, normally by the Opposition. If we compare New Zealand to Australia, although Australia’s company tax rate is higher than ours, when we add in Australia’s equivalent of accident compensation, which is 2½ times ours, its equivalent of Medicare, and the other state and regional taxes, the comparison does not add up. New Zealand companies are in a better position than those in Australia; hence the growth in business that we have seen over the last few years.

Rachel Meadowcroft: Does the Minister agree that by lowering taxes we may actually lower our standard of living because there is not enough public funding for things like the public health system, etc.?

CLAYTON COSGROVE: Yes is the short answer, but we have options. The Leader of the Opposition, for instance, has proposed lowering taxes, which decreases revenue. If we deal with superannuation, lower taxes would mean less revenue coming in. He then goes on to say that he will guarantee all the benefits of that superannuation, but does not tell the New Zealand people how he will pay for it. I think there is a feeling in New Zealand that we need roads, we need better standards of education, health, and welfare, and that people are prepared to pay a reasonable tax rate, as long as the money is not wasted.

Lukas Schroeter: Has the Minister considered that New Zealand could lead the way and show our neighbours how New Zealand would benefit from lower taxes, instead of always just following suit?

CLAYTON COSGROVE: If we compare New Zealand with Australia, I think we do lead the way. If we compare New Zealand to the rest of the world, our growth, for instance, for the March year was 3.6 percent, while over the last 5 years New Zealand has achieved growth of 21.7 percent. We are one of the fastest-growing economies in the OECD. That is a fact that is undenied, even by the members of the Opposition.

Ruchi Vyas: Since welfare was introduced, central government spending has increased by more than 500 percent; how does the member account for this?

CLAYTON COSGROVE: If we look at welfare and compare it to unemployment, for instance, unemployment is down to a 20-year low. That means more people are in jobs, more people are paying taxes, and there is more economic growth. Sure, there has been an increase in sickness and invalids benefit numbers, but there are programmes the Government has, which my colleague Steve Maharey is implementing, to get those people back into jobs, get them rehabilitated, and get them well. I think that makes common sense.

National Certificate of Educational Achievement—International Recognition

6. JADE McCORMICK (Mana) to the Minister of Education: Does the NCEA have international recognition as a credible qualification?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education)), on behalf of the Minister of Education: Yes, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority regularly provides information about the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) to national organisations in places such as Australia and the United Kingdom, where it is recognised as the main secondary school – leaving qualification for New Zealand. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority is also a member of two Australasian committees. Both of these committees include information about the NCEA on their websites. Each year, the universities and colleges admissions service handbook is published. This provides information of other countries’ qualifications, including the NCEA, for providers of further education in the United Kingdom. Other countries also use this publication as an authoritative guide to the qualifications available around the world.

Gerard Edwards: After contacting local universities and the University of California in America on this exact topic, it came back that they knew nothing of the NCEA on a personal level; therefore, what would the Minister do to affect that personal level?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: If I could have the numbers of those people, I will ring them after question time so we can get them up to date. We never like to miss an opportunity to tell people how good things are in this country. NCEA is, of course, a relatively new qualification, and we would expect that around the world people are not aware of the specifics of the qualification. But the important part of this is that we have now meshed in that qualification with all of the recording websites and bodies around the world, so gradually they will become aware of those qualifications as opposed to the old School Certificate, and so on.

Alexander Osborn: Does the fact that the Cambridge examination system has been instituted in many New Zealand schools undermine the credibility of NCEA?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I do not think so. Schools are able to take on the Cambridge qualification, but, as I have just been saying, it is now well established that NCEA is the qualification for New Zealand. So New Zealand students need to go through this. The qualification is recognised here, and will be, as it becomes more well known, recognised around the world. Students will need to have passed this. Its credibility, therefore, is their credibility.

Judeena Carpenter: How can NCEA be considered credible, considering it failed in Scotland and in some states of Australia?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: It is important to know that the fundamental principle of NCEA is to move towards a system that tells students what they are capable of doing. That standards-based approach is one that is adopted around the world, and increasingly countries are taking it on, rather than a pure ranking system, as we used to have. The philosophy, therefore, is sound. The approach to these new qualifications systems will always have difficulties in implementation, but just because other countries have had difficulties with their system does not mean that we are not going to end up with a system that works well and, as I said, therefore tells us what people are capable of, rather than merely ranking them, which is not much use to them, or their future employer, or society.

Supriya Singh: How does putting students into categories give a true indication of their abilities? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: I do not really think we need to have applause for questions. You can judge the answers. There have been some very good questions, but I do not think we need to have applause for them.

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: However, I do not mind if there is applause for answers.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, I do.

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I think dividing people into categories is an important part of a system, because we still need to know whether people are doing very well in terms of these standards, or not so well. In other words, the whole principle is how much is known by the students who are sitting these qualifications. Giving good clear feedback as to which category they fit into, in terms of how much they know, is very important as a means of being able to have some kind of sense of where the students sit in respect of the standard.

Mr SPEAKER: I will allow a couple more supplementary questions, because obviously this is a very interesting topic.

Emma Kuperus: How does the Government think other countries will be able to gain an objective picture of New Zealand qualifications when schools are not required to report “not achieved” results?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The system is one that does ensure that schools are not required to put in the “not achieved” results, but we are able to give people a clear picture of how many students are not being put in, through not being reported as having achieved. The most important thing about the system, as I said before, is that students sit the exams; they are able to record then what they are capable of doing; it is a standards-based system. It is that kind of comparison that people around the world want to know. They want to know how well our students are doing, and they can have easy access to that data.

Chris Neels: Do you not think there is something wrong with an education system where situations such as that recently seen at Cambridge High School have the possibility of arising?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: On the contrary, when examples like Cambridge High School arise, the Minister moves swiftly and the education system moves swiftly to protect the interests of those students, as has happened in that case with two limited statutory managers appointed already in the school. The Education Review Office is in there, as well. The only thing that matters is the standard of—

Oliver Searle: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The people who watch the news tonight will be able to see what students think of what has happened at Cambridge High School. A lot of damage has been done by what has happened.

Mr SPEAKER: That is not a point of order. A point of order has to be related to the order of business in the House. That was political point-scoring.

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: From the member’s point of view, as a person interested in the integrity of the system, he will know that when issues like that arise, the Ministry of Education moves immediately to ensure that the students’ interests are preserved. They are at the school now and that is the important part for the member to know.

Jenna Hansen: How do you justify that teachers have received enough funding and knowledge to teach an international qualification?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The main way we know that teachers are able to carry out their jobs, of course, is that they have to be trained, but, more important, they have to be registered. The system of registering teachers has been an important step forward for us so that we can ensure that people do have the qualifications, they are internationally comparable, and, therefore, we have a system that relies on the professionalism of those teachers that can be compared.

Death Penalty—Homicide

7. ANDY FEAU (Mangere) to the Minister of Justice: Does the Minister support the death penalty for New Zealand’s most notorious or repeat killers?

DARREN HUGHES (Junior Whip—Labour), on behalf of the Minister of Justice: No. Although the Government has responded to public concern about the need for tougher sentences for offenders by passing the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act in 2002, the Minister is still to be convinced that we send society a message that taking a life is wrong by having the State take the life of the person convicted. Further, there is no firm evidence that the presence of the death penalty as a punishment deters people from committing murder. However, the most compelling evidence against the death penalty is that our justice system will never be perfect, and the chance of an innocent person being convicted for a crime he or she did not commit is just too high a risk to take.

Josh Dennis: If the death penalty is out of the question, why does a person who gets a life sentence serve only 14 years, as Steven Williams is for killing a girl?

DARREN HUGHES: Under the new legislation that was passed just on 2 years ago the minimum non-parole period that can be set by judges is the highest it has ever been. In addition to that, it is now possible to keep a person in prison until the very last day of his or her sentence, whereas, previously, people were automatically released after serving two-thirds of their sentence. So we have been able to raise the bar much higher for parole and we are also able to make sure that people serve their sentence until the very last day. We also have a system now of preventive detention for people who we feel are likely to reoffend. The Parole Board criteria have been changed to make sure that community safety is the No. 1 criterion of the board when determining whether a person is eligible for an early release.

Sheena Thorn: What is the justice system doing for offenders who have been released and, potentially, may reoffend?

DARREN HUGHES: That is a very good question. People who leave prison once their sentence is finished do have a high reoffending rate. One of the initiatives that my colleague the Minister of Corrections is working on is to make sure that support is in place to ensure that people are rehabilitated back into society, so that it is not a revolving door for people in the prison system. That means we have to make sure that when people are in prison things are being done to address the sorts of issues that led to their offending in the first place. A good example of that would be to make sure that inmates’ literacy and numeracy skills are raised so that when they come out they have a much higher likelihood, for example, of moving into employment.

Foreshore and Seabed Bill—Benefits for Māori

8. JADE WIKITERA (List) to the Minister of Māori Affairs: What benefits does the Minister see for Māori if the Foreshore and Seabed Bill is passed?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE (Associate Minister of Māori Affairs), on behalf of the Minister of Māori Affairs: Heaps! There are a number and they are as follows. Firstly, the legislation will provide certainty—the certainty of whom to deal with in regard to communities and Māori. Secondly, it will provide a two-step approach—to the Māori Land Court for investigation, and to the High Court with regard to a notion called aboriginal title. Thirdly, it will provide for direct redress negotiations between the Crown and the group.

Jade Wikitera: Does the Minister believe that these benefits outweigh the costs for Māori if the Foreshore and Seabed Bill is passed?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: I commend to that member the views expressed by Parekura Horomia, Mita Ririnui, Mahara Okeroa, and Nanaia Mahuta. I do not commend the views expressed by Uncle Koro Pita Sharples and Auntie T Harawira!

Tuku Kururangi: Can the Minister assure us that, if the foreshore legislation is passed, exclusion for people who are not of Māori descent will not occur?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: What I can confirm is that a due and just process will be in place, and that access and navigation rights on behalf of and to all Kiwis will be determined and upheld.

Polly Higbee: Does the Minister not believe the fact that the Government can actually sell seabed and foreshore land—once this legislation has been passed—with a 51 percent majority in Parliament, which is pretty easy for a Government to do once it is in power because that is what is needed to govern?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: I agree with the greatness of this institution called Parliament, and parliamentary supremacy.

Mr SPEAKER: I think, perhaps, the Minister could expand slightly on that answer.

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: In the event that a Government holds a majority in this House, and in the event that a provision is not entrenched—which would require up to 75 percent of Parliament to approve a particular piece of legislation—a base majority will carry the day in regard to the legislative process, which adheres to the constitutional principle of the supremacy of Parliament.

Tahau Thompson: Does the Minister find these benefits a strong enough reason for the Government to neglect its obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: Māori members of the Labour caucus and the Government will adhere to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi in the expression of the legislation when it comes back before the House for its second reading.

Rachel Meadowcroft: Does the Minister intend to educate the public on how their rights stand, whether or not the bill is passed?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: The Hon Trevor Mallard, the Coordinating Minister, Race Relations, is overseeing a full information programme, which is being administered through his office. There is also a whole range of information being made available through a range of websites and through information drops that are occurring. We look forward to our youth population—as a new genre of Kiwis coming through—being far more knowing, informed, tolerant, and respectful of a range of rights.

Student Debt—Repayment Assistance

9. NADENE RUTLAND (List) to the Minister of Education: What measures is the Minister proposing to relieve student debt?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education)), on behalf of the Minister of Education: The Government has already taken a number of steps to relieve student debt. The four most significant are: removing the interest on student loans for those studying full time and for low-income part-time students; introducing the 50:50 system for student loan repayment—meaning that no borrower’s debt can increase by more than the rate of inflation; introducing the fee and course costs maxima to provide stability for student fees; and, from 2005, increasing the parental income thresholds for student allowances, which will benefit over 36,000 students.

Nadene Rutland: Why are student allowances still based on our parents’ incomes—it is not like they pay for our tertiary educations?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: What we call a unit of analysis is the reason we go to the household in New Zealand. Most of the payments that we put out in the form of income support, whether it is superannuation, a benefit, or student support, all go back to the household of origin. That is what we base our system on in this country, and that is why students’ allowances are related to their households.

Todd Smith: Is the Government considering lowering restrictions on student allowances specifically for single-parent homes and combined income caps—two areas that contradict each other regularly?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: Yes, we are—in the sense that we have just completed a student discussion paper, which has given students an opportunity to put in a large number of suggestions. We are now preparing a paper for Cabinet on those suggestions, and the matters that that member has pointed out are still in the running.

Youth—Problems Faced

10. ISABEL LEE (Manukau East) to the Minister of Youth Affairs: What does the Minister feel are the main problems facing youth today?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE (Minister of Youth Affairs): In answering that question, I must tell the member that I do not come from a deficit model of where youth are today. Rather than problems, I see a huge range of opportunities. If I might, I will say what the opportunities are, and then move into a number of the challenges. We now have the highest participation levels in tertiary education ever in this nation’s history, which shows quite clearly that youth are in transition, with a whole range of opportunities—be they in Modern Apprenticeships, industry training or, alternatively, opportunities on tertiary campuses themselves. We have seen a massive investment, so that the unemployment rate is the lowest ever in the country’s history in terms of rating the percentages of unemployed youth. We have seen a massive drop in a number of other negative indicators in the youth area. The biggest challenge facing us—or the biggest problem, if the member wants to use that terminology—is the way in which provision of services is delivered to the youth sector and the way in which we keep pace with the rapid and dynamic movement in the youth sector, rather than merely the provision of services for the benefit and comfort of a service provider.

Isabel Lee: In which age group does the Minister feel the underlying causes of these problems are happening, and how does he feel in going about solving these problems?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: The international definition of the age of youth that New Zealand has accepted is that of 12 to 24 years, but a lot of our problems occurring in that area are created in an earlier age group. It is our challenge to have earlier risk identification, and earlier belts and braces systems in place, in order to support younger Kiwis as they transition into youth.

Immigrants—Skills Category

11. AHMAD KHAWAJA (List) to the Minister of Immigration: Does the Minister support a stable long-term policy on selecting skilled migrants?

Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Immigration): Yes, I do. In 2001 the Government changed its immigration policy so that it could have much better control over how many people, and who, were able to become New Zealand residents. This year the Government agreed on a target of 45,000 places, plus 5,000, if needed, for new residents. That is the same target as the previous 2 years. Sixty percent of those places are reserved for people in the skilled business stream category—a category designed to allow people with the skills required for the New Zealand economy to gain residency in New Zealand.

Ahmad Khawaja: What will the Minister do when fewer migrants start coming to New Zealand in the next few years?

Hon PAUL SWAIN: Two things. The first, obviously, is that those new, skilled migrants will help with the New Zealand economy. That is a really critical thing at a time when most people know that unemployment in New Zealand has reached 4 percent—the lowest rate for over 20 years. It is important, therefore, that we have skilled people coming to New Zealand to fill our skills gap. Secondly, and this is also important, the Government announced in its last Budget that over the next 4 years $62 million will be set aside to help migrants settle in New Zealand, particularly those with English language and other skills. In this way, we hope to get a much more settled group of people coming to New Zealand so that they, along with all New Zealanders, can contribute to the future of New Zealand.

Shahlaa Al-Tiay: Why is it that New Zealand requires highly skilled immigrants, but when they finally come to New Zealand they are unable to find jobs due to a lack of New Zealand experience?

Hon PAUL SWAIN: That is a good question, and it is the reason we changed the policy in 2001. Before then there were lots of opportunities for people to come to New Zealand, but they were not able to get jobs, notwithstanding the fact that they were qualified. For example, sometimes the doctors and dentists who were coming—and who had been encouraged to come—could not get jobs in their professions, and they ended up driving vehicles for pizza delivery services or doing other kinds of jobs. At the moment we are making sure that the people who come to New Zealand have a job offer so that we can put them and their skills together with the people here who need them. In that way they can help contribute to the growth of New Zealand. We changed the policy to try to get around the very point the member has made.

Waste Reduction—Voluntary Control

12. BEN BOSCH (List) to the Minister for the Environment: Why is the Government relying mainly on voluntary methods for waste minimisation, when overseas experience shows that container deposit legislation is more effective?

Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Minister for the Environment): Both methods—the voluntary method and the container deposit legislation—have the same goal of reducing waste. There are problems with both options. The problems with the voluntary agreement options are that they may encourage free-riders—people who rely on the rest of the industry to reduce the amount of waste—and that the targets may not be met. Container deposit legislation is a problem at the moment, because it targets glass and plastic only, but ignores the largest component of packaging, which is cardboard and paper. Container deposit can also undercut the viability of highly successful, small-town recycling efforts by removing the easily recycled material, which leaves them handling the more difficult material without an income stream. But, should the targets not be met, we have agreed in the recently signed Packaging Accord to go back and look at legislation.

National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Standards

13. JUDEENA CARPENTER (Auckland Central) to the Minister of Education: What evidence does the Minister have that the integrity of the NCEA internal assessments are not only being upheld but are also standardised across the nation?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education)), on behalf of the Minister of Education: There is a nationwide moderation system to assure the integrity of internal assessment for national qualifications in schools. It has two parts. First, New Zealand Qualifications Authority staff review schools’ quality assurance systems and processes, and require or recommend improvements. Second, teachers’ assessment activities and samples of assessed student work are checked by national moderators, and reports are returned to schools.

Judeena Carpenter: How then does the Minister explain the recent scandal surrounding Cambridge High School, which was investigated only after a certain 20/20 documentary earlier this year?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: Of course, we are always concerned when allegations are made, but the only point of contact in that case was when allegations were raised. As I mentioned earlier in question time, we moved swiftly after that, with two people in the school now to ensure it runs smoothly, and the Education Review Office is also involved. I urge anybody throughout the country who is in a school where he or she feels standards are not being met to tell us immediately, and we will act immediately.

Prime Minister—Public Accountability

14. STEPHANIE LEWIS (Whanganui) to the Prime Minister: Who does the Prime Minister listen to, to find out what the people of New Zealand really want?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment), on behalf of the Prime Minister: The Prime Minister travels widely within New Zealand, meeting many people, and being briefed on many issues. She is also an electorate MP for the electorate of Mt Albert, and gets feedback from people within that area. In addition, all Labour MPs have extensive networks of contacts, and feedback from those networks is made available to the Prime Minister and to other Ministers. It is fair to say that Helen Clark also receives a large volume of correspondence, including a very large amount of email traffic that keeps her in touch with people’s thoughts.

Stephanie Lewis: How does the Government decide what opinions are relevant and should be further researched or acted upon?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The Government, of course, is elected on a platform, and that is always the guide for its behaviour, but it listens very closely to different points of view around that platform. When new issues arise, of course, it has to establish what the clear view will be on the basis of the evidence available. This is a Government that is trying very hard to ensure that its decisions are based upon good, clear evidence. That does not mean everybody will necessarily agree with that final decision, but they will know the basis upon which it is arrived at.

Jordan Williams: What did Shrek the sheep and the people the Prime Minister does listen to say about the 20,000 hīkoi marchers and the Māori views on the seabed and foreshore proposal, how did she take these views into consideration, and how have these been reflected in her decision making?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: It is fair to say, on the first point, that the Prime Minister was on the forecourt of Parliament with Shrek the sheep because Shrek was being used as part of a fundraiser for child cancer—an issue that I care deeply about, just as the Prime Minister does, and just as, I am sure, everybody here does. On the views to do with the foreshore, the Government has facilitated a large number of hui all over the country. Māori MPs have been to a large number of hui themselves, and most MPs have held meetings within their own electorates to ensure views are heard from across that community. Once again, we have seen a large amount of traffic—email, letters, and phone calls—on this issue. Also, it is now the subject of a select committee procedure, where, once again, people will have their views taken into account. So overall, I do not think there is a New Zealander left who would not have an opportunity to put his or her point of view forward if that person wants to.

Jordan Williams: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister has not answered my question about how these views have been reflected in recent decision-making.

Mr SPEAKER: The Minister might like to comment, but I thought he did answer the question.

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The views are reflected in the sense that I mentioned to an earlier questioner. As a Government we try to arrive at a decision that is soundly based on evidence. This does not mean that we agree with everybody, and there will be people who will say that their views are not the ones that are the basis of that decision. I am afraid in a democracy that is often the case.

Vote of Thanks to Ministers

MELAINA GRINDLEY (List): On behalf of Youth Parliament 2004, I would like to thank the Ministers for taking the time to answer our questions. It has been a great honour and a privilege working with the Ministers, and it has been very interesting to hear their responses. Thank you.

Mr SPEAKER: I would like to pay my tribute to those people who asked questions. Compared with 4 years ago, your questions were much sharper, better focused, and very much to the point, and I congratulate you on that.

AGE OF MAJORITY AMENDMENT Bill

LAND TRANSPORT AMENDMENT BILL

sale of liquor amendment Bill

Third Readings

KATHERINE HARRISON (Taupo): I move, That the Age of Majority Amendment Bill, the Land Transport Amendment Bill, and the Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The legal age for purchasing alcohol is 18 years. The question is: should it be raised from 18 to 20 years? Yes, there has been an increase in accidents, health problems, and drinking, but if that were such a big problem, how come these issues were not considered in 1999 when there was a change in the law?

At the age of 18, New Zealanders are old enough to take responsibility for their own lives and actions. They can get married, buy cigarettes, place a bet at the TAB, go to war, and even vote, so why do we not give an 18-year-old the responsibility of drinking and purchasing his or her own alcohol?

KATE MUIRHEAD (List): In this afternoon’s legislative debate on the Minimum Ages Bill, I wish to speak to Part 3 pertaining to the Sale of Liquor Act. The fact that we are here debating the amendment made to the Act in 1999, which effectively lowered the drinking age from 20 to 18 years, is evidence that the issue of alcohol abuse in New Zealand has not been effectively addressed.

When the Justice and Electoral Committee made its recommendation with regard to the amendment to the principal Act, it specified that a key objective of the law was to target the abuse of alcohol, not the age of a person. It was intended that lowering the age at which a person could legally consume alcohol would target abuse by removing the mystique of alcohol, and encourage more sensible drinking habits.

There are a number of indicators revealing that the drinking habits of young New Zealanders have not improved significantly since the amendment took effect. According to research carried out by the Ministry of Justice, the number of young people aged 18 or 19 prosecuted for driving with excess breath or blood alcohol increased steadily after 1999. The number of people under 18 years of age dealt with by police for possessing or consuming alcohol in a public place, increased from 834 in 1994 to 2,597 in 200—far exceeding predictions. But perhaps the most condemning statistic of all is that the volume of alcohol, and the frequency with which it was consumed by young people aged 14 to 19, increased in the years from 1995 to 2000.

The 1999 amendment has not successfully targeted the abuse of alcohol in the way in which it was planned to. It is a fallacy to say that lowering the drinking age diminishes the allure of alcohol for those who cannot legally drink, and thus promotes better drinking habits. If this were true, the minimum drinking age would be abolished, so that drinking held no mystique for anyone.

Increasing the legal minimum age at which alcohol may be purchased to 20 years, as proposed in the Minimum Ages Bill, would be an effective way of reducing liquor abuse. It is an idea that continues to have public support. Before Parliament voted on the amendment, 65 percent of New Zealanders were in favour of leaving the drinking age at 20 years. During this year, 71 percent of New Zealanders have shared similar sentiments. It is also an idea endorsed by the Ministry of Health, the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand, the New Zealand Drug Foundation, and the majority of the New Zealand public.

I recommend to the House that Part 3 of the Minimum Ages Bill be adopted. It is for the good of our nation.

KATHRYN BULK (Dunedin South): I suggest that the amendment to the Sale of Liquor Act be approached in two phases—firstly, that the minimum age at which young persons can buy alcohol from licensed premises remains the same; and, secondly, that the minimum age at which a young person can buy alcohol from liquor outlets be raised to 20 years.

Statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that since the lowering of the drinking age in 1999 there has been an increased frequency of drinking and increased alcohol consumption amongst young people between the ages of 12 and 17. Eighteen and 19-year-olds who supply alcohol to minors assist the trickle-down effect of youth access to alcohol. A whopping 60 percent of 14 to 17-year-olds surveyed by the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand (ALAC) claimed they were being supplied with alcohol by friends and contacts aged 18 years and over. Furthermore, in addition to the problem of under-age supply, Ministry of Justice statistics show that minors are also purchasing alcohol using the ID of legal-age friends and relatives. Thirteen percent of those surveyed by ALAC claimed to have purchased alcohol using false ID. Bottle stores were most often targeted by under-age offenders because that was where a large majority said they were least commonly asked for ID.

My suggested plan aims to minimise under-age supply by developing healthier attitudes to drinking. Allowing 18-year-olds to purchase alcohol at licensed venues, bars, clubs, and restaurants will help to eliminate the capacity of 18-year-olds to supply minors and under-age peers. Consumption restrictions that apply to most venues would encourage 18 and 19-year-olds to develop sensible attitudes towards drinking. Young people would also be drinking in safer and more appropriately moderated environments. Raising the minimum legal age of purchase from 18 to 20 years will mean that no one below the age of 20 could purchase alcohol from bottle stores, liquor outlets, or supermarkets, and 20-year-olds are far less likely to supply school-age youth. This restriction endeavours to vastly reduce the number of minors currently accessing alcohol from their school-going counterparts.

The majority of those over 20 years of age are expected to have developed more mature attitudes to alcohol, resulting in moderated purchase and consumption. If my recommendation were implemented with rigidly enforced guidelines, this plan would also help to educate and develop more mature attitudes towards alcohol and alcohol consumption amongst young New Zealanders.

RENEE PARKINSON (List): It is great that we are all here, and we are all here because we are teenagers who want to have our say. We are talking about the Age of Majority Amendment Bill. If we think about it, we know that this bill is really about teenagers—us—so it affects us.

What do you guys think about raising the drinking age from 18 to 20, raising the minimum driving age from 15 to 16, or even lowering the age of majority from 20 to 18? Those are the questions I pose to you.

For me, personally, I agree with only one of those—raising the driving age. When we look at the statistics regarding the number of accidents involving teenagers aged from 14 to 17, we see that they are scary. Honestly, the driving age of 15 is just too young. We should think about it: we are talking about operating a contraption that can kill. Do we let 15-year-olds own guns? It is practically the same thing.

When we look at the maturity level between a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old, we can see the difference. It is always there. We can look around town at how many boy racers there are out there, and at the trouble some of them may be causing. Although 15-year-old drivers are involved in fewer crashes resulting in injury or death than 16 or 17-year-old drivers, that is partly due to the restrictions of their learner licences, and so on. They are not inherently safer drivers. Far from it; their accidents are merely from lack of experience and from just not thinking. They are just too young. I cannot blame them, and I do not—they are only 15!

It is a fact of life that teenagers drink. Raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 20 years will not change that. We do things by example. Is that not what adults are always telling us, and are they not always telling us that we are young adults? By raising the age limit, we are only forcing more under-age patrons to try to get into pubs, clubs, and bars.

Eighteen-year-olds are going to drink—that is a fact of life—and so are 17-year-olds, and perhaps those who are even younger. Would you not rather that they got their alcohol responsibly, and had a safe place to drink it? That is how the old argument goes, does it not—as many other people have said?

I myself have been drinking when under age, of course. Come on, a lot of us have. I have been drinking in bars and clubs since I was 17—but I should not really be saying that. During one of those times I ended up having a nice chat with a copper about what I was doing. He told me a few scary things, and that brought it into perspective. So let us raise the driving age to 16, but let us not raise the drinking age.

GERARD EDWARDS (Te Atatu): Basically, I want to know who we are kidding by even looking at this bill. I think it is ridiculous. If we are going to put three separate ideas into one bill, what are we doing? We all have different opinions on different things, so we should deal with them one at a time. We have the drinking age, the adult age, and the driving age. Is it not obvious that they are all different?

Right now at age 18 a person can vote, as I said before, buy cigarettes, run for Parliament, buy alcohol legally, and have a full licence. This gives understandable reasons for the lowering of the age of majority to 18. If we are going to consider persons of this age as having adult status, though, then look at that issue on its own. Clauses 6 and 8 deal respectively with raising the driving age from 15 to 16 years and raising the age in respect of the sale of liquor from 18 to 20 years. Those clauses do not relate to the same legislation and lead to an obvious contrast of values.

If 18 is to be the adult age, are we not here taking a pivotal right that adults have held for years, and a right that affects the social patterns of those in the world? If you care to turn to page 24 of your Young People and Alcohol statistics books you will notice the graph there. It shows the previous fluctuation of apprehensions and police enforcements. This graph shows that fluctuations happened before the law changed and that it can happen without Government instrument.

So what are we even looking at? It is drinking, it is driving, and it is being an adult. Let us look at those issues separately and get this out of here.

DAVID BEATH (Northland): I wish to address the 1999 amendment to the Sale of Liquor Act. As you all know, the minimum age when a person may purchase alcohol is 18, which, I am sure, is an age that many of you are looking forward to with great longing, for that very reason.

It seems to me that the primary reason for raising the drinking age is not so much to prevent 18 and 19-year-olds from drinking as to prevent them from buying drinks for their younger friends. I am sure that you all know that drinking is detrimental to young people—and not only physiologically.

How safe do you think it is that people who are still learning to drive are drinking? As Kate said, in 1994 the police apprehended or issued infringement notices to 834 people under that age of 18. In 2002, 8 years later and 3 years after lowering the drinking age, that number had increased to 2,597. Raising the minimum age for purchasing alcohol to 20 years would mean that the youngest people purchasing alcohol are at an age when they would be expected to have left home, and how many 20-year-olds maintain regular contact with 14 to 17-year-olds?

The Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand reports international evidence suggesting that increasing the legal purchasing age for alcohol is an effective means of reducing alcohol-related harm to young people. We have all seen, in our briefs on the matter, that according to a One News Colmar Brunton poll from May 2004: “71 percent of New Zealanders supported a call to return the drinking age to 20 years.” As elected representatives of the people, we cannot argue with that.

Finally, if we do decide to keep the current drinking age at the age of 18, then we should not raise the minimum driving age to 16. That would mean that people who did not do a defensive driving course would get their full licences at 18. Do we really want people suddenly being allowed to carry passengers at the same time that they are allowed to purchase alcohol? I think not.

DIANA LOUGHNAN (Christchurch Central): I oppose the entirety of the Minimum Ages Bill, because I oppose the idea that adulthood is a one-off event. I oppose the idea that raising the drinking age to 20 will fix the problems of our society, and I oppose the idea that we as youth will be better drivers if we start driving a year later.

The age of majority is neither uniform nor practical. What significance does an age have, when numerous enactments of pieces of legislation have eroded one age and left us with many? The Human Rights Commission considers the transition age as 16. A child is defined in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act as anyone up to the age of 18, and, if we are not adults until we are 20, I can only wonder what we are at 19.

Then, of course, there are the avenues youth can take to avoid even these limits. The Gillick principle in the medical world allows a medical practitioner to consent for the parents of someone under the age of 16, if he or she judges that person to be sufficiently mature. There are also court hearings to invoke guardianship, and other ways to get around these things. These alternatives are there largely because the law tends to view maturity as a process, rather than a gift on your 20th birthday. I would argue, instead, that we individualise age-limits for each legislation, and keep continuity by replacing “adult” and “minor” with appropriate ages. For example, I would reword section 18 of the Marriage Act of 1955, from the use of the word “adult” to “18 years”, to correspond with the current Civil Union Bill, which presently has a different age-limit from that of marriage.

I also oppose the raising of the drinking age, because I have yet to see evidence that the safety issues outweigh the limitations that would be put on people of such an age. If there was such an age change, would it have any effect? Frequency of drinking is the issue, not drinking itself. As such, the results have shown that the December 1999 law change did not affect who drank, so we can only assume that the de facto age for drinking would most likely not change. Experience is the key to maturity, not isolation.

I would argue instead that we should stop shaking off the responsibilities of our society, and realise that it is our attitude that needs to change. Furthermore, my Opposition will argue that the statistics speak for themselves—that young New Zealanders are overly represented in crashes, and they would be right, and I do not plan to waste my 3 minutes arguing that point. However, I see greater correlation between inexperience and crashes, rather than age and crashes. New Zealand has the lowest minimum driving age in the world, yet it has the seventh-worst world record for crashes. Countries like Sweden have a minimum driving age of 16, yet Sweden has the third-best rate of crashes. America has an age of 16, yet the worst rate of crashes. To say that young people do not have the maturity nor the experience to handle driving or to handle drinking, and then take them away and isolate them from those experiences, is to deny them just what you claim they lack. Mr Speaker, that is naive, and short-sighted.

RAMON OLSEN (List): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. That member has just referred to the Chair of the House as Mr Speaker. I think she is being derogatory purposely.

DIANA LOUGHNAN (Christchurch Central): I apologise. I was not doing it purposely.

Madam SPEAKER (Elizabeth Lewer): From now on, can it please be Madam Speaker.

MARY WHALLEY (Rotorua): I would like to address Part 3, and support the view of my fellow members that it should not pass. What the facts make clear is that it is not the 18 to 19-year-olds who are the major problem. Just as they are adult enough to vote, to live independently and, as the bill so ironically proposes, to become part of the majority, for the most past they are also adult enough to drink responsibly. Rather, it is the 14 to 17-year-olds breaking the law who are the main concern in relation to health, transport, and the police.

What is appalling is how easy it is for under-age drinkers to purchase alcohol. One of the most shocking statistics came out in a 2001 survey. The survey concluded that 18 to 19-year-olds were more likely than 14 to 17-year-olds to be asked for evidence of age documents on a licensed premises.

What is wrong with that picture? All studies show that fewer than half of liquor outlets ask to sight young people’s identification before selling alcohol. At the moment it is not a legal requirement to ask for identification. Clearly, there is a loophole in the law that needs to be addressed before we resort to drastic measures like raising the age limit.

The main reasoning behind not making ID checks a legal requirement is that police say they do not have the time and resources to enforce the requirement. But we can think about how much more time and how many more resources it would take, in comparison, if the bill were passed. The logistics of trying to prevent 18 and 19-year-olds from purchasing alcohol and going into pubs or clubs would create more problems for the police than it is all worth.

But let us not blame the police; it is up to liquor outlets to be responsible and get tough on asking for ID. There need to be law changes here, too, as the current penalties are not enough of a deterrent to stop those places from selling alcohol to minors. They seem keener to make a quick buck than to cure social problems.

Before we make radical changes, let us put sufficient measures into place to make this system work. Let us make ID checks a legal requirement, and put police time into enforcing that requirement. Let us put harder penalties on liquor outlets that sell to minors, and on young people who try to use fake ID. Let us make some small changes to solve the problems we have now, before we punish 18 and 19-year-olds for the acts of those under the age limit.

WILSON CHAU (Mt Albert): I acknowledge the fact that some youth are opposed to raising the drinking age to 20. Also, some of you may say it would bring no effect if the drinking age was raised to 20. However, we must ask ourselves what benefit there is in putting the drinking age at 18. We must look at our past and present.

According to the booklet Youth Statistics for Drinking, in 1999 the total number of under-18s dealt with by the police for possessing alcohol in public places was 1,430. In the year 2000, after the Act was passed, 3,269 under-18s were caught by the police. That is more than double. The number shrank to 2,597 in 2002, and some of you may argue that New Zealand is showing some maturity, but still this figure is at least 1,000 more than in 1999. Yes, the availability of alcohol has gone up, but this cannot be blamed for raising the rates of under-age drinkers.

It is the drinking age sitting at 18 that enables more under-age persons to consume alcohol. The booklet, under paragraph 2.3, quotes the police: “Immature 18-year-olds are purchasing and supplying alcohol to under-age children.” New Zealanders are immaturely abusing their rights to consume alcohol at 18. We cannot allow such high rates of under-age drinkers to continue. We let youth drink at 18—no problem. But we have given them the chance to abuse their rights and to supply alcohol to under-age drinkers.

The proposition to return the age of drinking to 20 is the solution to these problems. It would allow easier identification of teenagers purchasing alcohol and also deal with the fake ID problems. People at 20 years of age show more maturity in their actions, and because there will be no more 18 to 19-year-olds purchasing alcohol it will reduce the number of people supplying alcohol to under-age people. It will take time, of course, for these propositions to take effect, but in the end they will be effective in dealing with under-age drinkers.

JORDAN KING (List): The issue that needs to be faced with regard to the purchase of alcohol is not that of age; rather, it is the Government’s right to prohibit its sale when its sale does not impinge on the rights of others to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Before I continue, I will state for the record that I am no advocate of youth drinking, and, thankfully, I cannot be sued for what I say in Parliament, which is just as well.

Certainly, if a 15-year-old buys alcohol, becomes intoxicated and commits a crime of assault against an individual, this person should be punished under the full extent of the law. However, if the said 15-year-old purchases alcohol, and under its influence does not commit any violation of others’ rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then the said individual has done nothing wrong. The fact must remain, however, that no matter what the perceived social consequences of youth drinking and of the age being lowered, it is not the role of the Government of New Zealand to override the choices of the individual. Therefore, this House must recognise that the legislation on the consumption of alcohol is blatant people-control and an immoral use of force.

I would ask the people of New Zealand to remove themselves from their cushions of apathy and press this House for a constitution, guaranteeing every individual in this nation the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; to follow your life without anyone impeding that. Until this document exists, no justice can exist. I will also press New Zealanders to wake up to the cold reality of today’s system—a system where the Government can, through the whim of the majority, impede the individual’s rights to seek out his or her own happiness. That is what I wish to say to you. Morality ends where the gun begins.

RADHIKA JOSEPH (Clevedon): The points in the Minimum Ages Bill that have come up for discussion are: reducing the age of majority from 20 to 18, increasing the driving age from 15 to 16 and, at the same time, increasing the legal age for the purchase of alcohol from 18 to 20. One might wonder whether those minor variations will have any impact on the nerve-racking statistics that are already available.

It is a fact that all of those points have undoubtedly been the subject of a global issue, and that issue is clearly reflected through international statistics. In Australia, minimum ages differ from state to state. In Europe, they differ from border to border. Whether they concern purchasing alcohol, driving a car, or being eligible to vote, qualifying ages differ throughout the world. New Zealand, like every country, is no different from the rule.

Interestingly, two of the three points being discussed seem to be interlinked. The purchasing of alcohol by youth—and by some who are under the minimum age—has often ended up being the cause of road accidents. The number of 14 to 17-year-olds prosecuted for such accidents had increased alarmingly from 596 in 1993 to 911 in 1999. The upward trend continued in the 3 years following the 1999 law change, with 1,155 prosecutions in 2002.

Judging from many statistics available on road accidents caused by alcohol, I am of the clear opinion that the law must be enforced strictly for people found breaking it. Apart from an increase in the age at which alcohol can be bought from 18 to 20, heavy fines and strict bans must be introduced to both buyers and sellers. Such penalties would definitely deter unqualified drivers, and parents of young drivers would have to take equal care over letting their children drive.

Results from surveys and comparisons done in 1995 and 2000 show increases in alcohol-related accidents, which are presumed to be due to the lowering of the drinking age. However, the same surveys also showed an increase in the quantity of alcohol drunk. That led to police all over New Zealand having to deal with more young people who had high intoxication levels. Does that not just go to show that the youth of New Zealand will fully capitalise on any given chance to drink?

After the minimum drinking age was lowered, hospitals saw an increase in the admittance of young people whose primary diagnosis was alcohol-related. If the abuse from the consumption of alcohol were better controlled by tighter laws, hospitals would spend less of taxpayers’ money, and the money could be better spent on patients who were more deserving.

The statistics presented favour the indication that the change in legislation to reduce the drinking age from 20 to 18 has, indeed, had detrimental effects on young people’s drinking behaviour. Those who drink appear to be drinking more frequently and in higher volumes. I believe that it will be an area of concern for the youth of Aotearoa if the age for legally purchasing alcohol is not raised back to 20.

JEREMY PURTON (Rakaia): This proposed Minimum Ages Bill is a sham. While its intention is to modernise the age of majority by bringing it into line with public perceptions, at the same time it seeks to take with one hand what it gives with the other. To amend three Acts in this ad hoc manner does nothing for the consistency of age-related laws in New Zealand. It also fails to address adequately the problem of youth drinking, resorting instead to the arbitrary and somewhat hypocritical method of raising the age of purchase.

In terms of drivers’ licences, I find that the status quo is very acceptable. I am in agreement with lowering the age of majority. It is about time the law recognised 18-year-olds as adults. However, I do have some reservations as to how this part of the bill has been written. Some discrepancy will arise from the present propositions when interpreting various Acts, namely, the Minors’ Contracts Act of 1969. It has sections dealing specifically with minors over the age of 18 that gives them only voidable rights in terms of entering into a contract that is considered harsh or oppressive. Does that mean that the interpretation of the entire Act, which does not define the actual age of a minor, should be construed as minors still being under the age of 20, because there are sections that specifically deal with that? This may come across as somewhat academic, but the case law in this area points out some flaws concerning the grey area. I cite the 1989 case of Morrow and Benjamin v Whittington as an example. This legislation and its amendments will not repeal, codify, or fix up any other flaws in Acts or case law.

The Sale of Liquor Act amendment in this bill is also a contentious and, I put it to you, ridiculous measure. The studies carried out by Barb Lash note that, yes, decreasing the drinking age coincided with an increase in alcohol consumption by young people. But that increase may actually be attributed to a continuing trend that was in existence long before the age was lowered. In short, these statistics by Barb Lash provide no firm reason for increasing the drinking age. It is also somewhat hypocritical to take away a right that has been previously given.

Furthermore, this amendment does nothing to aid Part 1, “Amendment to Age of Majority Act 1970”. How is it that you can increase one thing and decrease another? Ad hoc solutions like this are short-sighted and ultimately doomed to cause more problems than they solve. I urge this House to reject the bill on the grounds of inconsistency and hypocrisy. The Minimum Ages Bill will only seek to confuse an already confused area of law.

SARAH HOMAN (List): I will speak about the three separate areas that the bill involves, which are: lowering the age of majority, raising the drinking age, and also raising the driving age. Firstly, I will address lowering the age of majority from 20 to 18 years. The Age of Majority Act was set 34 years ago and since then society has changed and people are becoming more independent at a younger age. Students are going flatting in their first year of university and are therefore out there on their own. However, they still cannot be recognised as being of full age until they are 20 years old.

Means testing should also be included in the age of majority. At the moment students are still being means tested against their parents’ income until they are 25 years old. This means that some students are unable to get a living allowance because their parents are deemed to be so-called rich, even though they may live at the other end of the country and may not be contributing to the student’s daily living costs. In 1997 the age of majority was lowered from 21 to 20. This change was set in place to keep up with the ever-changing nature and increasing maturity of young people. I think we need to move with this trend and allow 18-year-olds to be given adult responsibilities and privileges.

I will speak next about the amendment to the Sale of Liquor Act of 1989. I think this law should stay as it is so that when young people are first experimenting with alcohol, they can receive education about it at school and also at home. If the age is raised back up to 20 years, many people will have missed this education because schools will not want to be teaching students about something that, by law, none of their pupils should be doing. Most 18-year-olds are still living at home and therefore, after a night out, will return home to their parents. Education continues at home, where parents can tell whether their child has had too much to drink. If the age is raised to 20 years, there will be no one telling the young person that they have had too much because all their friends will be in the same situation as they are. Education about drinking responsibly is very important and should not be allowed to be missed. I do not believe the age should be raised. But, for it to be left as it is, education about drinking alcohol responsibly should become part of the national curriculum taught in schools.

Finally, I will discuss the proposed amendment to the Land Transport Act of 1998. I believe the minimum age in this legislation should be raised from 15 to 16 years of age. This 1-year age gap may seem small and pointless, but in terms of maturity it may be huge. By the time people are 16-years-old they are beginning to have a far better grip on the world, and are more responsible. They would not have a licence to drive passengers until they are 18-years-old. Most of us here today can probably think of at least one teenager who has been maimed in a car accident.

So my view on the three parts of the Minimum Ages Bill is clear—the age of majority should be lowered, the drinking age should stay the same, and the driving age should be raised.

BEKKI ABERNETHY (List): New Zealanders have decided to lower the age of majority to 18. That means that once you turn 18 you are legally, in all areas, an adult. That is what one part of the Minimum Ages Bill proposes to do. It is confusing as to why the third part is a total contradiction and is devoted to increasing back to 20 years the age at which you may purchase or supply liquor. The law would decree simultaneously—if the Minimum Ages Bill were passed—that you have obtained full age, i.e. adulthood, at 18 years, yet you would not be able to buy alcohol for another 2 years.

For the past 30 years 18-year-olds have been voting. They have been deemed to be responsible and sensible enough to vote MPs into Parliament, and these MPs are in turn saying that adults—which is what you are at 18—cannot shout their work associates a round and are not deemed responsible enough to have the choice of drinking alcohol. The 2002 statistics on young people and alcohol prepared by the Ministry of Justice conclude that the drinking habits of teenagers are just a continuation of trends established before the law change and that, overall, it is not clear to what extent any of the changes can be attributed to the change in legislation. The results of that report were inconclusive, and no decisive argument was instigated to strongly support an increase in the drinking age back to 20.

This proposal has no hope of exterminating teenage drinking, which is what it is aimed at achieving. Drinking is a firmly established social ritual in New Zealand society in all age groups—not just among teenagers. It could make it more of a challenge for teenagers to get alcohol, but any excuse for a rebellious challenge would be taken on with great vigour and would completely undermine the law. If you treat someone like a child and take away their decision-making rights and responsibilities, they will act accordingly.

The part of the bill dealing with the age of majority would decree that 18 is when you would obtain full age—the age at which you are mature, responsible, reliable, and probably self-sufficient. Therefore, it is sensible to conclude that 18 is the appropriate age at which we may purchase liquor. It does not make sense to have these two bills passed at the same time, as they are total contradictions.

SETH GORRIE (Christchurch East): I would like to address one of the three parts of the Minimum Ages Bill before the House, with regard to the Sale of Liquor Act. Firstly, since the amendment to that Act in December 1999, there has been a significant increase in both alcohol-related arrests for disorder and a significant increase in alcohol-related motor vehicle accidents. Of course, I should stress that that increase has been primarily in the age group of between 18 and 20 years. People in opposition to that fact may contend that those increases are simply trends, and that the resulting statistics would have happened, anyway. However, I believe that by looking more closely at the data, something greater than a trend becomes apparent, and that that sudden increase in alcohol-related incidents, up to and including the current year, should be more than enough evidence to usher in a change in the legislation.

Secondly, we cannot continue to ignore the further financial cost to the Government and to our country. Already, issues such as the aforementioned alcohol-related disorder and vehicle accidents have seen the social cost rise as high as by $42 million. Another issue to consider is the rationale behind the original change to the Act in 1999. I would like to remind the House of the submissions that were brought to the Justice and Law Reform Committee when the amendment took place. Several of the submissions were in favour of the proposed change to the Act. Those submitters naively claimed that young people would drink more sensibly in a more controlled—and therefore safer—environment, and that it would make a reality of the fact that a large number of 18-year-olds already drank. The naivety of those submissions, and the fact that the rationale behind the change was not supported by a robust overhaul of the age-identification system, was, frankly, quite startling.

The submissions that were against lowering the minimum age to 18 were, in their wisdom, clearly overlooked by the members of the select committee. One submission showed a concern that the de facto drinking age would fall even further to 16 years or below. As we have since seen, the data tells us that the number of young people between the ages of 12 and 17 who think that “drinking is OK, as long as it’s not every day”, has risen to a majority of some 59 percent. An excerpt from Considering the Options, a paper provided to all members of Parliament in July 1999 by the School of Medicine at Auckland University, did not recommend that the legislation be changed. The paper stressed that lowering the drinking age to 18 could be reconsidered when it was shown that age identification and enforcement were working better than at present. Since the change in the age, there have been 1,500 new recruits to the police force—barely enough to accommodate the rate of attrition. That highlights how poorly equipped we have been to adjust to the requirements needed to enforce the legislation adequately.

I would like to signal my support for the proposal to raise the minimum age for the purchase of alcohol from 18 to 20 years.

JONATHAN WISEMAN (List): I rise to speak on clause 8 of the Minimum Ages Bill, which proposes to amend the Sale of Liquor Act. Before we lowered the drinking age to 18 in 1999, New Zealand was one of only three countries out of 23 countries in the modern world that did not have a drinking age of 18 or lower. The United States had a drinking age of 21, and Japan had a drinking age of 20. Twenty other modern countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Italy, and South Africa, had a drinking age lower than that of New Zealand at the time.

In some parts of Europe there is no legal drinking age at all, but we do not see the abuse of alcohol that has been seen in New Zealand. We do have a problem with youth binge drinking, but unless we remove the taboo in respect of alcohol, we will not see any normalisation of drinking in this country.

The Minimum Ages Bill proposes to decrease the age of majority from 20 to 18, yet to increase the drinking age from 18 back to 20. I suggest that if young adults of 18 years and older are considered to have the maturity to hold the rights of majority, then surely they have the maturity to make their own decisions on the consumption of alcohol. Eighteen-year-olds can marry, can vote, and can join the armed forces and be killed while fighting for their country. It is logical to me, then, that 18-year-olds should be permitted legally to enjoy the social pleasure of drinking alcohol, should they wish.

At 18 years of age a young adult is maturing, and should be encouraged beyond the early social activities of an evening at the movies or hamburgers with friends at McDonald’s. Young people who have moved away from home and who are in their first or second year of tertiary study are making their own decisions on life, and they should be guided in making well-informed decisions in respect of alcohol. In my opinion, banning alcohol from that sector of our community will not stop those people using alcohol, but will make criminals of some of the brightest and most energetic members of our society.

Statutory control is not the answer; the answer is education, and education costs money. There are many examples of society being educated away from inappropriate behaviour. The campaign against drink-driving is probably the most successful example, and the campaign against smoking is another. Similar programmes could be equally successful in educating youth about alcohol consumption and appropriate behaviour. Education and advertising can create a change in the way our community thinks and acts. They give long-term results—and that has occurred with drink-driving and smoking—but legislation simply tries to force one group’s view on another group and is not always successful.

The spirit of the bill—excuse the pun—is that engendering mature behaviour around alcohol requires a law to support that. I say, in closing, that it does not. We should instead educate young people about alcohol, so that when they reach 18 they have the skills to act responsibly. There is a saying: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”. It is all about education.

JAMES OWEN (Ohariu-Belmont): The 15 to 25-year-old age group is volatile, energised, ambitious, and curious. Legislation for young people needs to reward the considerate and responsible in this age group, while allowing for the mistakes of the rash and reckless. What is not correct is the assumption in this omnibus bill before the House today that by implementing this bill, a one-size-fits-all result can be achieved.

At 18 years of age, potentially we can be fully qualified pilots flying jumbo jets with 400 people aboard around the world. Still in our teens, we can buy addictive drugs such as tobacco and alcohol, which have life-changing and, indeed, life-threatening effects; yet we are not deemed adults in New Zealand society. Upon reaching 18, youth can make the absolute hallmark-of-democracy decision of casting votes in general elections. Given this kind of age-related evidence, what is the point of having the age of majority at 20, if we are able to make such informed and serious decisions 2 years before we legally become adults? Setting the age of majority at 18 makes clear and logical sense. It signals the fact that when young people turn 18, the decisions and responsibilities already permitted legally at that age are clearly matched by the status of being deemed an adult.

It is a well-known fact that New Zealand has some of the harshest driving conditions in the world. In 2002, according to Land Transport Safety Authority statistics, drivers aged 15 to 19 caused 14.6 percent of all serious injury crashes and 9.1 percent of all fatal crashes. Although these statistics may not seem huge, according to other statistics from around the world, New Zealand has the seventh-worst record in the world. This House now has the opportunity to vote positively on a motion that may help reduce this shocking record.

At present, excessive teenage alcohol consumption is an issue that is being addressed through enforcement and education. Regardless of whether or not the alcohol purchasing age is raised to 20 years, teens will continue to drink alcohol. Barb Lash in her 2004 report on young people and alcohol asserts that the real concern is that although the actual numbers of teens drinking may not actually be increasing, those who are drinking alcohol are doing so more often, and in higher quantities. Raising the alcohol purchasing age will not tackle this problem. Brian Easton’s 2002 recommendation for taxing alcoholic harm by modernising alcohol excise duties is another possible measure for dealing with this issue. The age of majority proposed at 18 years would complement nicely the current legal alcohol purchasing age of 18 years. This would signal the responsibilities, which go with this activity, as having adult status.

AMY MORTON (New Plymouth): New Zealand’s youth are unique. They are eager to become mature and to live up to the influences of their adult role models. However, adults need to realise that the handing over of responsibilities to youth does not make youth responsible.

The problem with the amendment to the Sale of Liquor Act is not the change in age; it is the lack of restrictions. The Ministry of Justice supplies statistics that state: “The number of minors in restricted or supervised areas of licensed premises who were dealt with by the Police has shown a decreasing trend ...”. This trend is similar in the case of minors purchasing liquor from licensed premises. Yet this information is contradicted by feedback from 12 police districts—feedback indicating that there has been an increase in the problem of minors drinking in public places and in the number of alcohol-related hospitalisations of minors. This law has provoked the use of private functions for alcohol consumption where youth of all ages are free to drink and do as they please.

This law needs to be adapted to stop under-age and irresponsible drinking. The main problem is the unrestricted access 18-year-olds have to copious amounts of alcohol. I also propose that this law be adapted so that 18-year-olds do not lose this responsibility but have a smaller piece of the pie. This simply means allowing 18-year-olds to go to pubs, clubs, restaurants, etc., and consume alcohol. The area is a controlled environment in which police on the streets and business owners have a responsibility to look out for the well-being of the public. But the law should restrict under-20-year-olds from accessing alcohol in bottle stores and supermarkets where huge amounts of alcohol can be bought and consumed by anyone anywhere. By bringing youth into public places to drink, we will be able to restrict minors’ access to alcohol and create more responsible, safer environments for our youth to have fun in.

The 15-year-old age barrier for obtaining a life driver’s licence was adopted in 1924. Given that this has been the law for 80 years and that increasing numbers of youth are having accidents, why has it taken until now to seek a change? We live in a time when cars are faster, bigger, and a fashion accessory. Boy racers are upon us, so it is about time that we not change but adapt the system to suit the minds of New Zealand youth. The majority of youth are students earning little or no wages, so they are dependent on their parents to pay the $282.30 to gain a full licence, not to mention any re-sits. But if you want to be a safe driver, you then have to fork out another $250, or more, for a defensive driving course. Surely youth should be encouraged to be safer drivers. I propose that this law not be changed but that a defensive driving course be included in the learners part of the three-stage process. In the future that will result in safer and more reliable youthful drivers.

WILLA YOUNG (Clutha-Southland): In 1999 members of Parliament chose to bypass the select committee process in favour of a conscience vote that lowered the legal purchase age from 20 years to 18 years of age. One of four submissions presented to the Justice and Law Reform Committee in support of the legislation was an acknowledgment of the fact that many 18-year-olds already drank. This was the result of what is termed the trickledown effect, with the cause stemming from the fact that many 18-year-olds often socialise more with 20-year-olds, and so on, down through the age groups.

In spite of advice to the contrary, the bill passed, and we are now experiencing the same result of that trickledown effect happening with an even younger age group. Given that 16 and 17-year-olds are now already drinking, will the same solution be applied? Using the same logic, perhaps the answer should be to raise the purchase age to 22 years and trust that the trickle stops at 20 years. Although raising the age of purchase to 20 years is far from ideal, as we can vote, drive, buy cigarettes, or get married without parental consent before then, the reality is that there needs to be a tougher stance taken with regard to alcohol education and the aggressive advertising strategies aimed at highlighting the dangers of alcohol abuse, as with cigarette advertising.

So the question is put to the representatives in this Chamber: how many of you socialise with 18-year-olds and, furthermore, how many of you socialise with 20-year-olds? By raising the drinking age it will, of course, not instantly come into action, but it will be clearly obvious that it will eventually eliminate the social connection between 18-year-olds and younger people, and the drinking factor that binds them together.

SHANNON TYLER (List): The last two amendments in this legislation are, for want of a better word, stupid. We need to accept that today’s young people are growing up faster. This is an observation that so many of us make; an observation that society itself has come to recognise.

We are witnessing our younger siblings wearing older-style clothes, acting with adult behaviours, and living adult lifestyles. It is a reality that we have to face in order to progress. My claims are substantiated with the sales figures of tween market empires, such as the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen brand, and statistics showing a trend in decreasing ages for sexual intercourse and drinking alcohol.

This is not a debate on the moral implications of such trends, and it is not a discussion of whether this tendency is to the detriment or benefit of young people. It is a legislative debate on where the law should be in respect of young people’s behaviour. I believe that when considering these amendments, it is crucial to look at the situation realistically, and I think the absolute worst thing that the youth MPs in this Chamber could do is to pretend that 12-year-olds do not engage in sexual activities and that 16-year-olds do not drink alcohol.

If we all put our reality hats on and look at things as they are and then look at the Minimum Ages Bill, I think it is so insanely obvious that the amendments are backwards and logically defiant. What does it hope to achieve in raising the driving age? Are we to pretend that 15-year-olds do not go out socialising and go to work? It is more convenient if they can get themselves there rather than being dependent on others to drive them. When it is proposed to raise the age at which liquor can be bought or consumed to 20 years, do we genuinely believe that when 18 and 19-year-olds go to parties, they will be sculling fizzy drinks? To me, the thought of a 19-year-old working man not being allowed to pick up a six-pack for Friday drinks is stupendously outrageous, yet this is exactly what the bill is proposing.

Unless the amendments to the two Acts are completely obliterated, I will not support this bill, as its head-in-the-clouds nature defies the forward-thinking, progressive nation ethos I believe we should all aspire to. Yes, it is shocking that intermediate kids have sexual relations and that young teens binge drink on the weekends. I see a lot of disgusted faces before me when I mention this, but raising legal ages will not change it. Community education will alter these issues, as has been demonstrated in the effective drink-driving and cycle safety campaigns.

I conclude by re-emphasising my opposition to this bill. It is not facing reality, it does not make sense, and it is not legislation New Zealand should adopt if it wants to retain its reputation for progressive, innovative ideals.

KYLE HENDERSON (List): We in this Chamber know exactly what is going on out in the real world, as we are there on most Friday nights with our under-age drinkers, and we know that 18 years of age is a time of transition from adolescence to the ideals of adulthood. We move from secondary school to tertiary education and into the workforce at this age. For the first time in our lives we can make our own decisions. We can eat what we want, sleep where we want, and do what we want. The changes to the law in 1999 gave us these abilities.

When the age at which we can purchase alcohol was lowered to 18, there were some major reforms. The first reform was a singular age for the purchase of alcohol. The age was not split between liquor outlets and restaurants. Also, a photographic form of ID to police these changes has come into effect, and that has allowed police to create a safer environment for us to drink in.

Statistics that have now been released show that lowering the age could, possibly, not have been justified. This was a waste of taxpayers’ money. These statistics compared the 1999-2000 period with numbers from the present and pre-1999 numbers, when a different law structure was in place. Of course comparisons do occur. Alcohol-related arrests are up and youth-related drunk-in-charge arrests have, of course, increased. But this is to be expected when the age limit is decreased. With the changes to the ID system, youth who try to purchase alcohol are being caught, and because of this and the illegality of their consumption and purchase of alcohol, more arrests are being made. This explains why police involvement in youth drinking has increased.

The increase in the drunk-in-charge arrests can be expected also. Those who will drink and drive are being allowed this opportunity at a younger age. This situation cannot be changed by legislation. Only education and time can curb this trend, and with enough time the trend may go back to the same level or to a lower level than pre-1999. This law has been in place just 5 years, and it has had its growing pains like every other law. But this is no reason to change it back. It takes time for society to become accustomed to change, and that is all this law needs.

ROBYN ZWAAN (List): In addressing clause 3 of the Minimum Ages Bill, which relates to raising the drinking age, we have to look at those in whose footsteps we are following. Most of the attitudes in respect of drinking shown by today’s youth have developed from the attitudes of parents or other role models whom we may look up to. So, instead of slamming the youth of today and taking away from us responsibility for the actions we choose with regard to alcohol, why not have tougher penalties on our role models—our elders—whom we respect and look up to, and penalise them for the attitudes they have shown to us over the last 30 years?

The average teenager in New Zealand probably watches around 2 hours of television per night—and probably watches one show after 8.30 p.m.—so it is not much of a surprise that one of the main ways we are influenced to buy alcohol is through advertising. We all laugh along with the advertisements without realising the effect they are having on us, and on the youth of today in general. Advertisers use so many different techniques to make their advertisements appealing and to subconsciously make us buy alcohol. It is not just television that has the advertisements; these days it seems that almost every second billboard on the motorway has an alcohol advertisement.

Those are not the only ways that we get bombarded with advertising. In Thames, where I come from, we get the Hauraki Herald twice a week. On the first page there is always at least one advertisement for alcohol that shoves the weekly specials into the faces of thousands of under-age drinkers. What is this going to do? It will encourage under-age drinking. Instead of trying to minimise our country’s drinking problems by raising the drinking age back to 20, why not put restrictions on the amount of alcohol advertising that companies are allowed, or ban it altogether?

Even though there has been an overall increase in many statistics related to under-age drinking and other drinking problems since the lowering of the drinking age, there has also been an increase in police patrolling of those issues. One cannot say outright that there is a direct causal link between the lowering of the drinking age and an increase in youth drinking problems.

Overall, I do not agree with raising the drinking age back to 20. If that happens, then a 20-year-old can have a university degree, be married, fight in a war, start a family, buy cigarettes, represent our country as part of a political party, or, if lucky, even be Prime Minister, yet he or she cannot go out for a social drink for friends. I would keep the driving age at 15, because New Zealand is a rural country where lots of young people need to get to work and have other commitments, and lower the age of majority to 18, so that there is some consistency in age restrictions under the law.

ANNIE NIKOLAO (Maungakiekie): Unplanned teen pregnancies, alcohol abuse, violence, gang-related issues, teen drunken driving, and deaths and injuries are among the many problems that affect young New Zealanders and their families. Statistics show that those problems have dramatically increased since the minimum age for purchasing and drinking alcohol was lowered from 20 to 18 in 1999. The question is whether we as a nation will let this situation slip or put an end to it.

The opportunity to purchase and consume alcohol legally is given to 18-year-olds who are fresh out of high school. Due to that legalisation, health issues have dramatically increased, even for younger teens aged from 13. Lifting the minimum drinking age from 18 back to 20 would be appropriate, and would bring down the statistics relating to alcohol abuse. We have our whole lives after the age of 20 to drink alcohol, so why start any earlier? It is at the age of 20 that we experience the first steps of adulthood and are mature enough to take on the responsibilities of alcohol-related issues.

Alcohol is the reason that the young people of today are going astray. An Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand (ALAC) policy states: “Raising the minimum legal purchase age or drinking age is an effective way to reduce alcohol-related harm to young people. The harm and costs of lowering the legal purchase age are unacceptably high. Therefore, ALAC supports legislative change to return the legal age of purchase to 20 years. That change alone will not solve drinking problems for young people and should be supported by a range of other effective policy interventions, including targeted policing and enforcement and an effective pricing structure for alcoholic beverages.”

The stats on lowering or lifting the minimum legal age for alcohol purchase or drinking will always show mixed pictures. There is robust evidence that shows that although the numbers of young people drinking alcohol may not be increasing, those who drink appear to be drinking higher volumes. That is an area of deep and sincere concern, and it is why I conclude by saying that we should lift the minimum drinking age back to 20. That action may not change the statistics with a flick of a switch, but it will change them in the long run for, most important, our children and our children’s children—the rising generation.

CONRAD REYNERS (Rongotai): Two parts of this bill could be seen as a great leap backwards in terms of youth development in New Zealand. The raising of the drinking age has been supposedly justified due to the amount of alcohol-related deaths on our roads. But to quote a popular cliché, this proposal is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, not the rope at the top.

The reason we have so many teenage alcohol-related deaths is not due to the age at which young people consume alcohol but the manner in which they do so. The problem is the way we as teenagers drink. I do not think I have ever seen a leaflet or guide from the Government that states: “This is how you drink safely and this is how you go about drinking.” If the drinking age is raised, all we will see are the same problems repeating themselves again and again. There is a large number of 18-year-olds who can easily deal with the pressures put on them by drinking. It is the culture of binge drinking among teenagers that has put a big black spot on youth who drink. If we raise the age at which you can buy alcohol, who is to say this problem will magically vanish?

The Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand, which people have been quoting all day, agrees with me on this point, and I quote: “This change will not alone solve the drinking problems for young people. What is needed is not another attempt to curtail the freedoms of youth but an increase in the amount of governmental involvement, programmes, advertising on how teenagers can go about drinking safely and in a good healthy manner.”

I cannot stress that enough. The legal age for purchasing and consuming alcohol is not the problem but rather the social attitudes that many youth have towards drinking. That is the major problem and the reason for these damning statistics.

It is said that the raising of the driving age is also justified due to the effects of alcohol on youth, and the fact that many youth feel invincible behind the wheel. The bill attempts to amend the age at which you may apply for a driver’s licence. The age of 15 was originally introduced in 1924, and this is where I see the problem with raising the driving age. In 1924, when you turned 15 you applied for your licence and you got it straight away—probably in the very same hour in which you applied. In today’s world it takes many youth at least 2 to 3 years to go through the vigorous testing and licensing system that was introduced sometime in the 1990s, by which age I feel they have gained enough experience to drive safely and competently on our roads. The age does not need to be raised, because there is no need.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the Youth Parliament, these two clauses are not conducive to the development of youth independence in New Zealand today and should be discounted.

JOSHUA RURU (List): I want to speak to the third reading of the Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill. If, at the age of 18, I can be sent to war, become a member of Parliament, and vote for a responsible and democratic Government, then I should be able to purchase alcohol at the same age, and consume it. What is more harmful: electing a Government, firing a weapon, or relaxing with others in a controlled environment—for example, a pub, a nightclub, or at a family gathering? Raising the legal age for purchasing alcohol from 18 years to 20 years will not solve the youth drinking problem, as youth will find other ways and other means of purchasing their alcohol. Instead, we need to start early prevention and early education for our young people, because with education our vast knowledge is expanded to a sense of responsibility.

Like other members of my party, Jonathan Wiseman and Renee Parkinson, I agree that rejecting the third reading of the legislation is the best for youth. You cannot give a right and then take it away. I call on the rest of the House to reject the third reading of the bill. If we can be called up for battle, then we can or should be able to continue purchasing and consuming alcohol.

RENAE WEST (Waitakere): The minimum ages legislation is divided into three parts: the Land Transport Amendment Bill, the Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill, and the Age of Majority Amendment Bill. I will address only two—firstly, the Land Transport Amendment Bill.

Some argue that 15 is too young an age at which to be driving, and that the number of fatal and harmful crashes involving people aged 15 to 19 years happen because of inexperience and youthfulness, or immaturity. Inexperience needs to be addressed not by raising the age limit—because your first time driving is always going to be your first time driving whether you are 15 or 50; that is never going to change—but instead by installing a full and comprehensive drivers education course, where people cannot even obtain their driver’s licence without passing that course. Drivers, regardless of their age, need to understand the full risks they take and the consequences of their actions before they get behind the wheel of a car. That is what gives a driver true experience.

Youthfulness is not completely age-specific, either. One argument about youthfulness is that younger people lack the life experience to evaluate consequences effectively. But if we go by that argument, then in all fairness people of any age should not be allowed to get their driver’s licence until they have married, divorced, raised a child, or lost a loved one. That is unreasonable, and so is the idea that raising the legal driving age will suddenly make it all better.

As to comparing New Zealand to the rest of the world, and even to Australia, I ask: so what? New Zealand has always been a uniquely independent country and we have never looked to others to tell us what to do, so why are we going to start now?

Another point to make, as has already been made, is that New Zealand is a very rural country. A lot of country kids cannot get to social activities, to school, or to rugby—they cannot get anywhere—without their driver’s licence, and they need to be able to obtain their licence as soon as possible. It is unfair and unreasonable to suggest that they should have to wait an extra year to do that.

That is why a more educated licensing programme is so badly needed, where you could teach young drivers about the consequences of their actions without them having to experience those consequences. That would address both the youthfulness and the inexperience of drivers before they even got behind the wheel.

I would also like to address the Age of Majority Act of 1970. Having the age of majority at 20 years is now obsolete. When you are 15 you can get a driver’s licence, at 16 you can get a gun licence, and at 18 you can drink, vote, and even go to war to fight and die for your country. So why should you have to wait another 2 years until, by law, you can be called an adult? Very few people even recognise the age of majority as 20; most people already see it as 18.

The logical thing to do would be to bring the age of majority down to 18, where most things that class you as an adult in society’s eyes are already set, anyway. So, no, the driving age should not be raised but, yes, the age of majority should be lowered.

ALAYNA SMITH (Rangitikei): Nobody here can honestly tell me they do not have a drink now and then, and nobody here can honestly say they are not a little bit excited about going to the pub.

Ramon Olsen: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member is telling lies, because I can honestly say that I never have a drink.

Mr SPEAKER: Let me put it this way. The member cannot accuse another person of telling a lie. The member will now stand, withdraw, and apologise for that remark. The speaker on her feet might have made a statement that was inaccurate, but she did not deliberately say that.

Ramon Olsen: I withdraw that point of order, and apologise.

Mr SPEAKER: No, no. The member will withdraw and apologise. No argument, or he leaves the Chamber.

Ramon Olsen: I apologise for making it.

Mr SPEAKER: Now, in ruling on the member’s point of order, it was a debating point and can be answered. I did not think what the speaker said was out of order. I do not necessarily agree or disagree with her, but she was within the Standing Orders. Please continue.

ALAYNA SMITH: However, we must not let our minds be clouded by our own bias. We must put aside our own personal wants, and look at the bigger picture. We should raise the legal drinking age back to 20.

Statistics have shown that the harm and costs of keeping the drinking age at 18 are unacceptably high. Let me tell you that teenagers between 14 and 17 years of age have experienced an increase in alcohol consumption and frequency since the drinking age was lowered, and that teenagers experience greater harm from drinking the same amounts as older age groups.

Now, 80 percent of police issues are alcohol and drug-related. This, in itself, should convince you to raise the drinking age. Since the law change, there has been an increased problem with young people drinking in public and teenagers being too drunk to look after themselves. The number of 18 and 19-year-olds convicted of disorderly behaviour increased from 406 in 1993, to 1,002 in 2002. Now, come on! A report in 2004 shows an upward trend in the number of 14 and 17-year-olds prosecuted for drink-driving, and that is continuing to rise. In 1993 there were 596 prosecutions for drink-driving for 14 to 17-year-olds, and in 2002 there were 1,155.

So what are the consequences of having the drinking age at 18? Most studies show the younger we start drinking the more likely that long-term, adverse outcomes will arise—such as alcohol dependency and abuse, and alcohol-related medical conditions. A survey in 2000 showed that one-third of 16 to 17-year-old drinkers had experienced five or more problems in the past year as a result of their drinking—from hangovers, to affecting work performance, to getting into a serious argument or fight. A shocking one-third of teenage girls who sought emergency contraception reported they were drunk when they had unsafe and sometimes unwanted sex. We need to open our eyes to these unacceptable statistics. Returning the drinking age to 20 would address the problem of increased drinking and alcohol-related harm among teenagers.

LUCY BROWN (Kaikoura): Are teenagers’ drinking habits are out of control? Surveys in 1995 and 2000 have shown that the frequency in consumption of alcohol by 14 to 17-year-olds has increased, while the proportion has stayed the same. Since 1995 we have experienced a lot of change. Cellphones have become smaller, cars have become faster, and the use of recreational drugs has become commonplace.

I do not agree with raising the drinking age to 20. I see that as merely a band-aid for the problems that teenagers are now suffering from regarding recreational drugs. We need to address this issue head on. Firstly, we need more alcohol-awareness programmes in schools to teach teenagers about the damaging effects that binge drinking and smoking have on their bodies. This must be addressed. Tobacco is the only consumer product that, when used as intended, kills half its consumers.

The year 1924 was the year New Zealand won its first Olympic track medal, 1924 was the year my grandfather was born, and 1924 was the year the minimum age for driving was set. When the minimum age was set there were fewer than 100,000 cars on the road. The top-selling car was the Ford Model A, with a top speed of not much more than the Olympian who won the gold medal. But times have changed. We now have over a million cars on the road. The road network is amazing, and cars are fast. This law is outdated, because the car has evolved from humble transport to a potential killer when in the wrong hands, especially when controlled by 15-year-old kids.

Lastly, by lowering the age of majority we are totally contradicting ourselves. If 18-year-olds are not responsible enough to drink legally, how can we expect them to take full responsibility as an adult in the eyes of the law? The age of majority protects young people from contracts that may be harsh or oppressive. This is a valuable method of protection, as at 18, teenagers can still be quite naive and inexperienced.

In conclusion, instead of trying to push aside our problems with young drinkers, we should look for ways to help them. We need to put the minimum driving age up to 16. Although it may be convenient to learn how to drive at 15, we need to look at the big picture. The safety of all road users is at stake here. Let us leave the age of majority at 20 and protect our teenagers for just a few more years.

KATHRYN GRANT (List): In 1970, when the Age of Majority Act was originally debated, the Acting Minister of Justice cited several reasons for lowering the age from 21 to 20 years. Two of those were the impracticality of keeping young people in a state of legal dependence for as long as in the past, and a worldwide trend towards the view that adult responsibilities should be assumed earlier. Are those statements not just as relevant now as they were then, but now in the context of lowering the age from 20 to 18 years? At 18 most people are leaving school and moving into either the workforce or higher learning. They move out of their childhood confines and into the world of adults. They are old enough to buy alcohol—under present law at least—buy cigarettes, vote, serve in the armed forces without permission from a parent or guardian, or consent to any medical or surgical procedure. They are making important decisions independent of guidance, yet by law they are still considered minors.

The inconsistencies and exceptions in those laws governing minimum ages mean that many New Zealanders are unsure of the rules for certain legal entitlements. Overseas, many countries cite the age of legal maturity as 18. The United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Finland are just a few. That is not unlike the trend mentioned by the Acting Minister of Justice in 1970. If the age of majority stays at 20, it will gradually lose more and more significance, as more pieces of legislation are brought in to enable young people—younger than 20—to make decisions and assume responsibilities. That is already happening—for example, the voting age and the minimum wage structure.

Bringing the age down to 18 will bring most legislation into line with each other, and that will also reduce the confusion that surrounds the present legislation.

AMY MAX (Nelson): I want to focus on Part 3. I do not think the legal age to purchase and drink alcohol should be taken back up to 20. It is important that we look at the big picture and the big issue. It does not lie in the 18, 19, and 20-year-old age bracket. It is the 13, 14, and 15-year-olds who are drinking, almost every weekend, to excess. With the age being lowered, alcohol has become more accessible to younger teens, but taking the age back up now will not stop excess drinking or deal with those issues.

There are many statistics that show that the volume of alcohol consumed, and how frequently teens are drinking, has significantly increased—but not the number of young people drinking. So we need to encourage alternative ways of socialising. Drinking is not the only way. We should look at having more events where alcohol is not the main factor. Teens should be able to have fun without it. This means that teens need to be better educated so that they can start taking responsibility for their own lives. We as youth can do that. We can have more responsible drinking behaviour. I think that if at 18 we can vote for who runs our country, we should be able to have a glass of wine with a meal if we go out for dinner, or have a few drinks with our friends.

Will raising the minimum age stop the under-age drinkers? No, it will not. It will create more. We need to step in with these alternative youth events and ways of socialising, and we need to start taking responsibility for our drinking behaviour. I do not mean just the older teens but everybody—because who do these young teens look up to? Ours is a society that says: “Why not have a few beers? Why not have a few more?”. I do not think that raising the age will help with any of these drinking problems.

TOM McCARTHY (Wellington Central): I ask my fellow youth parliamentarians to vote with me and strike out the proposed amendment to the Land Transport Act, which raises the minimum age of driving from 15 to 16. The grounds for this proposed change are safety. New Zealand is sick of motorists dying every year on our harsh roads. New Zealand is sick of pedestrians falling victim to reckless drivers. I agree with this view. I too am disgusted by the high rates of accidents that we have on our roads, and I do not like the possibility of falling victim to a car accident. Yet, in saying this, I do not believe the primary cause of the crashes is age. I believe road safety is about skill and maturity behind the wheel; not age. A prime example of this is that our elderly drivers are currently being taken off the roads because of their incompetence.

We need to address the big issue about maturity behind the wheel in particular. Already boy racers have been discussed today, and other things associated with them. I say that maturity is the key to this. We have two points here, and the first is that when a teenager is 15, his or her parents are more inclined to get involved because their child is young enough for the parents to feel that safety could potentially be at risk. For this reason they get involved in nurturing their child’s skill behind the wheel. My second point is that at the age of 18, as has already been discussed, we run into the issue of young adults becoming fully licensed drivers at the same age they are allowed to drink alcohol. The problem that this presents is not purely just with themselves and drink-driving but also with peer pressure, other drunken people being behind the wheel.

The first of these points regards parental involvement with the 15-year-old driver. We have already had members speak to us today about the low crash rates of 15-year-olds. This is primarily because they have this involvement with their parents. Because the parents are involved we have youth developing a mentality that means they want to drive responsibly, and they can learn the rules and regulations of our roads in a mature environment. We have been told today that cars can be a destructive tool. I completely concur with that—I think that is most definitely the case. We have been told a car is almost like a gun. That is most definitely the case, but we need to facilitate an arrangement whereby it becomes a weapon that is not used. New Zealanders want to have the least possible number of people who are irresponsible with guns out there. We need to facilitate involvement whereby New Zealanders are taught to a standard, and develop that standard with their parents, where they are not using cars in uninformed ways and where they have developed maturity through involvement with their parents, because they are at this age of 15.

Secondly, we must weigh up the consequence and risk to society of New Zealanders getting involved with alcohol at 18, at the same time they have just got their full licence. I say that for these above reasons we must keep the driving age at 15, primarily so that 15-year-olds can gain maturity from their parents and other supervised caregivers.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 3.30 p.m. to 3.45 p.m.

Speaker’s Statements

Business and Parliament Trust—Scholarships

Mr SPEAKER: Before we commence the general debate, I want to say a very brief word about something I am very pleased indeed to be able to tell you about. The Business and Parliament Trust is an organisation that consists of the 46 or so biggest businesses in New Zealand, from Air New Zealand and Fonterra to a group of other companies. We have a relationship with those companies, and I am the president of the trust. I have persuaded its members to pay an annual sum in order to have interchange between Parliament and the businesses concerned, and to have three or four functions a year where we show them around Parliament and then members go away for a week or so and do a course at somewhere like Auckland International Airport, Television New Zealand, Fonterra, etc.

The Business and Parliament Trust has decided to grant three scholarships—one of $2,000 and two of $1,000—to three lucky people who participated in this Youth Parliament and who write an essay about the experiences you have had over these 2 days, with comments, suggestions, or anything you like. A panel will judge the essays, and then the trust will present those cheques. They are not insignificant sums of money that are to be awarded for writing—two sides of an A4 sheet—about what this experience has meant to you.

I will have a little more to tell you about that, but it is something we have instituted that I think the three who are lucky will find is an extra $2,000 or $1,000 to help with their student fees.

Motions

Youth Parliament 2004—Anniversaries

ROWAN MANHIRE-HEATH (Napier): I move, That this House note this year is particularly special for Youth Parliament as it coincides with a number of anniversaries: 150 years since the first Parliament in New Zealand, 30 years since the lowering of the voting age to 18, and 10 years since the first Youth Parliament, and that it provides 120 young people and all those we represent with an opportunity to understand the parliamentary process better and to have our opinions heard.

Motion agreed to.

United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education

EMMA LILLEY (East Coast): I move, That this House note that the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education ends in 2004, and that human rights education should be a lifelong process by which each one of us learns respect for the dignity of others and fundamental freedoms.

Motion agreed to.

General Debates

KIM PRONK (List): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Abortion in New Zealand should be restricted, if not stopped. Abortion rates are out of control. People are more careless in their relationships and take fewer precautions, justifying any resulting pregnancy as OK because they can get out of it easily by having an abortion. But is abortion really the easiest option? Is it the best option?

Many women who undergo an abortion suffer from post-abortion syndrome. This often includes emotional and physical difficulties, including suicidal thoughts and impulses, regret, depression, and, in extreme cases, infertility, which produces more consequent emotional, physical, and mental issues. Abortion may seem easy beforehand. It may seem like a way out of a lifetime of responsibility, but, seriously, is a quick fix worth a lifetime of regret? If you think about it, you will see that abortion is too severe to be justified as simply a choice. Abortion is not simply a choice, it is murder—the murder of an unborn child. I repeat what the stand-in Minister of Justice said earlier today—that taking a life is wrong and that the chance of an innocent person being charged for a crime he or she did not commit is just too high. I ask: what crime did the unborn child commit? The aborted child is not simply a foetus terminated. It is a person in whom might have been the cure for cancer or the answer to world hunger. Convenience and choice may have cost us our greatest assets as New Zealanders.

I move to change the way our nation looks at abortion. We cannot promote abortion as the quick fix. It is damaging not only to the unborn child but also to the pregnant mother. Is it worth killing the future of New Zealand to fix a problem? Is it worth a child’s life to save a few bucks? The answer is no. I stand completely opposed to abortion, but I know that not everyone would agree with my view. That is why I suggested a restriction to the circumstances in which abortion is allowed to be undertaken. I know that in extreme cases of unplanned pregnancy, such as those caused by rape, it can be difficult for a mother to carry through with her pregnancy. But in the case of a healthy, 25-year-old woman, how can we justify abortion? We cannot, especially when adoption is a perfect alternative.

I urge you to consider a reshaping of the way abortions are permitted in New Zealand. Why do we not start a trend in the world, so that New Zealand can enjoy the future we deserve, with people who are world changers.

SHEENA THORN (Wigram): Should teenagers between the ages of 14 and 19 be taxed while at school? Teenagers get a job for one reason: to earn some cash—whether it be to save for their future tertiary education or their future OE. Paying tax at about 19.5 percent on a student wage of about $7.20 makes the prospect of saving for a tertiary education, on top of other expenses, very bleak. The amount of tax being taken off teenagers over a year could pay for a year’s university study. It would also save a year’s worth of student loans to pay off.

The thing is, teenagers get back only about $190 to $300, after the rebate system. Although for those above the age of 20 years the amount of tax received back increases, it really is not enough to make a difference, as increases in the price of goods in malls and in general retail mean that the most this money would buy is about three to four items at a clothes store—well, it is for me, anyway. Facts indicate that at the end of the 2003 financial year, 188,000 people between the ages of 0 and 18 paid $160 million in tax. Out of this, $4 million gets paid back to them. The rest goes into the consolidated account. All we know is that the Government gets it, and we see it invested in projects such as the Auckland highway project.

I understand that when we move higher in the ranks to a secure job and full-time work with a high salary, tax will seem like nothing. I also understand that tax from the workforce is much needed to pay for future benefits. This tax has been helping the New Zealand Budget, and in this case we know it will go towards something important. All I am saying is that although taxing is done according to age, when it comes to young people funding their own expenses and saving for their tertiary education, that money is much needed.

JORDAN WILLIAMS (Independent): I want to touch on two things today: firstly, the underachievement of boys, and, secondly, the worthless qualification you may have heard of, called the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA).

Over the past few decades we have seen far more female teachers, especially at the primary school level, entering our teaching structure. This not only leads to different teaching styles but also creates a vacuum of male role models, preventing many boys from having male teachers until they hit secondary school at 13 years of age. Do I need to point out that for a nation that is already growing up so often fatherless, the consequences of this are immense? Boys were on a par with girls 15 years ago in terms of their reading ages, and naturally with the advancement of teaching techniques you would expect both boys and girls to have improved their reading skills. Yes, girls are reading at a level ahead of that expected 20 years ago, but, in the same time frame, boys have actually slid backwards.

Let us now pay attention to the fact that we have just rolled out a complex, jargon-ridden national qualification to replace School Certificate and university bursary examinations. No longer is the focus on external exams, which provided the pressure boys responded to. Instead, we have crammed language into subjects such as calculus and accounting, where boys responded to the theorems and where girls have now gained the upper hand with their advanced language skills.

Tuku Kururangi: And so they should!

JORDAN WILLIAMS: You are welcome to your opinion. NCEA appears to have increased the gender gap. Under NCEA, girls are achieving the same number of excellence grades as they received A passes in School Certificate examinations. Boys, however, have slipped behind even further. We are well on the way to a state where a third more girls achieve university bursary. I am sorry, but any discrepancies in the achievement of the sexes must be taken seriously. I say to the Minister of Women’s Affairs that she should move over. It is the boys’ turn—

Tuku Kururangi: There are more girls in this hall than men.

JORDAN WILLIAMS: And you are not one of them, sir. I am mindful of time so I will not go into the horrendous problems of NCEA. Most of the members here will already be aware of them; rather, let us go over just a couple of things that have been reported in the media and what they show us.

How can we hold up NCEA as a national qualification when it allows students to pass for picking up rubbish? Yes, sure, I understand what the head prefect of Cambridge High School said—and I am sure that Cambridge High School might have the cleanest schoolyard in the country—but how can an employer judge pupils on their true performance from this? How can we, this nation’s youth, have faith in the New Zealand Qualifications Authority when our teachers have not even been supplied with the resources they need?

Mr SPEAKER: I just remind members about interjections. There is a rule and a convention in this House that members do not interject if they are within the range of the speaker concerned; otherwise, the person interjecting could turn round, upset the speaker, and stop him or her from being heard. When the gentleman who has just sat down was speaking, it was fine for the people further away from him to interject, but not those near him. The rule is that members cannot interject in the second person, using the word “you”. That brings me into the debate, and I certainly will not be brought into the debate. Members need to say something like: “The member knows that’s nonsense”, and not: “You’re speaking nonsense.” If people talk of me speaking nonsense, I might get a little cross.

TUKU KURURANGI (Tukituki): Tēnā koutou. I have a problem. Yes, I have many problems, but I shall discuss only one of them. I sit on a fence. My name is Tuku Kururangi, but, when I pull up my sleeve and show members my arm, what does that show people? However, I know in my heart what I am, and I know that many in today’s society do not think in the same way that I do.

We have two sides arguing over rights and the small things that do not need to be argued about. In my home town of Hastings we can see it all the time: Māori on one side—and I do not mean to be nasty to either side, because I am both and have the best of both worlds—and Pākehā on the other side, each attacking the other. It is ridiculous. We are lucky in New Zealand. We have had a country that has been a home to more than two categories of people for over 100 years. Other countries do not even get this chance. Their Governments force them to fight or bicker with other countries or races. So why can we not take this advantage and lead the world in what I would like to call “racial harmony”? Who cares what people look like; it is what is inside that counts.

I will tell the House a story. Just last week we had a kapa haka group to introduce the Hon Trevor Mallard to our school. This haka almost brought a tear to my eye, not only because it was passionate and traditional and the performers gave everything they had but because two boys in the group were just like me. They were Māori, but they sure did not look like it—and that brought a tear to my eye. For a minute there the audience watching them did not care what they looked like. They were so passionate about it that they could not care less, and for a minute the audience just accepted them for who they were, not for what they looked like. If I was accepted for what I look like, I would be cast out of every single door. So let us stop this. Let us lead the world in racial harmony and let us put aside the categories. I move to change all of this.

SUPRIYA SINGH (List): I have always been told that this land was one without prejudice, and that our country was one where people were equal, but apparently this is not so. I have learnt of things that puzzle me, because they are so illogical and contrary to what we have been told by our Government is its aim. One of these things, my fellow youth MPs, is racially based funding.

As I see it, race-based funding operates against the very moral fibres of Western society, because, for this scheme to work, we must rely upon crude racial stereotyping—the stereotypes of the average person. The scheme makes sweeping assumptions that all Māori and all Pacific Island people are poor, and that all other ethnic groups are financially stable and thus not as deserving. Such statements are plainly false and greatly damaging to those they apply to, and are also extremely offensive. Race-based funding encourages racial stereotyping—something that experience has taught me is not at all pleasant.

Our Government justifies this policy as positive discrimination. It fails to see, of course, that all discrimination is positive for those in whose favour the discrimination swings. There is always, however, the other side—those who are discriminated against. Let us take a well-known situation as an example: apartheid. This scheme was positive discrimination for the Afrikaaners and other whites, who profited very nicely from the scheme. Their employment levels, standards of living, and average wages rose significantly. But at the same time, it was negative discrimination to all those who missed out—namely, the blacks and coloured peoples. So it could be justifiably said that apartheid was positive discrimination, much like our own is called.

I am not saying that our system is thus oppressive or that it will become as bad. I am saying that positive discrimination—an oxymoron if ever there was one—is the first step down a dangerous path. Dividing our nation by discriminating against people racially will lead to great resentment. In fact, it has led to great resentment, and this resentment will lead to hatred and worse, to the detriment of our society. Is this really what we want?

Why can we not help those who need help based purely on the merits of that need? Certainly, needs-based funding will not be as easy to implement or manage, but ease is not a measure of justness, fairness, or effectivity. He iwi tahi tātou. We are one people. Why must we divide ourselves in this way?

RAMON OLSEN (List): “Forget the homeless.”, they say. Well, the Government is notorious for that. The provision of State housing has been around awhile. Re-branded in 2001, Housing New Zealand Corporation’s role is to provide housing where the private market cannot, and to lift the standard of housing in New Zealand. The Government defines “housing need” as an inability to access or sustain housing that is suitable, adequate, and affordable. “HNZC provides homes for 6 percent of New Zealanders.”, the last census reported. Very generous.

The provision of adequate homes is an investment. Housing plays a pivotal role in people’s lives, as it is closely linked to social and economic outcomes extending well beyond providing shelter. An inability to access suitable housing can contribute to poor health and injury, low rates of educational achievement, reduced access to jobs, and greater exposure to victimisation and neighbourhood crime. Quite true. The member for Northland will verify that there have been reports of people in his electorate, including helpless children, who are living in cars while on the corporation’s urgent waiting lists. The Government is so out of touch that it thinks its citizens are unable to detect when they are promised something then do not receive it. If the Government is happy to admit that some households are unable to access or afford suitable, adequate, and sustainable housing without State intervention, then 560 people from the member for Northland’s electorate want to know why they are waiting for up to a month for a home and living on a day-by-day basis in the meantime. This is not the Philippines or India. The whole debacle smells of hypocrisy.

Soon, you will probably have a right to a house, but do not hold your breath on this senseless suggestion. No, although this Government promises, it seldom delivers. But it gets an airline and a billionaire to sponsor the black boat in a foreign regatta, and it sends questionable artwork abroad for exhibition. I sometimes wonder whether the entire Cabinet was shuffled off, blindfolded, and unknowingly taught economics and accounting by Tuku Morgan. Why not invest in something tangible that citizens can benefit from now?

Housing is a priority and a great start. The people of Northland do not need more empty promises from the Government; they desperately need comfortable housing now.

Mr SPEAKER: Before I call the next member, who is a deaf member of Parliament, I want to say that she will make her points. They will be translated, and I will make a slight allowance for the time concerned.

LAUREN SLAVEN (Banks Peninsula): [An interpretation was given to the House:

I am speaking to support the New Zealand Sign Language Bill and to support New Zealand Sign Language becoming the third official language of New Zealand. New Zealand Sign Language is a gestural, visual language used by the Deaf community. Like Māori language, New Zealand Sign Language is a language that belongs to New Zealand. It does not occur, and it is not used, anywhere else in the world. So many countries have recognised their native sign languages.]

The New Zealand Sign Language Bill has been introduced to Parliament and is now before a select committee. English and Māori will be affected only in a positive way by New Zealand Sign Language. It has its own grammatical structure, as do the English and Māori languages. Look at me—I am strongly fluent in spoken English. I was encouraged to speak when I was a young child, and this has helped me to communicate with my hearing family and friends.

When I came to van Asch Deaf Education Centre, a school for the Deaf, I looked at their language and reflected on my experience as a student in mainstream schools. New Zealand Sign Language complements my ability to fully understand communication. For my group of friends at van Asch Deaf Education Centre, and throughout New Zealand, New Zealand Sign Language is the only way they can understand each other. Often when I was in mainstream schooling, I felt I was the only person in New Zealand with a hearing problem. The next step I learnt was a connection between hearing and Deaf people.

We should definitely pass the New Zealand Sign Language Bill. I see that the opportunity of having more interpreters available will give Deaf people better access to the justice, health, and education systems. Interpreters will also give the hearing world access to our Deaf community. All New Zealanders need access to language in order to develop good family and social relationships, to succeed in education, and to become successful, independent, and contributing adults. Deaf people have a right to these opportunities, and, indeed, New Zealand Sign Language is a start.

I want to speak about another important issue that relates to this matter. It is about the early detection of deafness. Deafness in babies should be detected as early as possible so that their language can be developed, be it sign language or spoken English. Twenty years ago the average age of deafness detection was 18 months; now the average age is 42 months. We should be embarrassed. The good news is that a universal hearing screening programme for newborns began in February 2004 at Waikato Hospital. A national initiative called Project HIEDI—Hearing Impairment – Early Detection and Intervention—is working to make a programme pilot.

I am speaking on behalf of my Deaf community and I am speaking on behalf of the future youth of New Zealand.

Mr SPEAKER: If any of you ever get a chance to go to the van Asch Deaf Education Centre to see what is being done there, it is a very, very fine thing to do.

TIMOTHY WALMSLEY (List): I would like to say to the previous speaker that her speech was beautiful. I loved it, and I love her being here.

The topic I want to talk on is the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA)—the system of horrors. Whoever thought of such a system? I recognise that the system of bursary, Sixth Form Certificate, and School Certificate was not the perfect system, but why did they bring in a worse one? Why do we have something so inconsistent and so easy—something in which you can get credits for picking up rubbish? You can literally earn 30 credits, which is three-eighths of your NCEA level 1, in 1 day at Cambridge High School.

It is for that reason that we need to chuck out this system. We need to stop this nonsense and get a system that recognises our true abilities, not our abilities in picking up rubbish. Let us be world-first in a different system—something that is unique, and something that is not necessarily ranking but extending us beyond what we have now.

Why do we not try something where all of us are still comparing our work against the standard, but using a percentage scale? Why do we have to use a system of “achieved”, “merit”, and “excellence”, which only limits our potential? Why do we stop there?

LUKAS SCHROETER (List): It is imperative that we, the members of this House, radically adjust our views to reflect those of the citizens who place us in these positions of relative power. It is imperative that we trust the law-abiding citizens of this nation. That trust needs to be wide reaching, and more than mere tokenism. We must not hold people responsible for being uninformed about the affairs that affect them, or for being unable to deal with the circumstances they encounter.

We must trust that each person knows best how to spend his or her own money. There is a maxim that states that each transaction makes the world wealthier: if I buy your sweater for $100, in a mutually consenting transaction, we are both better off. That is not true for taxation.

The Labour Government’s Working for Families Budget is a prime example. Its own documentation shows that for many groups, the income tax they pay is nearly dollar for dollar the money the State gives back to them. Many other taxes—GST, petrol, road-user, tobacco, alcohol, etc.—are in part used on the administration of redistribution.

We must trust that taxpayers’ consciences encompass a huge sense of duty towards their neighbours. That is part of the New Zealand psyche, proven every day. All our churches, Rotary and Lions clubs, The Salvation Army, and World Vision are privately funded, because New Zealanders care.

The Government’s own measures are horrid. We need to trust that welfare recipients, single mothers, and others want a better future. It is disgusting that under this Government the effective tax rate for a mum on the domestic purposes benefit who wants to move into the workforce, is 91 percent—a tax rate of 21c and a 70c benefit rebate. Smart people do not work for 9c in the dollar; beneficiaries are not dumb.

We must trust that parents and caregivers are the best people to choose their children’s education, because they care most about them. A system where funding actually followed the student would allow education to be a choice for more than just the financial elite or students in scholarship contention. Proof of the success of having school choice has been in the pre-school sector.

I trust you to live your life. The question is that if you do not trust me, do you have the right—that is, an authority you grant yourself—to force me to act differently, live differently, and think differently, according to your principles, although I am harming no one? Trust is imperative. As members of this House we need to trust those who trust us. They know best how to live their lives.

LUKE CLAASEN (Ikaroa-Rawhiti): Tēnā koe, te Minita. Tōku reo, tōku ohooho! Tōku reo, tōku māpihi maurea! Tōku whakakai mārihi!

[Greetings to you, Minister. My language, my awakening! My language, my object and ornament of affection. My preciousness.]

The voice I speak with today is the voice of feelings, not only of my own but of many other Māori—feelings for the Māori language. I believe that te reo Māori should be compulsory in schools. The facts are there, next to the stats, that the Māori language is in a huge predicament at the moment.

I need only one fact to base my argument on—that is, te reo Māori alongside New Zealand Sign Language are the only official languages of New Zealand, as Lauren said. This same language has taken decades to get to the level it is at now—of being available in schools, etc. But that means nothing if we are not using this opportunity.

Why? The fault lies in the education system and in the schools themselves. Māori is an option subject, a subject of lower status than core subjects such as English, science, and maths. Because Māori is an option subject, schools, coincidentally, put Māori up against PE, art, and music. But I should not be moaning. This same language was the language my mother was smacked for, for speaking when she was at school. The only resolution to this issue is to make te reo Māori compulsory in schools—to have te reo Māori part of the primary school curriculum and to make it an option at secondary school level.

The benefits of that would be huge. The language would not only get the mana it deserves but it would also play a huge part in race relations. If that was achieved, then I could feel confident in naming my children with Māori names, without worrying about their names being mispronounced or misspelt.

Anei taku wero ki a koutou.

[Here is my challenge to you.]

RYAN BRIDGE (Otaki): Today I put it to you that in an inclusive, democratic society there is a need for representative bodies beyond elected district councils. These representative bodies, in my opinion, need in particular to address the young people within a certain community. A youth council is a prime example of this, and not only represents the views and opinions of young’uns like ourselves but also stimulates the personal and societal development of youth.

Back in my home district of Kapiti I am involved in the Council of Youth in Kapiti, established in 1998. Our role in the community is to encourage and promote the development of young people—be their interests sporting, cultural, or arty; or in any personal hobby, dream, or aspiration that those in our area may have. As well as that, established just over a year ago was the Horowhenua Youth Council, which consists of representatives from three local high schools.

Youth councils are great fun and a chance to meet new, like-minded people. Today I encourage you as ambassadors of youth—

Hon Member: Youth councils are a waste of money.

RYAN BRIDGE: I like the sound of your voice, too!

Today I encourage you as ambassadors of youth from all over the country to promote or kickstart your existing Youth Councils, so we can achieve right across the board a more inclusive society. If your community does not have a youth organisation, establish your own. Believe me, it is not as hard as it sounds; the support is definitely there.

Our district council gives us $5,000 a year to spend on benefiting youth. Then there is the overwhelming support from local businesses. All it takes is a bit of effort and motivation—but perhaps not a negative attitude. Who knows how much bigger your budget could be in larger districts?

The Council of Youth in Kapiti has planned and paid for three major events coming up this year—namely, our ball next month, a youth art auction for October and, finally, an outdoor concert in summer, featuring local and national level bands. As well as that, the Council of Youth in Kapiti has given out $2,000-worth of sponsorship to benefit youth in our area, while the Horowhenua Youth Council has been busy organising a weekend bus between their towns for young people, as well as giving out sponsorship for youth development. Its council says that it is looking forward to building a youth centre in the future.

Youth councils are extremely beneficial to young people. As we work towards a more inclusive society, it is imperative that we make sure our peers are involved in their communities. So I conclude by encouraging you to take up the challenge and build the foundation for youth in your communities.

TODD SMITH (Port Waikato): I so move that terrorism be a topic that this Government addresses with a certain degree of context. Our understanding of it is a marginalised concept: it pertains to a certain region and a certain people. If you think terrorism, you think car bombings, radical fundamentalist groups, and an Arab face. That tragic misconception is used to desensitise the public in order to give justification to Western influence in the Middle East, and to the crushing of opposition forces under false pretences. It is like forward defence. In fact, it is more like forward profit: we will move into your country, rape your soil, and that is that.

American foreign policy in the Middle East is not driven by democratic ideals or humanitarian interests; it is driven by profit—pure and simple. There is no clash with civilisations that make the world such a disorderly place. That is what some Governments would have you believe—namely, that it is just the nature of our different cultures. They cling to that paradigm because the only other alternative is the truth, and we cannot know that because they will lose control. They pull a veil across cause, and whip us into fervour by effect.

The privileged elite hates democracy, because democracy puts the power in your hands and threatens their privilege. If you know the extent of the State terrorism that your country inflicts, your patriotism wanes.

That brings us to the issue of a war on terrorism. The invasion of Afghanistan is a clear-cut example of an obtuse, blundering directive that hides behind a visage of morality, while gifting the United States with more power to undermine and exploit the Middle East. Terrorism is a scapegoat for violent activity, and September 11 was the catalyst that gave reason to US intervention. It is a poor injustice to the families of the victims of September 11 to use the event to inflict equally atrocious acts elsewhere.

I ask you a question: what is it that distinguishes the beheading of an American civilian by Iraqi militant forces, from the destruction of a mosque, full of innocent civilians, by US tax-funded cruise missiles? Unless you have zero compassion, you can see that they are one and the same. When they do it, it is terrorism; when we do it, it is counter-terrorism.

I would like to end with something that I feel is important for every youth MP in this hall to consider. You know that the actions undertaken by Governments this House supports—especially the United States—carry ulterior motives that allow no room for compassion. The problem encountered is defined by where your personal absolution lies: if in knowing about them it is enough to wash your hands. I do not sponsor a child and I do not send aid. I help the man down the street, but not the man on the street. My moral existence depends upon the hope that my knowledge of those atrocities is enough to release me, as a Westerner, from guilt. Sadly, I fear that it is not.

I sincerely hope that everyone here can consider their own awareness, as well as their own culpability. That includes the people who fill these seats on the days we do not. If they cannot reflect on that, they do not belong here. Political scientist, Noam Chomsky, stated that wanton killing of innocent civilians is not a war on terrorism; it is terrorism. It cannot be much simpler than that.

LAFOALUGA TAPALEAO (List): Looking back on my life I was very fortunate to be raised in a family with such rich cultural values—some values that could be challenged, as I found out growing up. But someone whom I look up to told me that it was not the values I stood for that were important, but it was whether I had any, and that is true. So let us talk about some of the issues that affect our well-being, such as education, teenage pregnancy, and morality.

The first is education. Why is education important? Our teachers are the key influential people in front of our classrooms from day one. If we treat them well, they will offer their best to our younger ones, who are the future of tomorrow. My ideal solution is to raise the teaching profession. We need to work together—students, teachers, and the Government.

One result of this breakdown in the value of education is the rate of teenage pregnancy. We need to find out why New Zealand has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the developed world. We get these misconceptions of people, of us girls. New Zealand, come on! What are we teaching our kids? Who are we letting them watch on television? What are we letting them listen to on the radio? Is it that, or could it even be school that is causing the problem?

Surely we need to teach ourselves that there is more to life, because—let us face it—it has a flow-on effect. Inadequate education leads to poor behaviour. Again, we can change that by working together—students, teachers, and the Government.

Personally, I feel saddened by the fact that young women have to sell themselves, which is also known as prostitution. Decriminalising prostitution is just a band-aid to cover up the deeper problem of poor morality within New Zealand. With the help of solid family support and effective education, we can encourage young women to choose the right path in life, and we can criminalise prostitution.

O le ala ile pule ole tautua—the way to power is through service. Start serving your country and your country will serve you. Faafetai lava mo le avanoa. Thank you for your time.

KELSI STAYT (List): Factory farming—it stifles the cries of millions of animals in New Zealand and contributes to the most horrific cruelty imaginable.

Imagine if your existence was one of severe confinement—imprisoned in a sloping wire mesh cage and unable to move or even stretch. You never see daylight. This is the life of the battery hen, and there are 2.2 million of them in New Zealand. Every person here who has animals knows that each one is an individual with the capability to enjoy life, to feel pain and sadness, and, above all, to bring happiness to our lives. Then how can it be that over 20,000 pigs in New Zealand are kept in metal crates? A sow will never walk, turn around, smell fresh air, or feel the warmth of the sun. Painful muscle cramping, leg disorders, frustration, and stress are what she lives with every day of her sad life.

These systems are unjustified, unnecessary, and disgustingly inhumane. With all the countryside New Zealand has to offer for free-range farming, these factories are a downright embarrassment. Fifteen countries in the European Union are phasing out these cruel cages, so why not New Zealand? Factory farming is barbaric, and the sheer lack of consideration for animals makes New Zealand less worthy of respect and lowers our dignity by condoning this disregard for life. New Zealand does not want to continue to be at the forefront of it, or have a reputation for being a bastion of outdated, cruel farming methods.

So let us, the youth of today, stand united and work together to free our animals and free our country from this shame. Today in Parliament I am launching a nationwide petition from the school pupils of New Zealand calling on the House of Representatives to ban the use of battery hen cages and sow crates in New Zealand, and to ensure that humane, free-range farming systems replace factory farming. I urge every youth MP in the House to help get signatures from school pupils in your respective schools.

Finally, I ask you to stand if you think sow crates and battery hen cages are unacceptable. Thank you. [Applause] This proves that the youth of today believe in freedom and morality and, above all else, are against this animal cruelty.

RENEE MASON (Helensville): I so move that public rural schools be sustained and supported by the New Zealand Ministry of Education, not only for the benefit of the children but for their communities. I believe that with the continual closure of rural schools, the following impacts will occur: there will be less one-on-one time with students in an increased classroom population, and there will be a major change for students coming from a school with around 50 to 100 students to a school that is 45 minutes away from home with a population of 150-plus students. That would affect their learning and development of social skills, as well.

We should think of the children, ranging in age from 5 to 13, who catch a school bus at 6.30 in the morning and have to endure a 45-minute bus drive. Not only is this a health issue but it is also a safety issue. Those are some possibilities that the Government and communities should look at. The fact that young children can be and have been run over by vehicles, the possibility that children may miss the bus and could then be picked up by strangers—

Hon Member : Ha ha!

RENEE MASON: Excuse me! Fine! Then I will order some little chainsaw massacre to come and pick you up then!

Lukas Schroeter: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The member referred to being picked up by—what was it—a chainsaw murderer?

RENEE MASON: Mate, take your hand off it!

Madam SPEAKER (Elizabeth Lewer): I would like to remind you all that this is the House of Parliament; it is not a place to heckle people. I would like to see some order.

RENEE MASON: It could also encourage wagging. Children could have a shorter attention span during class time due to long bus rides and early starts.

In conclusion, I propose that the Ministry of Education re-evaluate its decision to close rural schools around New Zealand, as it has a more negative effect rather than a positive effect on communities and their people.

NIRUPA GEORGE (List) E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā hau e wha, tēnā koutou katoa. Youth are no doubt the future of tomorrow; however, their ideals are being shaped today, their morals are being shaped today, and their views are being shaped today. Those ideals, morals, and views are shaped by the world and the environment around them, and it is those ideals, morals, and views that will rule our country in the future.

With the happenings in the last couple of years, one can say without much doubt that the world and the environment of today is hardly full of peace. It seems that today there are wars raging all over the world. From invasions to civil wars, at every turn there are the causes of death, suffering, and inhumanity through war. Death, suffering, and inhumanity are broadcast on our television sets every night, without fail. By witnessing that, it is true that our young children are being educated to such horrors—which, thankfully, do not exist in New Zealand—but they are growing up in a world where war is being normalised. Sadly, it is coming to a stage where war is no longer an event filled with shock and horror, but is a daily going-on—a norm.

That is a kind of traumatisation. Although it is true that children in New Zealand are not traumatised in the same manner as those who live in war-torn countries, and who lose parents, relatives, siblings, their homes, and their livelihoods, children in New Zealand are affected by seeing those wars as a norm. If this trend of seeing war as a norm continues, without fail we are raising a future war society—not a future peace society, as one would hope. To stop this trend we can eradicate war and all its horrors but, unfortunately, at this moment in time, that is not realistic.

But we can, however, continue and better the education we give children regarding war and peace. The education that is going out today is targeted mostly at older children, from high school onwards. Younger children are being exposed to war trauma, so we need to educate them before they consider war as a norm. More programmes targeted at intermediate and primary students are necessary—now more than ever. By encouraging events like Peace Week and peace-related programmes, children will learn that peace, not war, is the norm.

Through this I know that the ideals, morals, and views that will be used to run our country are those of peace, and this, my fellow youth parliamentarians, is an idea that I look forward to.

MICHAEL COPE (List): In the ultimate scenario, money would come by the truckload to people for doing absolutely nothing whatsoever. In the scenario created by previous Governments, for all those on the unemployment benefit, that is exactly the case. For some who are doing absolutely nothing, as suggested in the ultimate scenario, money does almost come by the truckload—for 4.4 percent of the whole working population, as a matter of fact.

Personally, I believe that helping out anyone who is really and truly struggling with life is something every human should do. But with the number of people on the unemployment benefit these days, you have to ask yourself how many of those people are really hunting around for some sort of long-term career in order to build a future for themselves.

The problem to me is that too many people are making a mockery of the Government’s system, by slipping through the system like a wet eel through the Nile River, and by lazing around home doing nothing about their future. Instead, they depend on those who do have a future, whom we will call the taxpayer. Why is it necessary for taxpayers, who are those who have jobs and a future, to pay for those who do not?

The solution is to try killing two birds with one stone. For example, without developing the idea too heavily, I say that we could fix Auckland’s terrible traffic problem with the same scheme that is being introduced currently, but we could just start earlier with a bigger workforce—those on the unemployment benefit. If worked correctly—for instance, by providing incentives for those who worked and cuts for those who did not—that could be a very effective system. It would keep Aucklanders, especially John Banks, happy, as well as create a future for a lot of people. That would be a very rarely occurring situation—two worlds benefiting from one solution.

The same could be said for Christchurch and Dunedin. In Christchurch, we could get people off the benefit and into promoting public awareness of dangerous smog levels, and also into finding new ways of heating Christchurch homes without adding to the smog. In Dunedin, we could move people from the unemployment benefit and into building better housing and accommodation for the residents of State houses, and into fixing flats for the students of Otago University, which would make housing more attractive to Otago’s booming student population.

As I said, if worked correctly, by providing incentives for those willing to work and cutting the superfluous amount of money thrown at those who are too lazy to find their own work, that could solve a lot of problems in New Zealand. Creating a better environment for people to live in is exactly what we should strive to do.

DANIELLE HAY (List): Government must have society’s best interest in mind, and protect its citizens and the institutions that contribute to the common good. It makes sense for the Government to recognise and encourage what is beneficial for the majority. With this in mind, I wish to raise the matter of the Civil Union Bill. All societies have three classes of sexual behaviour: preferred, tolerated, and prohibited. Marriage is preferred, de facto and same-sex relationships are tolerated, and incest and polygamy are forbidden.

Marriage has a preferred status because of what it offers society. It is our way of saying to future parents that their long-term relationship is socially important and of public concern, not just a private good. Throughout history and across most cultures, marriage is recognised. There is a multitude of clear evidence that stable, heterosexual, two-parent families are the building blocks to successful societies. Solo, de facto, and homosexual parents can be successful. However, why would we want to encourage something in our legal system that is less than ideal?

The Civil Union Bill addresses perceived unjust discrimination against homosexuals and people who wish not to marry, but is it wrong to recognise the obvious and inherent distinctions that exist between marriage and all other sexual relationships? It is clearly the Government’s intention to make all relationships equal by dragging marriage, as a separate institution, off its pedestal. The lobbyists for civil union see equality and the right of the individual as the highest goal, but do we want to live in an individualistic society where the unnecessary rights of the individual are more important than the common good? The contribution of a solo mother or another type of family structure should not be devalued, but it must be recognised that marriage is the best we have to offer for the nurturing of future generations, and this must be recognised in law.

If every relationship and family type is equal, then on what basis can the privileges of marriage be withheld from any imaginable sexual arrangement? The public policy made in this room should consider the long-term effects on society as a whole, not simply the immediate benefits for a few. All relationships are not equal, and marriage is a tall poppy that should not be levelled.

SHAHLAA AL-TIAY (List): On a most serious note, I say that taxation—defined as a contribution for the support of Government, which is required of persons, groups, or businesses within the domain of that Government—is most certainly not a concept that is alien to the New Zealand Government. Taxation is, in fact, one of the country’s main sources of revenue, generating an estimated $32 billion annually. As a matter of fact, paying tax, from “pay as you earn” tax and goods and services tax to rates and customs duty, is a routine for the Kiwi population—for the old and, unfortunately, for the young as well.

Ironically, a tax also means a burden or excessive demand, and that is exactly what tax is to the youth of New Zealand—an excessive and unnecessary demand from the Government, which they should be exempt from. At the legal age of 16 years, most secondary students usually choose to break away from reliance on parental funds by taking on a part-time job and by gaining independence—if only a fraction. Owing to schooling and social commitments, a 16 to 17-year-old secondary student will usually work an average of one full day a week, or its equivalent, totalling an average of 8 hours.

At the current minimum wage of $7.20, that would mean a weekly income of $57.60, but $7.20 of that is handed straight to the Government as income tax. That may not seem like much but, in reality, it will total $374.40 per annum, equating to 52 hours. Those 52 hours represent 6.5 weeks of the student’s income.

I present this question to Parliament: how can the Government—how dare the Government!—deprive a student, whose main and most essential occupation is to study in order to gain a qualification, of nearly 2 months’ earnings? [Interruption] Yes, people do receive a child rebate of $156, but that is only half of what has been paid.

It is not a secret that the minimum wage is in fact the bare minimum. The raise on 1 April 2004 of the minimum wage from $6.80 to $7.20 was a good move, yet after tax the $7.20 turns to $6.30. I believe that employees have done their part to support the youthful secondary school population; now it is time for the Government to contribute.

SAM KIDD (Tauranga): Today I would like to reflect on the 150-year history of the New Zealand Parliament in order to look towards the future. Free and fair elections have always been central to New Zealand’s identity as a progressive democratic nation. In 1893 New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the right to vote. We also responded to international trends when we reduced the voting age to 18 in 1974. In 2004, thanks to MMP, Parliament became much more diverse and representative of modern New Zealand society in terms of gender and ethnicity. It is great to be able to celebrate this progress. However, there are still ongoing challenges confronting New Zealand society that Parliament needs to address proactively.

The issues troubling New Zealand youth have been clearly identified over recent years: the education system, university fees and loans, high family violence, youth suicide rates, drug and alcohol addiction, mental health issues, poverty, and unemployment. These current problems need to be confronted now. We need a legacy that leaves us, as future leaders, a country that is in a positive developmental state, not one with chronic social problems.

The issue I would like to focus on today is university education. The fees for tertiary study prevent many young people from obtaining essential qualifications that will contribute significantly to the knowledge economy that we are trying to grow. The student loan system is driving many of our brightest and most talented graduates overseas. They do so to escape the repayment system, and that is creating a major gap in our professional community. This has been referred to as the brain drain.

Tertiary education is an investment in the future, and must be seen as adding value to New Zealand society. It should be accessible to all those who have the diligence and capability to contribute to the future leadership of this country. This means significantly lower fees, more scholarships, and less debt for students. This would reduce the number of graduates leaving New Zealand.

In summary, Parliament needs to encourage the youth of New Zealand—both boys and girls—to become better educated, and it needs to provide the means for this to happen. Education and knowledge promote participation and leadership capability, and this ultimately leads to a brighter future. The message I want to convey to everyone today is to invest in our youth. As Soraya Mentoor of South Africa said to the International Youth Parliament: “Youth are leaders of today and tomorrow. We are assets, not liabilities. We are solutions, and not a problem to be solved.”

EMMA KUPERUS (List): I wish to speak to the issue of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). As this has also been talked about by Timothy Walmsley and Jordan Williams, I will shorten this to one aspect that I do not think has been covered yet—that is, how quickly the system was put in place.

Most of us will, no doubt, acknowledge that there are flaws in the system. What we have not looked at yet today is the fact that it came in over just 3 years. That is a really short time in which to put in a system that changes completely the way major secondary school assessments take place in this country. Yes, there were flaws with the old system—notably, scaling under bursary, and the grade pool system under Sixth Form Certificate—but the speed with which the new system has been put in has been too fast. I think it would have been much better for New Zealand if we had put in only the first 2 years and left year 13 under the bursary system this year. The reasons for this are that most of our textbooks are still in bursary format, our teachers are more familiar with bursary, most schools have had to put in a whole new system this year, and some schools have actually had to put in 2 years of NCEA because of opting to do Sixth Form Certificate.

Another problem that has happened with NCEA being put in so quickly is that there is confusion about university entrance requirements. An example is fifth form maths. When many of us were in the fifth form we were told we needed eight credits to get into university. This was later changed to 14 credits, creating confusion, and, in some cases, difficulty in working out how to apply and what was needed. NCEA has been put in too quickly to be effective, and as a result we have a guinea-pig year that has been left with untried qualifications for 3 years running. It would have benefited New Zealand if we had left bursary in longer while we tested the system in a slower way.

AYLA NATHAN (Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe. Kia ora, my name is Ayla Nathan and I am here to speak to you today about teaching. How many of you can say that you have a stressed teacher who stands in front of you today? Have you ever wondered why he or she is stressed? Maybe it is because of their heavy workload, thereby creating long work hours for them. Teachers who spend long hours planning, up till midnight, even into the early hours of the morning, come to school to teach, and are tired and stressed. Why cannot our teachers have time to do their planning in school hours, instead of cutting into their personal lives? It would make it easier to cooperate with the teachers in schools. The workload of secondary school and primary school teachers is so heavy that these last couple of years it has led to strikes. Now the strikes might have been caused by a money issue, but they were also helped by the long hours that our teachers had to work.

Those days might have been good to take off school, but in the long run who were the ones missing out? It was you and it was I. When the teachers were on strike I was at home watching Ricki Lake and cartoons. What kind of education is this? The National Certificate of Educational Achievement is not just an end of the year thing. It is something that runs throughout the whole year.

So what good does it do for our teachers to go on strike when it is the rangatahi who are missing out? I do not know about you, but do you wonder why the taiohi are not succeeding in school? I put it down to some teachers who do not have the energy to go that extra mile to do more one-on-one teaching, or simply smiling or asking how you are today. They are always nagging at us, which creates a wall that causes some youths to be put out of school and who would rather go to alternative courses or just loaf around.

I want to succeed in school. But my peers and I will have to prepare in case more teachers go on strike. As a year 12 student who has only one more year of school, I want to finish on a good note, and I want my teacher smiling. So I leave you with this whakataukī: he aha te mea nui o tēnei ao. Māku hei kī atu, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

[What is the most important thing of this world? I say to you that it is people, people, people.]

JAMES ROLFE (Rodney): We are not putting enough emphasis on, or funding into, our military. The deliberate destruction of our military can be seen in the scrapping of the fighter aircraft wing, the removal of the armour and armoured personnel carriers in our army, and the replacement of them with the near useless light armoured vehicles. It can also be seen in the lack of real offensive capability of our frigates, and the inability of our frigates to defend themselves if attacked. It can be seen in the general lack of quality, or quantity, of equipment for our troops. For instance, in Bosnia they had to beg, borrow, or steal from the other UN nations. Finally, it can be seen in the declining numbers of military personnel in our Defence Force.

Now the military, as well as being a tool to defend a nation, is also a means of participation in the international community. It can be used in the helping of matters of mutual interest between countries.

Hon Member: Like invading Iraq?

JAMES ROLFE: Yes, if that is a mutual interest. But more important, a military can be and, in the case of our military, is used for peacekeeping.

In the position of peacekeeping, it is not nearly good enough to be men of war without guns. At times when push comes to shove, peacekeeping cannot be done effectively when our troops do not have the means to defend themselves.

Hon Member: It shouldn’t be done at all!

JAMES ROLFE: Peacekeeping should not be done at all—okey-dokey!

Mr SPEAKER: When people have a contrary point of view, we let them make their point.

JAMES ROLFE: Standing with our friends and allies and having the ability to provide some backbone and force to our collective security creates solidarity with, rather than reliance on, our allies. In history, how would we have had collective security in the Pacific if all the contributing nations—for instance, those in the Five Power Defence Arrangement, to which we are a signatory—had not had military forces? It simply would not have worked.

Also, if we have a military, we can train with other militaries. This gives the opportunity to participate in and actively help other countries, which provides a cohesive force when we do need to go to war.

Hon Member: An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

JAMES ROLFE: I am not advocating fighting wars unnecessarily. I am simply saying that we need a military to do the job when we have to.

I suggest we increase military funding, purchase better equipment and more of it, and have compulsory military service so that if the need arises, we have a military to fight with. We should also increase training exercises and military cooperation with our friends and allies. While I do not promote a militant foreign policy, I do believe that without a reasonable military force, we are unable to participate effectively in the international community. Without an effective and capable military force we cannot be considered a fully independent nation.

JAMES COOPER (List): I have a vision in my mind—a legacy of the past: a waka is powering its way through the ocean waters from Hawaiki, and I see another vessel, sails billowing, with my ancestor aboard in anticipation of a place called Aotearoa.

“European” is my title, but I have never been to Europe. In the beginning was this land, a place of rare, seismic beauty, deep in the South Pacific. Every person who inhabits this land opens a new chapter in the culture and identity of the nation. But many people are looking back over their shoulders and worrying about the past.

The lens through which we view the future reveals an exciting New Zealand. I tell Tuku Kururangi and Luke Claasen that I respect every word they said. There are people in this nation who disrespect its culture and are only after the money. I classify those people as racist pigs. But we take the best from all cultures, we value the people who are proud to call themselves New Zealanders, and then we move forward. I am not talking about changing society, but rather about reshaping, reinvigorating, and renewing.

The lawmakers who will stand on this national marae in the future have to be able to relate to the many cultures that will continue to call this place home. How many people in New Zealand feel disconnected from the laws that are in place? The laws of this country have emerged from the British cultural line, but today other cultures are an essential part of our cosmopolitan society, and the laws need to be responsive to them, too. I am not suggesting we throw out the bathwater but, rather, that we mould heritage to the emerging society.

So what does it mean to be a New Zealander? I have an incredible attachment to this place. The great thing about New Zealand is that its beauty is not something enjoyed only by the rich. Your arrival here later than others does not mean that you cannot love this place with all your heart. I believe, however, that we need to re-establish our emotional attachment to the symbols of nationhood—it is about valuing each person for who they are—and then we can go forward.

I would like to think that the next time I stand in this fantastic building, it may be as an MP, and I hope that it will more accurately reflect the Aotearoa of the 21^st century.

HINEWAI PŌMARE (Tamaki Makaurau): E te rangatira, e te kaikōrero, tēnā rawa atu koe! E aku iti, e aku rahi, aku whakatamarahi ki te rangi, ko Te Rārawa ki te whenua e! I kanapu ki te rangi, rū, rū, rū ana te whenua! Ko te reo Māori e ngunguru nei, auē! Ko te rangatahi e ngunguru nei—i au, au, auē hā!

Ki a koutou ngā tūtapu mārō o te ao tawhito, ngā poutoko manawa o ngā whare maire, koutou ngā tōtara o te wao, haere atu koutou ki Matangirei, ki te poho o Hinenuitepō, oki ai. Toe mai ko mātou ngā rangatahi e toi tū nei i te mata o te whenua, i te ao pāhekeheke nei a tātou.

Ki ōku hoa e aru nei i tētahi huarahi kia ora mārika te reo me āna tikanga, ā kō ake nei ka tahuna te ahi, ka whakatata tātau ki te mahana o te ao Māori. Ā, kāti, ko au tēnei e tū ake i mua i a koutou. Nōu rā te waha, te horo a Tāne, te ngutu Hūia e manako ana kia kōrerotia ngā kupu tuku iho o ā tātau tūpuna. Nei rā, he uri o Te Rārawa, o Ngāi te Rangi, o Ngā Ruahine.

[Greetings indeed to you Mr Speaker, the chief! To my meek and mighty. My boasts to the sky is that Te Rārawa indeed rules the land! The sky flashed and the land continued to rumble! It is the language of the Māori that rumbles forth, alas! It is the young that rumbles forth—oh the pain, oh the relief!

To the sacred pillars of the ancient world who stood firm, to the central poles of the learning houses of sacred lore, to you the mighty tōtara of the forest, journey on to the 13^th Heaven to rest there in the bosom of Hinenuitepō. We the younger generation are left standing here like citadels on the face of the earth in this uncertain world of ours.

To my colleagues who are pursuing a pathway that will ensure the absolute survival of the language and its customs, the fire is about to be ignited so that we will be able to draw closer to the warmth of the Māori world. Enough, standing here before you is me. The mouthpiece and Tāne’s speed, the lips of the Hūia yearning for the traditional words of our ancestors to be spoken are indeed yours. Here before then is a descendant of Te Rārawa, Ngāi te Rangi and Ngā Ruahine.]

My fellow parliamentarians, you may be wondering why my speech is predominantly in te reo Māori. Quite simply, it is an official language of this country and needs to be recognised accordingly. My vision is of a bilingual New Zealand—one where Māori place names are pronounced correctly. You may also be wondering whether te reo Māori has any relevance to you. In the year 2031, one in every four New Zealanders will be Māori. Therefore, I believe that te reo Māori should be integrated into the New Zealand curriculum and into all areas of school life.

Although it may be a thought many of us would like to be untrue, New Zealand is not one nation. To my peer and Leader of the Opposition, Supriya Singh: ehara tatau i te iwi kotahi.

[We are not one people.]

New Zealand, sadly, is a country where the minority is discriminated against; where due process is not granted to Māori but is to every other New Zealander.

I believe that if te reo Māori is integrated into the curriculum, not only will this provide students with a second language, but it will also mean less ignorance of race relations issues. Te reo Māori in everyday school life gives you and me a greater understanding of not only New Zealand history but of each other. E ngā uri o ngā hau e whā, tēnā rawa atu koutou katoa.

[So, to all the relatives of the four winds, greetings indeed to all of you.]

POLLY HIGBEE (List): Mr Speaker, member parliamentarians, and members of the gallery, I know it has been a long day and you probably want me to shut up right about now, but I am going to talk quickly about an issue that is very important and very dear to all New Zealanders’ hearts, and that is the seabed and foreshore. I am going to talk about the legislation that, at the moment, is in the select committees. In particular, I will talk about two issues to do with it: firstly, this idea of access that it supposedly guarantees to all New Zealanders; and, secondly, the consultation that the Labour Government has supposedly done with the communities of New Zealand.

The most important thing I think we all agree on about the seabed and foreshore is the fact that it stays in New Zealand people’s hands—that the beaches and the foreshore are there for New Zealanders to use, whether they be Māori, Pākehā, or non-Māori. What we want is to have the control stay in New Zealanders’ hands. What we can see from the legislation that the Labour Government has put forward is that this is not always going to be guaranteed. I brought it up earlier when we were asking questions of the Ministers.

What we can see is that with a simple Act of Parliament, Parliament can sell the seabed and foreshore. What I, a member from Dunedin, say today is that it is not that hard, especially when you have certain opposing parties that would quite readily sell off the seabed and foreshore with just a 51 percent majority. That is not good enough. It is not good enough to have a Parliament that, on a whim, overnight, could pass an Act of Parliament and sell off land that is ours.

Secondly, I turn to this idea that the Labour Government has supposedly consulted all areas of the community. When you have hui that were so short that people were angry that they did not get their say, when you have thousands of people marching on Parliament, when you have the Business Roundtable disagreeing with the seabed and foreshore legislation because of its uncertainty, because of the fact that it goes against the Treaty of Waitangi—which is what the Waitangi Tribunal has said and advised the Government on—then you have a Labour Government that is not consulting New Zealand, and that is not good enough. When there are 4,000 submissions from the New Zealand people about the seabed and foreshore, and only 350 of those are heard because the Government wants to get a piece of legislation through before the next election, that is not good enough.

Today I agree, and I think you all will too, that the seabed and foreshore legislation should not be passed.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

ISLA McKECHNIE (East Coast Bays): Officers of the Chamber, thank you for your participation and for the many services you have provided us with today. I would also like to thank the gallery officers for so graciously helping all youth parliamentarians settle into their first, but possibly not their last, day in the debating chamber.

Mr SPEAKER: I think we should give them a round of applause.

The House adjourned at 5.11 p.m.