Aviation Crimes Amendment Bill and Civil Aviation Amendment Bill (no2); Third Reading

Hone Harawira, Member of Parliament for Te Tai Tokerau

Tuesday 18 September 2007

Last week was the anniversary of 9/11.

Last week was also the anniversary of the death of Steve Biko, born 18 December 1946, died 12 September 1977. Steve Biko was a noted anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, arrested under the Terrorism Act of South Africa on 18 August 1977. Biko was brutally treated, and eventually died on September the 12th, and although the police claimed his death was due to an extended hunger-strike, an autopsy showed that he died from massive injuries to his head, consistent with the torture commonly practiced by the apartheid police of the time.

September 12 coincidentally, is also the 26th anniversary of the last test of the 1981 Springbok Tour, during which a squad was specifically named after the anti-apartheid hero, Steve Biko.

And more importantly for Aotearoa, last week was also the birth of probably the most important piece of international legislation ever, for Maori.

Last week, Thursday the 13th of September 2007, will be forever remembered by indigenous people all round the world, as the day on which the United Nations General Assembly, after 25 years of effort by indigenous people the world over, voted to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

And last week, Thursday the 13th of September 2007, will also be forever remembered by Maori people all round the world, as the day on which a select group of Maori MPs, namely the Maori Party Caucus - Tariana Turia, Dr Pita Sharples, Te Ururoa Flavell and I, along with Metiria Turei of the Green Party, expressed their full and formal support for the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

And last week, Thursday the 13th of September 2007, will also be forever remembered by Maori people all round the world, as the day on which a select group of Maori people, namely the Labour Maori Caucus, Parekura Horomia, Dover Samuels, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Mita Ririnui, Dave Hereora, Moana Mackey and Shane Jones, stood alongside the government in opposing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Yes Mr Speaker, it’s hard to believe but it’s true – while the Maori Party was registering its support for the Declaration, Labour’s Maori Caucus was not only voting against it, they were laughing and making snide remarks about it while a Maori Party speaker was recording support for the Declaration in this House.

And yes Mr Speaker, that vote of opposition by the Labour Maori Caucus, and their disrespect in this House, will be forever remembered in the years ahead as a breach of respect for international indigenous rights.

But I come back Mr Speaker to the attacks of 9/11, which are very much part of the context of these two Bills before the House today, to provide enhanced security measures for aviation in New Zealand.

And as we consider these proposals on search and seizure, the screening and searching of staff, and other measures, I want us also to be thinking more broadly about the whole context of political war, and I refer the House to a comment by David Horowitz, a strategist, who said,

“Political war is about evoking emotions that favour one’s goals. It is the ability to manipulate the public’s feelings in support of your agenda. In this war, the most potent weapons were anger, fear and resentment”.

It says a lot about the ways in which the doctrine of a war on terror, and the deliberate build-up of fear and hostility drive the passage of policy – and the way in which that doctrine forces us to react through the passage of bills such as these two – the Aviation Crimes Amendment and Civil Aviation Amendment Bills.

Mr Speaker, I note that the majority of public submissions presented to the Transport and Industrial Relations Select Committee were mainly about prohibited items, review processes, and devices or aids for searches and imaging technology, so it’s timely for me to share some notes from my recent overseas trips which may be of value to this debate.

The first came from a trip I’d taken to further my knowledge as a Member of Parliament for an indigenous electorate, the Tai Tokerau, when I decided to visit what would have been my electorate if I’d been an Australian MP – the Northern Territory.

Now visiting the Northern Territory, to highlight the dangerous consequences and the inherent racism in the Australian Prime Minister’s plans to solve child abuse and alcoholism in Aboriginal communities, by getting his filthy little hands on their lands for 99 years, was never going to be a difficult task.

I mean, I could have been arrested for carrying a copy of Howard’s racist 'Intervention Plan', which many people have described as aweapon of mass destruction targeted against the indigenous people of the Northern Territory, on an internal flight from Melbourne to Alice Springs.

That I chose not to do so, says more for my intelligence than it does for the scant effort that went into producing that five hundred page document, which was supposed to be based on the findings of the 'Little Children are Sacred' report, but which chose to completely and utterly ignore the 98 recommendations which were part of the report itself, in the interests of a series of proposals designed to maximise Howard’s visibility prior to the Australian general election, and change legislation to open up the Northern Territory to mining companies, liquor companies, gambling companies, and other enterprises which the Plan was supposedly going to put an end to.

Indeed, John Howard’s racist “Intervention Plan” was deemed so dangerous to race relations in Australia, that a tiny little clause was inserted into the Bill, “exempting the Plan from prosecution under the Racial Discrimination Act”, a clear demonstration that the authors of the bill intended that it would be racist, and covering themselves against any prosecution later on.

And if that isn’t a description of a dangerous weapon Mr Speaker, then I’m not sure what is.

Another, somewhat less dramatic but equally as relevant situation played out for me on my same breakout to Alice Springs, a report of which can be found on my website www.tokerau.co.nz, entitled “A Walkabout with Alice”.

One of the organisations I visited was the headquarters of the local tribal authority for the area, the Lhere Aretepe, where I was presented with two, beautifully hand-painted boomerangs. Now these weren’t those quaint little ones that you throw and they come back. No, no, no. These were the bigger ones with one arm longer than the other; the ones that don’t come back; the ones thrown with the specific intention of hitting the target – they don’t come back.

Now I mention these boomerangs Mr Speaker, because although I had no intention of using them on the plane, I have no doubt that if I’d wanted to, I could have caused considerable damage with them.

So when it came time to fly back home, security refused to let me take them on the plane. Sorry guys, I said, I ain’t letting them go, so you’re going to have to come up with a solution to this problem because they’re travelling with me.

They called up the Qantas security representative who called his Head Honcho, who to my pleasant surprise came up with the line “Qantas does not consider boomerangs to be dangerous weapons, let the man keep them”.

Now that incident got me thinking about just what exactly got through the system, and I must say Mr Speaker, I was astonished to realise that a very dangerous weapon slips past everyone, on every single flight that I’ve been on since 9/11, and that’s all those carry-on bags with collapsible metal handles, which with very quick and relatively minor re-adjustment could be very quickly turned into extremely dangerous weapons.

And it made me realise Mr Speaker, that for all the fuss that is made about terrorism, bottles of clear liquid, plastic knives and forks, nail-clippers, and having to put your shoes through the x-ray machine, current airport security is allowing carry-on luggage onto flights, which pose a far greater danger than Mahara Okeroa’s long-suffering socks.

Mr Speaker, I know this Bill is supposed to have serious implications, but I really do have difficulty understanding why we have to restructure, refinance, and re-align upwards, the prices of flights within Aotearoa every time someone wants to take a shot at the United States for their war-mongering, resource raiding activities across the globe.

Mr Speaker, the Maori Party accepts that the world is becoming a dangerous place to live and to travel, especially for Americans, and everybody else caught up in the American invasion of Iraq, and although we are supporting this Bill, we urge the citizens and indeed the governing authorities in Aotearoa to begin exercising far more independence and discretion in the way in which we view dangers in our world.

Ends

© Scoop Media