Panthers up against Wall

Dr Gerald Wall M.P. caused a furore recently when he called in the police to a hearing of the Social Services Committee. He wanted them to remove members of the Polynesian Panthers who had protested the removal of certain sections of the submissions of the Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination (ACORD). Here are the statements not received by Dr Wall's committee.

"This society has more institutionalised criminals per head of population than most other western societies for one reason and one reason only: our police, welfare, judicial and penal systems have been over the past 50 years and are still today creating criminals out of young children."

"Worse still, we are creating Maori criminals in hugely disproportionate numbers."

"...the Department of Social Welfare deliberately chose an all-Pakeha Committee to consider its new Bill. Acord cannot condemn the Department too strongly for this. It is a clear example of institutional racism; that is, the deliberate exclusion of the Maori people from decision-making and policy-making on issues which directly affect them and their children. It is a clear example of that Pakeha arrogance which so often leads us to believe that we have all the answers and that we can speak on their behalf. It is a clear denial of multi-culturalism, a concept about which this government has talked so much. Because if multiculturalism is based on a single principle, it is the principle of equal participation in decision-making. And the situation was worsened rather than improved by the Department's last-minute decision to allow the Associate Minister of Social Welfare to sit in on some of the Committee's sessions but not participate in drawing up the final recommendations. She should have been on the committee right from the start, together with one or more, if not all, of the other Maori members. For if there is one thing that is certain it is that Pakeha New Zealanders do not have all the answers, and nowhere is that fact illustrated more clearly than in the record of the childrens court."

"We denounce this arrogant attitude of the magistrates who, as they should remember, are nothing more or less than civil servants; and we denounce the Department of Social Welfare for this deliberate neglect of defendants in the children and young persons court."

[Referring to a lawyer being attached to the Childrens Court] "...the futility of this gesture can best be seen in the attitude taken by Mr T. G. Maxwell S.M. during Kahu W.'s case in the Otahuhu childrens court. The statement he issued upon refusing the Minister of Justice's request that an amicus curiae' attend that hearing on behalf of Dr Finlay left no doubt that magistrates at present have no use for such lawyers and there is no reason to expect them to change that attitude in the future."