Gary Williams

Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa

Minister Dyson, my fellow colleagues, other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

As we celebrate the imminent ratification of the Convention, I want to use this opportunity to reflect on my involvement as one of the New Zealand delegation members involved in its development.

I want to start by acknowledging people who can't be with us today but whose contribution cannot be forgotten.   The late Ambassador Clive Pearson, Ambassador Don MacKay, Ambassador Rosemary Banks, Andrew Begg, Valerie Meyer, Chris Hanson, Mary O'Hagan, Anne Hawker and Wendi Wicks.

It was my privilege to work with these and many more people.

Apparently, I only have 5 minutes left, probably an appropriate analogy to how we got to where we're at today.

On a warm Monday morning in June 2003, I found myself sitting in a Conference Room in the basement of the UN.   The second session of the Ad Hoc Committee to consider whether or not a convention was needed had just started.   It was my first time at the UN and I wondered how many years this would take.   The optimist in me reckoned at least ten, after all this was the UN!

As fate would have it, New Zealand was first to speak.   Jan Scown spoke eloquently for us for about ten minutes, that I will summarise as "Convention, yes!"

At the end of that second session, and with five minutes left, the New Zealand proposal to have disabled people included as equal partners in the working group to develop a draft text was adopted.

These anecdotes demonstrate our country's support of the Convention, our leadership role from the outset and my own inclusion in a process that previously would have excluded me.

Now I jump forward to a Friday evening in August 2006.   I'd listened to more than 350 hours of debate and been in countless discussions.  It's ten to eight.   We should have finished at six and we are working on borrowed  time.   Mike Gourley went for a walk at 6.30 because it was so stressful.   He's come back and one of our Arabic colleagues is talking.   I've stayed and seen issue by issue be resolved.  I also need to collect $30 from some Australians who'd bet me that we would have finished an hour ago.

We all know that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.   We wait anxiously for our colleague to finish then for any further objections to the text being adopted, there are none.   

This was one of my life's contradictory emotions moments - tension and relief at the same time.

Fast forward to today.  It's like ten to eight in New York again.   Without much time to spare we are going to ratify the convention.    It means we are going to be bound by the Convention.

Strategically, we are going to be at that crucial first meeting next month where we are among a select group of countries that will determine the very future of the convention.

I say congratulations to us all.   We all contributed to a fantastic job.

We've earned a momentary pause.

Despite what has gone before, we must look ahead.

I say to future Governments, the implementation of the convention in New Zealand must be first-rate and leading-edge.   Second best will not be good enough.  

The text of the Convention was created by disabled people talking about real life experiences that the UN turned into a one-dimensional text.

Implementation of the Convention means taking the text again and turning it into multi-dimensional outcomes.

Its implementation cannot be an impersonal tick-the-box exercise but a real attempt to support disabled people to have our human rights and fundamental freedoms met.

Disabled people must partner with you to ensure this happens.

We all know it works.

Thank you.