Mr Speaker, as I stand to speak in this House for the first time, I wish to pay tribute to what has brought me here. And to give some sense of what I hope to achieve as a Member of Parliament. Can I also Mr Speaker acknowledge your elevation and the speech from the Throne from the Governor General.
Like some other new members, mine is a migrant’s story.
In the early 1920s, my dad’s Uncle Mick fled grimy Liverpool determined to find a better life than England offered him as a working man. He landed in Wellington, working and saving until the Depression hit. Only with the first Labour government’s election was he able to put a deposit on a house and send for his wife and son. They had been separated 15 years. 15 years!
Uncle Mick later encouraged my father Jim and dear late mother Julie to come here. He said it was a great place to bring up a family – and he was right.
I still regularly thank my parents’ courage for having the courage to bring determination me and my five brothers and sisters to New Zealand when I was four years old.
We were almost wholly bog Irish by extraction, Catholic and working class.
Fear of nuclear holocaust was another key trigger for leaving England.
As well as being early anti-nuclearists, my family shared other Labour values. We kids all got the opportunities afforded by a good Catholic and state education. And apart from a bit of teasing as our accents faded, we were treated to genuine Kiwi fairness. And tolerance. These values remain fundamental to the sort of Aotearoa New Zealand I wish to work for and live in.
I remember as a teenager making an unkind comment about someone being different. My father gently reminded me that our forebears had arrived in England from the potato famine; dirty, poor, speaking a strange language and professing another faith. They were treated like scum because they were different. And, remember, he said, people are just people.
What was true more than 150 years ago for emigré Irish peasants is true today in my electorate of Christchurch Central, which hosts 100 ethnic minorities. Just last week, one of my electorate office staff assisted four Ethopian orphans to arrive, somewhat wide-eyed, from Addis Ababa. An already resident family member is helping them start their new life in Christchurch. And so the cycle repeats.
I think every one of us who is given opportunity and succeeds owes it to the next generation to provide the same equality of opportunity, to ensure the same fairness and tolerance is provided to every New Zealand child, whether born in England or Ethiopia, Samoa or Shirley.
That must be the measure of a fair and just society. You don’t just take the opportunities provided to you and then pull up the ladder; you drop it down it further so even more can come aboard.
I want to thank the voters of Christchurch Central who supported me and Labour on November 8. I assure all everyone who lives in this wonderful eclectic and diverse electorate that I am here to represent them and their interests.
My first priority is to do all I can to help employers, unions and business groups to retain any jobs that now come under threat as the recession bites in Christchurch Central. It was sobering to read the maiden speeches of some illustrious predecessors – Sir Geoffrey Palmer, David Caygill and Lianne Dalziel, and be reminded just how recently high unemployment blighted my electorate.
Mr Speaker, I also wish to acknowledge the extraordinary work of Tim Barnett. Tim was legendary in his devotion to the constituents of Christchurch Central. He was also generous, accommodating and supportive of me as a candidate, right up to door knocking late on Election Day. Just hours before he flew out of the country, we bundled him out of the electorate office, still trying to pass on files and notes, He and his partner Ramon are now enjoying a well-earned break before taking on new challenges. I am sure this House wishes them well.
The Christchurch Central electorate is the jewel in the crown of Christchurch. It encompasses all of the splendour of Hagley Park, the city’s museum and hospital complex, our new, iconic art gallery, the country’s best Edwardian heritage buildings as well as new apartment complexes. If you haven’t had a recent holiday in Christchurch, then come and experience all it has to offer.
Christchurch Central is home to AMI Stadium and to the mighty Crusaders – so perhaps you might time your visit to see your home team play and be beaten.
The electorate includes some of the country’s wealthiest streets, but is also home to some of the nation’s poorest people. We have among the highest figures for those renting, living alone and on sickness and invalid benefits.
Some of the housing stock is shameful, best described as wooden tents. They are among the one million New Zealand homes that still have no insulation or are not properly insulated. This is unacceptable for a first world nation in the 21st century, especially in a city where winter day temperatures numbingly remain in single figures. To be warm in the place you call home Is a basic human right.
The Labour-led government forged an agreement with the Green Party to address this through a 15 year programme.
I say to the new government that there are few other initiatives with so many benefits – lower power bills, less pressure on the health system from cold people getting sick, reduced demand on our energy system and on our planet.. The New Zealand Council for Sustainable Development has just reported that nearly $5 billion in energy savings can be had in the next decade through insulating every home; that’s $300 per household every year.
This is infrastructure every bit as beneficial as roads and broadband. And with building firms laying off staff in the face of recession, I say now is the time to insulate New Zealand homes, starting with Christchurch.
Another matter of prime importance to Christchurch Central is reform of the liquor laws. At weekends, our inner city’s numerous bars and cafes attracts thousands of people, locals and tourists alike. Unfortunately, many people arrive in a grossly intoxicated state. Often they are refused access to licensed premises. Despite a ban on drinking on inner city streets, people can buy alcohol from nearby dairies and supermarkets. Police and hospital authorities estimate alcohol accounts for 70 percent or more of weekend crime and injuries in Christchurch. I suspect it will not be greatly different in any other community represented in this House.
Liquor legislation remains difficult to get right, in part I think because it remains a conscience vote for members, a residue from the strong pro-temperance push early last century. As further liquor legislation looms in the course of this Parliament, I suggest it is timely, for parties to consider whether such law changes should become matters of party policy.
I am very pleased to have water quality among my Labour spokesperson duties. Water will be a defining issue for our future as climate change hits and demand increases. Christchurch currently enjoys perhaps the best quality drinking water in the world. Meanwhile Canterbury accounts for two-thirds of the nation’s irrigation. Much new demand has been driven by corporate-scale dairy farming, with Canterbury farms twice the size of the national average.
I am far from being opposed to development – I was instrumental in setting up an economic development trust in Marlborough – but we must have development that is both economically and environmentally sustainable. Dairy farming is already a key contributor to making it dangerous to swim in many Canterbury streams and rivers, let alone drink their water. Effluent is a real problem but more sinister are the poisonous nitrates from urea fertiliser which can take decades to seep into water supplies.
When water allocation is on a first in, first served basis with little real cost to the user, we simply encourage rampant growth where the environment is always going to come second. We need a new allocation model for water that recognises its primary importance to every New Zealander, not just the landholder who owns a thin mantle of soil above an aquifer or adjoining a river. Water is a common good. It belongs to every one of us and we should all have a say in who gets it and what it is used for.
My other shadow portfolio is broadcasting. My working life began as a broadcasting journalist. I still regard Radio New Zealand as a national taonga. In an ever digitising, increasingly commercial and converging world, it is imperative to retain state-owed radio and television to deliver New Zealand content and develop our sense of identity.
Mr Speaker, I come to this House with strong, established beliefs in its traditions and its democratic values.
For 12 years, I sat up there in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. I am not sure if that makes me gamekeeper turned poacher, or vice versa.
I believe I am the first former Gallery member to be elected to Parliament since Sir Frederick Doidge in the 1930s.
While never shy of expressing strong opinions as a journalist, I always retained a healthy respect for Members of Parliament on both sides of the House, not least for the onerous workload I am only now truly able to appreciate.
I wish to acknowledge my former profession but observe it is increasingly difficult for journalists to do justice to their calling in an ever more commercially-driven environment. To give just one example; there is now virtually no coverage of candidate meetings by major media outlets in main centres. How can media be a public watchdog when the chain keeps getting shorter?
Many embark on the journey to get to this House – some of us more than once – but rather fewer arrive. I am here now because in early 2002 I went as a newspaper editor to a Marlborough mussel factory. Helen Clark opened it and she made everyone in that audience, me included, just so proud to be a New Zealander. I got a lift back into town with her. A fortnight later, I was the Labour candidate for Kaikoura.
I was then privileged to work for Helen in the Prime Minister’s Office.
But the greatest privilege of all is entering this House, being part of a strong Labour caucus and I hope being of service to my electorate, this Parliament and nation.
Being able to do that results from a harmonious and hardworking Labour team in Christchurch Central ably led by campaign manager Pam Wheeler and secretary Coral Hodgson. To them and many others I can’t name, thank you.
I wish to acknowledge my National opponent at the election in Christchurch Central, Nicky Wagner, and say I hope we can work together on issues of importance for Christchurch.
Finally, I want to acknowledge my wife Philippa, who is here in the Gallery today with friends and family, and with whom I have shared every step of this journey. And to thank our daughters Hannah and Rachel and my sister Julie, for their love and support.
Sadly my mother passed away in August and my father is too frail to travel but I know they are with me here today.
In the same way as they and my Uncle Mick came here to give others’ opportunity, I come to this Parliament to help ensure my daughters’ generation and those which follow, can enjoy all the opportunities that this blessed nation of Aotearoa/New Zealand can and must provide to all its people.
I have been making a real effort to get to know Christchurch’s ethnic communities.
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