542 Address in Reply; and Proposed Amendments 6 March tradition. I have to advise her-and she will have to work out the virtue of this-that the other two were Michael Bassett and Trevor Young. At least one of those two can provide a shining example.. The House is where we have the chance to talk, to confuse, and to get things wrong, but I say to the member for Hawke's Bay: "Don't ever think that it runs the country.". ' When I first came to the House and took a back-bench seat in the Opposition, fundamentalist groups used to write to me and say: "We're praying every week for your job in running the country.". I used to write back and say: "Look, I hope you've got the message through to the right person, because I'm the wrong joker.". I am here because I am part of a political process in which back-benchers are given certain rights; in which Parliament is a forum where they can hold the Executive to account; in which they can test the views of the Executive; in which they can express the views of their constituents, agonise over their affairs, and try to resolve some of their worst dilemmas; in which they have a licence to work in their electorate offices, paid for by the State; in which they will be competing with people who hate them; in which the press will have a crack at them; and in which there is an organ in Auckland called the New Zealand Herald that can abuse a former Prime Minister, the member for Tamaki, because he had a 4 percent increase in his retirement salary over a period of 2 years while the same paper 2 years ago cost 40c and today costs 60c. Members will be the victims of double standards in everything they do; they will be attacked when they do it right, and they will be attacked when they do it wrong. But there is one thing that new members should remember: "If you don't stick with your mates you're not likely to have a Government of any cohesion, and if you don't have a Government of any cohesion the very people that you purport to represent will suffer.". Tony Ryall: Is the member speaking from experience? Rt. Hon. DAVID LANGE: If the member says that I speak from experience, by God I do! BILL ENGLISH (Wallace): It is an honour to stand in the Parliament of New Zealand to speak as the representative for my own home, the electorate of Wallace. I congratulate Sir Paul and Lady Reeves on their term in office. They had an unusual ability somehow to shed the pomp and elevation of their office yet act with the dignity and respect that we would expect from representatives of the Queen. I also congratulate Dame Cath Tizard on her appointment as Governor-General. In her own way she will bring out yet another positive aspect of the New Zealand character. I pay tribute to some subjects of the Queen whom the Governor-General represents, including Mr John Shallard, a farmer from Wendonside, who thinks that because I have the good will to go back to my electorate every weekend he might come up to Wellington during the week to hear my maiden speech. The electors of Wallace do not often have a new member of Parliament. For 80 years Wallace has been the south-west comer of the country, and in that time it has had only 5 previous members of Parliament, 2 in the past 30 years. Brian Talboys had a distinguished career, and he retains to this day the stature, the sharpness of mind, and the dignity that made him one of the outstanding parliamentarians of my lifetime. Derek Angus, my predecessor, served his electorate through the hardest years it has ever seen. He worked silently and effectively without drawing attention to himself, unfashionable as that may be. The highest tribute I can pay him is that he left politics after 9 years the same man he entered it-a man of warmth, of dedication, and of unquestionable honesty. Wallace stretches from Big Bay above Milford Sound, east to Kingston, down to Gore, and south to Oreti Beach. It is the south-west comer of New Zealand, much of it rugged coastline with fiords of breathtaking grandeur, a million acres of mountains and bush untouched, some unexplored-! have never campaigned there-and all of it hostile and beautiful. Alongside that, there are thousands of acres of the best that can be wrought by man. The fertile land of Southland is walked by the feet of people who love it, who know it, and who sustain it. The early Maori crossed our plains from the south coast to Fiordland in search of their treasure, the pounamu, the greenstone. Then the early gold diggers passed from Bluff to Central Otago in search of their treasure. Now that land is peopled with the spirit of those who saw the treasure beneath their feet, and who stopped and cultivated the soil. I am proud to represent some of the few 6 March Address in Reply; and Proposed Amendments 543 people in New Zealand who can produce something with their own capital and expertise and sell it at a profit on the other side of the world. It was fashionable not so long ago to condemn us, with our provincial attitudes, our conservative ways, and our subsidies. Well, the big ideas have come and have gone and we are still in pusiness. Farm profits have collapsed to new lows, but my people have world-beating skills in production that are the envy of sophisticated, innovative, but, unfortunately, bust businesses in the big cities. We have been restructuring for 7 years now, and we have learnt some valuable lessons. The first is that economic survival, personal achievement, and social cohesion in the face of adversity are not all about profit and income. Our farms and our towns have survived because we are resilient, and we are resilient because we believe in what we do; we believe in our capacities; we believe in our way of life. We need to do better, of course. The need to market better what we produce so well is so often quoted it is a cliche. Brian Talboys mentioned it in his maiden speech in 1958. Thirty-two years on we are no more satisfied that we have it right. So much for progress. We have learnt some other valuable lessons from our 7 years of restructuring. Our communities are small but they are not defined just by the people in them but by the way that those people come together. So our services matter. They pull together the sparse threads of communities that are few in number-the schools, the medical services, the roads, the bridges. Those are not just bits and pieces that we can do without. They are, quite literally, the place from which we come, and therefore part of who we are. Gore, Winton, Te Anau, Riverton-those are my larger towns. They have a momentum of their own. They are doing OK. Our smaller towns and districts, however, are reaching a critical point at which the social fabric, threadbare from economic strain, is beginning to tear. Another lesson we have learnt is that, because politicians cannot do anything about the very few economic facts that actually matter, they do not talk much about them. Those are the terms of trade, or what we can import for a given quantity of exports, and productivity, or what we can produce in Wallace for a given unit of labour, capital, or land. The rest of the indicators-the deficit, the inflation rate, the exchange rate-make for easy politics, but they are peripheral to the creation and the distribution of wealth. The economic task of government in the future is one about which Wallace has some serious views, and a task of government in the future will be to keep the domestic environment stable wherever it can. Despite years of wishful rhetoric, New Zealand is still a farm with a forest on it. We will have a chance of getting more wealthy only if our exporters of those products have a fair chance. I can assure you, from my own continuing participation in the world market, that it is a roller-coaster, and we need every stable factor that we can get. The things that we ask of the Government-stability and consistency-are unspectacular; they are politically difficult and often unpopular, and it would not surprise me if they were not just a wee bit right wing. But politicians who want to indulge their instincts to do something to the country might well turn their attention to the way in which the spoils of successful rural capitalism are distributed. As a country, we should have started talking about those issues some time ago. As well as restructuring and related unemployment, a lot of things have happened in the past 6 or 7 years: flatter tax scales; the regressive goods and services tax; a boom and a massive bust in asset values; lower inflation; changes in the age of the population; changes in the make-up of the labour force and the work it does; and changes in the make-up of families and households. All of those things have a significant effect on the welfare of the people that we dare to govern, yet they are little understood by politicians. We concentrate on the reallocation of economic resources and we presume that people will simply reallocate themselves. They do not; many of the things that the Government does changes their circumstances, even if we do not realise it. In four brief months in the House I have already been involved with the passage of controversial legislation dealing with that very matter. That exercise has certainly tested me personally, and so have the attitudes of my constituents towards decisions that have been made. As a new MP-naive, hopeful, well-intentioned-! have discovered that it is not easy to be a politician in hard times. When I am optimistic my constituents tell me that they have "heard that all before, and don't believe it"; when I am realistic they say: "You haven't got anything to offer.". 544 Address in Reply; and Proposed Amendments 6 March That experience, as can be imagined, has required me to examine my own assumptions about why I am in politics. Do I, in fact, have something to offer the sceptical people of Wallace? They offer me many things-they offer me trust. Each week they pay for me to get on a plane and fly to a strange place 600 miles away to represent their interests, diverse and contradictory as I know those interests to be. They offer me their respect, the respect of a hearing when I come back, and the respect of assuming-because they do not know-that I am doing my best. What do I offer them? In the modem idiom, perhaps, a recycled speech made by the Prime Minister; an attention-grabbing headline; or, worse still, someone else's neat little sound-bite. Let us not overestimate the raw material that makes up the new MP. Many of us come to the job, as I have, without a fully developed, coherent set of beliefs, much as that may be expected. We are not a nation of philosophers, and Wallace is certainly not an electorate of philosophers, and I am not ashamed of that. We come with a grab-bag of views and opinions, prejudices-dare I say it-and assumptions and assertions about how the world ought to work. With this somewhat simple equipment I am expected to confront the complexity of determining, in this institution, what is in the public interest. Having had a normal job and a family life, and having tried with mixed success to manage my own interest, suddenly it is my job to distil the public interest. It would be heroic, to say the least, if I knew what the public interest was in every situation. But what I do bring to this job is a willingness to get into the argument rather than to avoid it. I owe it to my voters to present in Parliament what is best in them-a credible, constructive, and committed argument. I do not pretend to be totally representative of the people of Wallace. I share the beliefs of some of them, some of their spirit, and some of their aspirations. But the ones that I do share I believe are worth while representing to the nation. I cannot see how the meetings, the miles, and the sacrifice of family life would be worth it if I believed otherwise. Many good people in this country stand back and criticise. Politics is "too grubby", "too superficial", "too much about egos". Yes, it is all of those things, but it is much more, too-it is an opportunity to serve the electorate, and thereby the nation. I pay a tribute to all members who have at some stage made the decision to put themselves forward in the public interest. Many who regard themselves as having greater capacities would not dare to do it. But, as has been mentioned, I, as a new MP, find that politics has lost standing in the community-it has lost its mana. To put it in the dry, but perhaps perceptive, terms of one of my older farmer constituents, a politician these days has all the qualities of a good dog except brains and loyalty! That is what he told me when he thought that I needed encouragement. I believe that we have lost that standing for one primary reason, and it is this: politics in New Zealand has come to be the exercise of power without persuasion. In any circumstances a Government ought to be willing to subject its decisions to debate; it ought to try to win the argument. Power without persuasion has no lasting place in a democracy, because how else can power be exerted except by coercion, except out of the barrel of a gun? As a new MP, I have been surprised at how suspicious my constituents are and how fearful they are of the Government. They are normal, reasonable people, who worry so much about the Government and what it might do-not just about what it has done, but about what it might do next. The Government has become something "done to you"-something like the compulsory visits to the dentist as a child. Unlike any particular policy, I believe that democracy is an end in itself. What makes this institution legitimate in the eyes of the people is not that it gets the answers right-because it surely does not more than about 50 percent of the time-but that it seeks the answers in a fair, humane, and reasonable manner. We all have preferred policies; we all believe that our wills should not be thwarted unreasonably by idiots; and we all believe that the public good is best served by a strong, decisive Government. In a word, we all believe in power, but we also have an obligation to attempt to resolve, in a fair and reasonable manner, the inevitable conflict between the inevitably different interests that our capitalist society allows to exist. That is the service of politics. Keeping the balance between power and service is the challenge of good government; restoring that balance is the challenge of the new National Government. The balance has been lost. It has been lost not because of the foibles of the rules of this institution, though I 6 March Address in Reply; and Proposed Amendments 545 know for sure that it has some foibles; not because times are hard, though I know for sure that they are hard; and not because the voters are selfish, though I know for sure that they can be selfish. The balance has been lost because people in this place have chosen to use the institutions of free government in a spirit of power rather than in a spirit of service. I do not know why that has happened. Perhaps the generation that was young in the sixties thinks it knows everything. But we do need to be vigilant, because more and more people look to the State as the steward of public values through its laws, its words, and its education system. They look to the State to describe the worth of our children, the worth of our old people, the worth of our labour, and more recently in the resource management debate-and I think it is a ridiculous request-they look to the State to decide the worth of the future. That was in legislation that came before the House-that the State was to decide the worth of the future. We have ministries for youth, for women, for Pacific Islanders, and for Maoris, and we have commissioners for children and for the environment. It is not so much the existence of those that bothers me, because they do a good job; it is the assumption that in their absence there is no one else in the nation who can defend the interests of the old, the children, and the ethnic minorities. Is it, indeed a fact that in our day and age only the State can guard those people? I also have in mind the debacle over indigenous forest policy, since I am the member for Tuatapere. It is the Government's job to provide a mechanism for people to resolve the different values they put on the native beech tree. It is not the job of the Government to take sides, and to do so in such an illogical and stupid manner. I pay tribute to the people of Tuatapere. They have felt the jackboot of power Government but they have maintained their dignity and their town despite a trail of broken undertakings-of plans laid and scrapped by the Government within months. It was a revelation to me to find that the middle-class activists of the environmental movement-liberal and sophisticated as they are-reach for the sledgehammer of power government when it looks as though reason might prevail. Environmental extremism, like economic extremism, can be maintained only by people who do not have a connection with reality, and neither of them has a place in democracy. Despite those excesses of government, I am not a great fan of changing the electoral system so much as the parliamentary system. If we want to change the process we need to know why. Why bother to turn it upside down if we have no concept of what is the best we are trying to do here? In a free society the rules of government allow those who are governing to do it badly. It is an easy answer to accept the failure of the spirit of the New Zealand Parliament. It is an easy answer to accept the cynicism of the public and the news media. It is an easy answer to accept those embedded attitudes and change the rules. The hard answer is to keep the rules the same and to change the attitudes. I come to the House with my own baggage of prejudices, and I have discovered a considerable amount of ignorance of many things. I come to the House with a conscience formed by a Christian upbringing-by values that, no doubt, I shall struggle to maintain. But, most important, I come with the blessing and support of my family. My wife, Mary, and I have the benefit of having being brought up in large families with mixed backgrounds. My sons are part-Samoan, part-Italian, part-English, part-Irish, and all Kiwi, and their many relatives span every age and stage of life. Those people are not particularly political, but they are not short of a word of advice, I might say. Without them, it would be impossible for Mary and me, with a young family, to do this job. No one can ask more of a spouse than to go into politics with a young family. I hope that one day I can return Mary's generosity of spirit. When the time comes for me to go-probably well before the time comes for me to go-my people will judge me as, of course, I have judged every other politician in the country. When the people who elected me and the people who support me come to make their judgment they will ask some questions that are not mine but are searching. They will ask: was he a man of courage who stood up to those he opposed and, when necessary, stood up to his friends? Was he a man with the courage to resist public pressure and private importance? Was he a man of judgment, with perception of what mattered, with perception of his own limitations as well as the limitations of others-a perception I have keenly-and with the wisdom to know what he did not know and the courage to admit it 546 Address in Reply; and Proposed Amendments 6 March even in public? Was he a man of integrity who never ran out on the principles he believed in or the people who believed in him? Was he a man who understood the trust of those whose hopes he carried? And was he a man devoted to serving the public interest and not compromised by any private obligation? There will be times in the world of politics-and perhaps there have been some already-when eloquence and competence are certainly not enough, and when even loyalty and stature will not be sufficient; there will be only the ideal of service and the answers to those somewhat difficult questions. The voter is fair-minded-I am satisfied of that. None of us can be right enough to earn respect simply for being right. It is the human qualities in us that will be judged; it is the human qualities that at last determine the respect we gain from others and the respect that the institution of Parliament gains from the nation. That will determine the self-respect that we take away from the task. I want the tone of my term in office to be set not by the spirit of the institution with its mysterious ways and ritual cynicism. I want not so much to bring the spirit of the institution to my people of Wallace but to bring the spirit of my people of Wallace to the institution. I have enough respect for them to know that if I fail this place will be the worse for it, and that if I succeed this place will be the better for it. Hon. Mrs T. W. M. TIRIKATENE-SULLIVAN (Southern Maori): I have been pleased to listen to the maiden speeches made by new members who have come from areas of the Southern Maori electorate. The member who has just spoken comes from an area that is very dear to my heart-namely, that part of the electorate around Tuatapere, Colac Bay, Riverton, Gore, Mataura-and earlier there was the member for Hawke's Bay, who comes from that part of my electorate with which I also strongly identify. It is now 24 years since I made my maiden speech, and I have heard many since then. I have seen many members come and go, but it is always exciting to hear the ideals and the idealism expressed in maiden speeches. One eventually comes to observe the development of each member and whether he or she attains the objectives and goals that were espoused in those first speeches. I express a thought for Sir Paul and Lady Reeves and also for Dame Cath Tizard. They have graced the vice-regal residence of the nation and they are all role models of unique significance. Sir Paul was a pathfinder here and it was a considerable breakthrough to have a Governor-General who would also fit into the vice-regal role his earlier role as a bishop. Somehow we have been led to believe that that was a natural thing, with Queen Elizabeth II being not only the monarch but also the Defender of the Faith. In fact, it would seem that in time the diminution of the aspects relating to faith have become acceptable around most of the British Commonwealth-and New Zealand is no exception. It was somehow satisfying to me when, as Governor-General, Sir Paul asserted his role as a cleric and an evangelist. Of Dame Cath Tizard I want to say that when I first came into the House I was in the office next to her husband, and I recall very well her rearing of her family. I believe that her husband conceded that she did most of the rearing of their children, and for such women I have considerable admiration. I have a particular regard and respect for the spouses of members of Parliament who shoulder a special burden in the rearing of their children, and I appreciated the references to families by members making maiden speeches earlier tonight. I refer tb the speech from the throne, and to the paragraph on the second page that refers to the events before the invasion of Kuwait by the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, when he laid claim to two Kuwaiti islands and the Kuwaiti section of an oilfield that spreads beneath the border between the nations of Iraq and Kuwait. It was stated that the President of Iraq had criticised Kuwait's oil production and pricing policies. In the passage of time we have come to know that if the price of oil or the oil itself was not within the grasp of Saddam Hussein it was his habit to devastate that oilfield. That is a manifestation of power, where power corrupts a person, a nation, and a country's resources. In the emphasis on politics and power-and one comes in here seeking the power to change policies, certainly, one would hope, not for oneself-one needs to be aware that power can indeed corrupt. I have seen people come in here with humility and attain a prestigious rank and at times become arrogant and disregarding of others. English, Bill: Address in Reply [Sitting date: 6 March 1991. NZPD Volume: 512; Page: 542]