Maiden Speech - Phil Twyford

Patrick Leyland | 14th December 2008 | 3:25 pm

Pou hirihiri, pou ramarama Tiaho i roto, marama i roto, Wananga i roto, marama i roto, Tenei te pou Te pou ka eke Te pou kai a koe na Ko te pou o enei korero Tihei mauriora

Mr Speaker, I rise for the first time in this House, proud to be a Labour Member of Parliament, inspired by the democratic tradition this House represents and humbled by the great Parliamentarians who have come before.

I congratulate you Mr Speaker on your election and acknowledge that your experience and wisdom in this House will serve us well.  I acknowledge the Speech from the Throne, and look forward to contributing to a robust Opposition fulfilling its constitutional duty for the next three years.

Mr Speaker as I look around the walls of this debating chamber and reflect on the battles waged and lives lost by thousands of New Zealanders to help forge our young nation, I am moved by the simple but brilliant concept of this House.

Like the countless, often nameless, people who have served and sacrificed for New Zealand in war we too are servants of something bigger, something bolder, something grander.

We come from varied backgrounds but we all are united in a goal to collectively serve. At the end of our times here, some of us will be remembered but most of us not. Regardless, we all will have served our nation and for that I greet every member, no matter which side of the aisle, and look forward to working with all and strenuously disagreeing with some.

If there is one thing that unites us all in this House I would hope it is the belief we can make New Zealand the best country it can be.

It seems a minor miracle this little collection of islands at the bottom of the Pacific with only four million people can sustain a successful modern nation state that boasts some of the best quality of life the world can offer. 

What an implausible but heroic project, bringing together the descendants of the first settlers who a thousand years ago crossed the Pacific by waka to this, the last significant landmass in the world to be settled by humans;

The 19th century Europeans who sailed to the other side of the planet to build a new life, free from class exploitation;

And the 20th century “boeing” arrivals who fled poverty, oppression or were simply seeking a better life for their children.

We are all united by a desire to create a better world and the only difference between us is when our waka touched these shores.

This common bond created a whakapapa of pioneering social reform: The Parihaka prophets Te Whiti and Tohu who offered a strategy of non-violent action to resolve previously lethal disputes; Kate Sheppard and the suffragettes securing the vote for women; Richard Seddon and the Liberals introducing ground-breaking social and industrial legislation; Michael Joseph Savage creating one of the world’s most comprehensive social security systems in the 1930s; Peter Fraser at the UN in 1945 helping draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Norman Kirk in the 1970s standing up for a nuclear free Pacific; and the treaty settlement process started by Kirk and Matiu Rata, a unique effort at post-colonial reconciliation over more than three and a half decades.

There is much to be proud of and to draw inspiration from. And we shouldn’t forget our other nation builders: the entrepreneurs, the scientists, public servants, our artists, our sportspeople, educators, the men and women who worked the land, the workers who built the roads, raised the kids, fought the wars when we asked them to, who clean the offices, run the footie and netball teams, look after our older and frail New Zealanders, and who work in the kitchens and shops and factories.

In spite of our national tendency to self doubt, we know this country is capable of great things.

I believe that to achieve great things there are a few things we must do first.

I believe we must unleash the talents of all our citizens. This takes great health and education systems, and a shared belief that unemployment, incarceration and ill health are above all a waste of human potential we cannot afford.

I believe we must recognise there are some things we do more efficiently and fairly together rather than privately. Smart, strong government can deliver the essentials: health care, cost-effective social insurance, education, superannuation.

These social supports mean we all get the best possible start in life. After then it is up to each of us to apply our talent and hard work.

This is, to me, modern socialism. This is, to me, the modern social democratic movement. This is, to me, what it means to be in a modern New Zealand Labour Party.

I reject the notion that Government is a burden.

In a global marketplace where billions can be moved across borders at the click of a mouse, it is easy for the big to get bigger at the expense of the vulnerable. Rules are needed for fair competition and fair markets.

Government can have a role owning strategically important enterprises.

I believe we must constantly look for ways to help our firms to grow, and create high value jobs, and seize opportunities in global markets. We have to invest more in research and development, and science based on our comparative advantages. We have to keep building the infrastructure for a 21st century economy.

And we must meet head on the challenge of sustainability. If we win, we can continue to do business in a post-carbon world, and enjoy a land that is truly clean and green. If we lose, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Is there a New Zealander who wouldn’t want their children or grand children to once again be able to swim and fish in our lakes and rivers and beaches?

None of this will happen unless we strike a deal with each other based on a shared idea of the common good.

A deal that says if we work hard and play by the rules, we will have every opportunity to get ahead and enjoy the fruits of our labours.

That we pay our fair share of taxes because they are the price of a decent society, the only way to truly protect the Kiwi way of life – that fair go for all.

They are the price of a decent New Zealand where the local school provides a great education, where access to health care isn’t determined by the size of your wallet, where if you are injured at work or play that you are taken care of and no one needs to live in a gated community to feel safe.

That is why I am proud to stand here today as a Labour Member of Parliament.

One of the issues we need to talk about is our constitution. That conversation about the nation’s destiny must be framed by the republic, and not the constitutional trappings of our colonial past.

We have been far too shy of this debate. But as our nation rapidly changes its makeup its ties to England will become even more  strained and irrelevant. As I look around this House, the most diverse in the history of this institution, the last thing I think of is the Queen on the other side of the world.

It’s not a debate we should leave for the Australians to have first and then by some kind of osmosis follow in New Zealand. We need to have this discussion on our own terms.

It is a journey that I hope to play a role in as a first generation New Zealander, the fourth child of Sam and Gillian Twyford who arrived fresh off the plane at Whenuapai, shortly before I was born in 1963, as part of the great post-war British diaspora. 

My mother, who will be watching this speech on television, more than anyone, made me who I am. She brought love and hard work to the task of raising five children on her own. We were never what you would call poor but to put jam on the bread she cleaned other people’s houses, and worked the night shift as a nurse-aid in a rest home. In mid-life a stroke left her disabled. She recovered and has lived independently for the last 23 years thanks to her grit and drive.

While my mother is the core of my being, I trace my political awakening to a couple of important moments.

As a Fifth Former at Westlake Boys High School I listened on a transistor radio at lunchtime to a news broadcast of police and army evicting Ngati Whatua from Bastion Point on the orders of then-Prime Minister Rob Muldoon.

It struck me as shameful that a democratic nation could send in the might of the state to evict these people from their land.

The second was the visit to my school of Michael Lapsley, a New Zealand Anglican priest who was part of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. A parcel bomb from the South African intelligence services blinded him and blew his hands off. I wagged a class to hear him speak to a group of older students and the story of his courageous refusal to compromise his beliefs before the unyielding power of the state changed my life.

My moral and political compass took its bearings through the economic and social turbulence of the1980s. Like thousands of other New Zealanders I marched against apartheid, blockaded our harbours against nuclear-armed ships, campaigned for a nuclear free and independent Pacific, and door knocked for the election of the Fourth Labour Government.

Its independent foreign policy, long overdue social and environmental reforms, and progress on the Treaty were cause for elation. But like many, the sweet taste of social progress turned to ashes in my mouth.

An economic crisis became the pretext for an ideological blitzkrieg that tried to re-make our country by imposing the commercial model on almost every facet of life.

Change was needed. But by god we paid the price in poverty, inequality, loss of productive capacity in our firms, and damaged generations. We are still paying.

We were told “there is no alternative” as a sort of religious dogma. It left me with a conviction; that there are always alternatives.

It is possible to run an open economy that welcomes good foreign investment while also protecting what is good and valuable about our landscape and our institutions and our way of life. It is possible to have a business friendly environment while also treating workers with dignity and respecting their rights. It is possible to celebrate success and wealth creation while also giving a hand up to those who need it. Of course it is possible.

During the dark years of the Douglas-Richardson experiment, I refocused my energies on humanitarianism and development, first as the founding Executive Director of Oxfam NZ, and then as the advocacy director of Oxfam International based in Washington DC. I built a business, and ran an organisation. We gave many thousands of New Zealanders the chance to help in a practical way to make our planet a fairer place.

We smuggled medical supplies into Bougainville through a military blockade so mothers who had fled the fighting into the bush wouldn’t die preventable deaths in childbirth. We funded loans to Ethiopian farmers driven off the land by famine so they could start businesses. We provided legal support for widows who lost their husbands and children in the Guatemalan civil war so human rights abusers would be brought to account.

And during the genocide in Rwanda we lobbied the New Zealand foreign affairs minister, and our ambassador to the United Nations who happened at that time to be chairing the UN Security Council, feeding them information from Oxfam staff on the ground in Rwanda.

I tell you these things to illustrate my view that we all need to stand up against what we see is wrong in our communities, in our worlds. Not to act makes us part of the problem.

My latter years with Oxfam running global campaigns showed me how much can be achieved by people of conscience fighting for a just cause.

It taught me you cannot achieve lasting change without politicians prepared to be courageous, to take risks to do what is right.

As I lobbied the UN Security Council against the invasion of Iraq, Helen Clark’s stand against the Bush-Blair-Howard war made me proud to be a Kiwi. It made it all the more exciting to return home to New Zealand with my family after years away.

As a social democrat it is hard to underline enough how important Helen Clark and Michael Cullen and their generation in Labour politics have been to our hopes for this country. 

They rescued our party and rebuilt it. They brought our nation’s politics back to a better, more sensible place. They reconstructed a working model of social democracy anchored in Labour values. For that I say thank you.

Let me conclude by thanking those who have travelled with me and helped me along the way on my political journey so far. My colleagues in journalism, my fellow members of the Service and Food Workers Union and the wider labour movement, my Oxfam mates both here and abroad, and numerous party colleagues.

I do want to single out my campaign manager Barbara Ward, and the members of the North Shore Labour Electorate Committee who have campaigned alongside me during the last two elections, particularly Frances and Bill Bell.

And most of all, today, for my partner Joanna and our son Harry I say this: this land is our land, and nothing is too good for the future generations we will pass it on to.

No reira, e nga mana, e nga reo, e nga rangatira maha, kua rupeke mai nei, ki raro i te tuanui o tenei o to tatou whare, tena koutou, tena koutou, kia ora mai ano tatou.

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