Mallard Trevor; Simmonds PennyMAIDEN STATEMENTSSPEAKER: I'll now intervene and say that in accordance with a determination of the Business Committee I call on Penny Simmonds to make her maiden statement. PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. Ōku rangatira ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa karanga mai karanga mai. [My esteemed ones warm greetings to you all call me call me.]Mr Speaker and parliamentary colleagues I proudly represent the people of the Invercargill electorate which takes in the communities of Invercargill Bluff Stewart Island Riverton Tuatāpere Ōtautau Wyndham and Edendale. Its boundary to the east is the Catlins Conservation Park to the west it extends into Fiordland National Park and to the south it takes in Rakiura National Park. It is a region of stunning rugged beauty important rural and manufacturing industries and innovative hard-working people. It is a region that produces its wealth from farming fishing forestry manufacturing tourism and aluminium smelting. Much of this wealth comes from the consistency of our rainfall which despite the often unflattering comments by the misinformed about our climate is the lifeblood of our industries. As our famous mayor Sir Tim Shadbolt prophesied many years ago water will one day be more valuable than oil. My foray into politics has perhaps been more of a surprise to me than to many of my supporters. After several decades of involvement in the communities of Invercargill and Southland many saw my move into politics as logical or even inevitable. However it was anything but for me. I loved my work at the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) and in various community organisations such as the Community Trust Hockey Southland and in the implementation of the Southland Regional Development Strategy. However the foundation industries of our southern community are coming to critical junctions where decisions will be made that will impact on several generations of Southerners and I want to be part of that decision making not just subjected to them. I would however like to first refer to the influences of my early years growing up on a farm in Riversdale in northern Southland. Ours was not a traditional farming family with land passed down generations. My parents' first farm was a returned serviceman's settlement block acquired after my father served in the army in World War II and after many years of working as a shearer. My father was the oldest of five siblings and when his father died at a young age my father at the age of only 14 years became the family breadwinner. This experience and the kindness shown to him and the opportunities given to him by many people in the northern Southland rural communities shaped the values of his and our lives. He carried a deep sense of fairness and looking out for others until his own relatively early death. My mother came from a large farming family of—well to be blunt—fairly stroppy high-achieving females. She like her sisters excelled in many sports with three of her sisters playing hockey for New Zealand and two of them captaining the New Zealand team. My father and indeed most of the male in-laws in our extended family had to quickly adapt to being regularly thrashed at tennis golf bowls or any other sport they might have the misfortune to compete against their wives in. This laid the foundation for a highly competitive spirit and instilled the notion of girls can do anything" long before it became a popular slogan. It also supported a number of us in subsequent generations to achieve national honours in hockey. My mother was also a skilled pianist. She had to turn down a scholarship to study beyond her teaching letters at Trinity College in London due to her family's financial circumstances. They couldn't afford it and her mother was in a wheelchair with polio so her duty was to help the household. She did continue to use her skills as a music teacher and in local choirs and both she and my father who also played several instruments instilled in us a love of music. The one element that stood us apart from most of the community was our oldest sibling being intellectually handicapped as a result of decisions made during a difficult birth. This extended our world into the families institutions and bureaucracy of dealing with disabilities. This has continued for our family with the birth of our youngest daughter Briony who is Down syndrome. Apart from that my upbringing was pretty standard fare in a Southland rural community. We were neither wealthy nor poor. We understood the need to work hard but also to support those who needed it. We immersed ourselves in the community through school sport music church and social activities. We learnt the value of family and community engagement and support. It was that understanding of the value of interconnectivity with community that drove me in my 30-year career at the Southern Institute of Technology. I started as chief executive when the then Southland Polytechnic although financially stable had experienced two consecutive years of declining student numbers. With only 1400 equivalent full-time students it didn't have far to fall to reach an unsustainable level and risk closure. Our SIT team over the 23 years I was chief executive secured the support of our local community to implement a number of innovative schemes and initiatives which impacted positively on individuals their families local industries and organisations as well as the community itself. Our zero-fees scheme supported by community funders local authorities and many individual businesses and championed by my good friend and mentor His Worship Sir Tim was a pivotal community initiative. Mayor Tim's account of my devising the scheme in the shower has an element of truth to it. I did after all at that time have a very young family of three daughters and uninterrupted time to think and plan was a rarity although I can assure you Mayor Tim was not privy to my daily ablutions. Our zero-fees scheme was not a lone initiative. It was part of an overall strategy to rejuvenate the economic social and cultural elements of our community after the devastation of the 1980s which we were still suffering the effects of. The establishment of a strategic partnership with Te Wānanga o Aotearoa in 2001 through the assistance of two other people pivotal in my career the late Koro Riki Cherrington and Ngāi Tahu kaumātua Michael Skerrett enabled a raising of awareness knowledge and capability in tikanga and te reo Māori in our communities. The wānanga gained many friends when they were large wealthy and influential. However the founding members Rongo Wētere and his family and other early managers of the wānanga never forgot that we worked with and supported the wānanga when they were small and struggling. A Woolf Fisher Fellowship enabled me to visit a number of innovative educational institutions in various parts of the world including the Canadian distance tertiary education delivery in Nova Scotia using technology to overcome the tyranny of geographic isolation. Modelling this led to SIT developing its own distance learning faculty SIT2LRN which has proven to be invaluable enabling SIT to deliver cost-effective quality education and training throughout New Zealand and across the world as well as blended on-site delivery and seamless delivery for SIT students during the 2020 COVID lockdown. SIT's international strategy brought to our local communities international graduates with diversity vibrancy and skills to address industry skills shortages. Again working with the community SIT brought the international students into Invercargill to study; not Auckland as many other institutions did simply clipping the financial ticket. The need to work for and integrate with the local community was always top of mind. I am extremely proud of what SIT has been able to achieve for Invercargill and Southland over the two decades and more that I was chief executive. My reason for recalling these achievements today is to underpin why I made a decision to stand for the Invercargill member of Parliament role. I believe in the value and importance of our communities in the South and I have unashamedly fought to strengthen and support our people industries organisations and communities in my various positions at SIT and in other community leadership roles I have held. At times my parochialism and intransient attitude to changes imposed from Wellington may have been interpreted as disruptive or even cantankerous but I learnt many years ago how important it is to push back against "Wellington knows best". I looked back to the development of the Tīwai Point Aluminium Smelter in 1971 the economic development brainchild of long-serving Invercargill Mayor Neil Watson and then MP Ralph Hanan set up in conjunction with the Manapōuri power station and currently under threat and with it the jobs and livelihoods of several thousand Southlanders and their families. I also looked to our Southland rural sector. The economic bedrock of Invercargill and Southland's wealth and prosperity which survived the reforms of the 1980s and pulled itself back to a powerhouse once more ensuring that Southland punches well above its weight consistently contributing around 15 percent to New Zealand's GDP with less than 1.2 percent of New Zealand's population. The South's rural sector is justifiably proud of its long history of economic success. But our rural sector is facing significant threats that seem to ignore or not understand the unique climatic and geographic challenges to the southern farmer and that give no credit to the incredible progress already being made by farmers working together with scientists to improve environmental outcomes. And I look to the threat of SIT—the organisation I had the privilege to lead—losing its autonomy and innovation being swallowed up in the ideological mega-merger of institutes of technology and polytechnics. While there may be better alternatives to the status quo in each of these industries I know that the decisions must be driven by Southlanders to ensure the benefits stay in the South. The decisions must also be pragmatic and science technology and engineering – based; not reacting to emotive sound bites from people who don't understand either economics or science.Ngāi Tahu's Murihiku regenerative project provides the opportunity for a partnership to drive our future from the South. As Tā Tipene O'Regan said recently "we are facing a once-in-many-generations opportunity to reset the way we manage energy". We need to ensure that the clean energy from Manapouri and the abundance of fresh water in the South is harnessed to provide jobs and prosperity for the South. However the Crown's plans to spend over half a billion dollars on upgrading transmission lines to take power north does not fill me with confidence. It is these important local issues and pending decisions which led me to stand for the Invercargill electorate at a time when my role at SIT could no longer achieve the things that I considered important for Invercargill. I saw an opportunity to further our community's needs and to support our farmers and industries as the local MP. In securing the role of MP for Invercargill I extend my thanks and gratitude to the Invercargill National Party executive my campaign team the regional chair and the hundreds of members and volunteers whose hard work made this transition possible for me and I thank my caucus colleagues and in particular our leader the Hon Judith Collins who have helped ease my way into the intriguing world of politics. I also acknowledge my long-suffering family who for years have put up with me being away on business for significant family events like birthdays and anniversaries and despite this have encouraged me in my new endeavour. My thanks to my husband Marty; twin daughters Alex and Whitney; their spouses Kurt and Rowan; our little mokopuna Flynn Lily and Harrison; and of course our very special youngest daughter Briony. Briony's support person Jicinta Veale must also be acknowledged as playing a large part in enabling me to do what I do. A career politician has never been my aim but then a career chief executive wasn't either and I lasted 23 years there. The position of chief executive enabled me to do what I loved. It was an honour and a privilege to work in tandem with the community to implement many community initiatives and I acknowledge all my SIT senior management colleagues. I thank in particular those in the gallery here today Bharat Guha and Teri McClelland as well as my good friend and colleague Patsy Eade and the many supportive SIT council members I have had over the years. I will always be indebted to our famous Mayor Sir Tim Shadbolt who was with me through these golden years at SIT as well as the very influential Ngāi Tahu and SIT kaumātua Michael Skerrett. I will be driven in this new role as the member of Parliament for Invercargill to continue my advocacy for the people industries and organisations of the Invercargill electorate. I come to the role with the experience of a farmer's daughter and a farmer's wife a mother and a grandmother an educationalist and a soldier for several years in the Territorials a businesswoman a community leader and a sportsperson. But most of all I come as a passionate Southlander who will not stand by and allow the place that I proudly call my home to be adversely impacted upon by poor political decisions. Our rural communities farmers SIT our productive land fresh water and clean energy are worth standing up for. In concluding I will chant a waiata written for me by the late Koro Riki Cherrington. It refers to the people and rivers of the South and the pathway of the whales. Murihiku the southern region is of course the important and powerful tail of the whale of Aotearoa something best not to get in the way of. Kia ora. Thank you. E rere ŌtepuniPākaha a Pakiaka eKi te Ōtarewa Ngāi TahuNgāti Mamoe Waitaha eE rere puta WaihōpaiKi te Ara a KewaKa whakamaua kia tina tinaHaumi e hui e taiki e.[Flow on Ōtepuni streamStronghold of PakiakaFlow to Ōtarewa where Ngāi TahuNgāti Mamoe and Waitaha reside.Flow on until you reach Waihōpai riverAnd then out to Foveaux StraitLet it be firmly fastenedJoin it bind it it is done.][Applause]SPEAKER: I call on Joseph Mooney to make his maiden statement."