Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Speaker. Jeanette Fitzsimons has left us far too early. I rise to speak on behalf of the National Party and the people of Coromandel. Jeanette Fitzsimons was a character and a personality larger than her sometimes diminutive stature might have foretold. She was always passionate energetic and articulate in her advocacy for the policies and principles that she held so dear and lived by every day of her life—those were primarily the environment conservation and humanity. She was staunch always with gritty and determined but often humble focus on achieving the goals that she wanted to. She never did it in a personal way; it was always about the policy about the argument about the debate and about the issue rather than the person—something that we sometimes have too little of in this place.In the Coromandel she was always an active articulate and vocal presence in local communities even after her time as the member of Parliament. She was never short of a well-considered well-thought-out and well-constructed contribution to any conversation or debate on any particular matter. She represented the Coromandel for just three years of her parliamentary career from 1999-2002 but she left a local legacy that is much greater than often three years in this place might imply from an ordinary constituency MP.Jeanette was well regarded well admired and well respected locally nationally and internationally for her views and for the way that she expressed them and presented them not only to those that supported her but to those who were opposed or had a different view. No matter what our personal view might have been of those policies and thoughts and ideas that she had one could never ever underestimate the sincerity or the level of conviction of those principles that she held dear and espoused at every opportunity. She lived as others have said by those principles every day of her life.I had an opportunity to spend a couple of hours yesterday in the Kauaeranga Valley near the farm with Harry and the extended whānau and friends at a very beautiful and typically Green-type affair if I might say—in a pleasing way. It was a very genuine sincere and pleasant afternoon beside the river in the valley that she loved with the people that she loved and who cared for her.Towards the end of last winter the Environment Committee was hearing submissions on the zero carbon bill. It was winter and a sub-committee had been meeting in Auckland City for nearly two days in a rather drab cold colourless community hall—in Freemans Bay from memory. Jeanette Fitzsimons arrived to make her submission on the zero carbon bill but before she started to speak she presented on the submissions table a posy of bright yellow daffodils taken from her garden in the Thames Valley that very morning. They sat there a bright beacon of hope and inspiration while she gave her considered submission in that otherwise drab room. Then when she'd finished her submission the flowers stayed and they remained and for the rest of the day those flowers stood on that table as a beacon of her contribution not only to the debate but as a measure of her views about the issues that we were talking. And they stayed there long after her submission had finished. I want to extend condolences on behalf of the National Party and on behalf of the people of Coromandel to Harry her children and her wider whānau. A bright green light has gone out on the Coromandel and across Aotearoa New Zealand too soon.