Robertson H V Ross: Valedictory StatementsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson H V Ross: Valedictory Statements[Sitting date: 30 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19699. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]H V ROSS ROBERTSON (Labour—Manukau East):Kia ora matua Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou e te Whare e ngā iwi e ngā reo e ngā hau e whā tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa and warm Pacific greetings. I appreciate the opportunity to address this House today as I say farewell to this fine establishment. For the past 27 years I have had the privilege to participate in the ebbs and flows of the ever-changing environment that is New Zealand’s Parliament. I am delighted to welcome my wife Grace here today on her birthday. Without Grace’s support I could not have dedicated my life to my work over all these years. I owe her and my children Cherie Daine Lee and Lisa a huge debt of thanks.When I stood for Parliament it was for three reasons: to promote productivity to serve my community and to encourage ethical leadership. While here I discovered a fourth: a passion for education which is crucial for my community for when South Auckland wins so too does New Zealand.In the 1980s I worked in industrial relations and later became an industrial engineer. I went from freezing works management to the Auckland and Tomoana Freezing Workers Union. I want to welcome Mike Nahu here today who is from that union. At the time the meat industry was in crisis. It was costing more to process meat than we received for the product. We were converting unsold sheep meat into fertiliser. A group of us realised that the only way to save the meat industry was to dramatically improve productivity. We achieved remarkable results and we showed that the meat industry had a future. Everyone—worker manager farmer shareholder and the country—won. The experience in the freezing works convinced me that the way to lift our nation’s standard of living is to improve productivity.Our good work was destroyed overnight when Sir Robert Muldoon issued a decree granting everyone in the freezing industry without a productivity agreement a $20 pay increase. Those who had refused to change were rewarded. One political decision set the industry back a decade. I decided the best way to promote change was to become an MP.For 27 years I have taken every opportunity to tell this House that the answer to the economic issues we face is to lift productivity. My member’s bill the Productivity Council Bill (No 3) passed its first reading but never made the carry-over motion in 1990. New Zealand is a rich country yet we are becoming relatively poorer. The issue I came here to support is not yet won. I am delighted that we now have a Productivity Commission and I urge all members to study the commission’s reports and implement its recommendations. The secret to increasing productivity that I learnt in the freezing works still holds. It is continuous improvement and sharing the gains. To increase everyone’s standard of living is going to take a continuing effort by this House and a continuing effort should be something that we can all agree on.There is no higher honour than to be elected by your friends and neighbours to represent them in Parliament. I feel a special bond with the people of Manukau East who have twice given me the biggest majority in this House. But what the Boundaries Commission can give it can also take away. The boundary changes have meant my seat has wandered around South Auckland and east Auckland.As one of the longest-serving members of Parliament I am occasionally asked what the secret of survival is in politics. The commentators would have you believe that success in politics is charisma. Well I was standing in another queue the day they handed out charisma. Rather I have built my career on the principle famously expounded by US Democrat Speaker Tip O’Neill that “All politics is local”.Every Saturday for 27 years I have got up at 6.30 and gone to the Ōtara market the meeting place of my electorate where my team of volunteers sells quick-fire raffles and I meet the people. Then I travel to the sportsgrounds in my electorate and support the local teams. If parents players coaches and referees can be there every Saturday so can their MP. Around 4 p.m. I go and visit one of the bowling clubs in my electorate and have a cup of tea and a chat. Members should try it. You will be amazed at what you learn and your constituents become your friends. On Saturday nights for 27 years I have been privileged to have an electorate engagement and sometimes two or three—perhaps as a guest of honour at a dinner a prize-giving a wedding or a birthday—and 50000 constituents soon become 50000 friends. Sunday is God’s day and I give it to my family and my church.On Mondays and Fridays I see constituents. Rather than always having constituents come to my office I visit people in their homes because it tells me so much more. I have a programme of electorate visits so every year I visit every church temple and mosque and every business. I also see each of the more than 40 educational institutions in my electorate at least once a year. Let me give you a tip. Visit at 2.30 p.m. When the bell rings the principal no matter how enthusiastically he has been lobbying you will escort you off the grounds where of course you will meet all the parents waiting for their children. I doorknock every week.I know that Mike Moore tells this story about me. He has a friend who says: “That Ross Robertson is mad. I have a security fence security lights and watchdogs. Only one person has knocked on my door—Ross Robertson. I have told him I am voting for him but every 3 years he gets past my security fence past my Dobermanns and knocks on my door.”From my door-knocking I have found it is not just this House that is often out of touch but also the commentators. I have found my constituents are less concerned about the controversies that captivate this House and are more concerned about the common good.Some of you as is the nature of politics will have polls that say you are facing defeat this election. I have been there twice in 1990 and in 1996. The year 1990 was not a good year for Labour and I was 8 percent behind with 3 weeks to go. My opponent the late Allan Brewster was the popular local mayor. He was also the chair of the Auckland Regional Authority airport committee which was advocating a second runway for Auckland Airport. A week before the election my team put a postcard in every letterbox in Papatoetoe. The postcard showed a map of the electorate with the proposed flight path going straight over. The postcard just asked: “Do you want to share breakfast with a 747?”. Apparently the thought did not appeal. Twenty-four years later they are still talking about a second runway and I am still here. All politics is local.I won because I have a wonderful team. I still have in my team people like Ruth Gordon Gail and Kay Absolum Alistaire Hall Phil Greenbank and Grace Robertson who helped me in my first campaign 27 years ago. They say that you cannot leave the Manukau Labour Party. If you die we expect your children to take your place. I thank the Gush family Mulitalo family Johansson family Lavakula family Wiki family Tillotson family Yvonne Matson Efu Koka Michael Clatworthy and of course my children.The House will understand when I give tribute to the Speakership. This Parliament has indeed been fortunate in the quality and dedication of members of Parliament who have served this House as our Speakers. It was a great honour for me as a State house working-class boy from Ngāti Toa - Tītahi Bay and Mangere East to become Assistant Speaker. I am the only MP to have served as Assistant Speaker in four Parliaments and under two Governments—an achievement that gives me great pleasure. Under MMP the Speakership has become a cross-party organisation. I meet regularly with the Speaker and what party we come from is irrelevant. I can say that because I have been an Assistant Speaker under four Speakers—two who were Labour and two who were National. I would like to see the day come when the Speaker is nominated by the backbench as happens in the United Kingdom. In the British House of Commons the Speaker sometimes just calls on an MP to take the Chair. If every MP had to take the Chair even for a day not only would behaviour be better but also debate would be better.MPs complain that debates in this Chamber are not reported as well as they once were. While in the Chair I have been privileged to hear some great speeches but I have also listened to a lot of rubbish. I can tell when an MP has researched the contribution and has something to say and so can the public. We owe it to the electorate to lift our game. If MPs do not take every contribution to parliamentary debates seriously why are they here?Too many MPs think they are here just to be a Minister and of course that is important. But there are avenues for MPs who are passionate about issues. I have been able to raise issues such as prostate cancer in 1993 because I am an MP. I worked with the late Eion Scarrow the gardening guru in setting up the Prostate Awareness and Support Society to highlight this silent killer of men and became its first patron. So guys get a check-up. And then there was the stand against sexual harassment in the Royal New Zealand Navy which was to make history and guarantee more safety for female sailors.But it is we the backbench who must uphold parliamentary democracy. We are one of the least corrupt parliaments but we could do better. In the last 10 years two former MPs have gone to jail for things they did while they were MPs. One MP suddenly resigned when questions were asked about the use of the travel privilege and the Auditor-General has made adverse reports about the use many MPs make of their allowances. Of course we need a code of ethics. The British Canadian and all the Australian parliaments have a code of ethics. This Parliament has legislated that all New Zealand local body politicians have a code of conduct. How arrogant of us to claim that we alone do not need a code of ethics. Will a code stop all scandals? No of course not. A law against theft has not stopped burglary but no one is suggesting we drop theft from the Crimes Act. Both of the MPs who went to jail told the court they had done nothing wrong. If Parliament had had a code they could not have made that outrageous claim. I urge backbench members of Parliament to continue my campaign for an aspirational code of ethics for leadership at this level is by example.Worldwide there is agreement that the best protection against the misuse of privileges is transparency. We need more transparency in this institution. We need to apply the Official Information Act to Parliament. If we backbenchers wish to hold the Government and others to account then we must be willing to be accountable. I have seen many things in the last 27 years that would not have happened if we had had the Official Information Act applying to Parliament. Rather than making it a secret we should be willing to defend expenditure like MPs’ travel.When I was first elected from the freezing works of South Auckland I did not even have a passport. I never put my hand up for any overseas travel. One day Richard Prebble then a good Labour Cabinet Minister rang me up and said: “I have a transport calibration flight going to the Pacific Islands. They have a space for an MP. You’re going.” I did not want to tell the Preb that I did not have a passport so I said: “I have a marginal seat. I’m too busy.” “Nonsense!” said the Preb. “How can you represent Pacific Islanders when you’ve never visited the Islands? You’re going.” so I went. It did make me a better MP.In 1993 the honourable member Kennedy Graham who was then the secretary-general of the Parliamentarians for Global Action was coming to New Zealand and I was invited to meet him. Next thing I found myself in the Hague with a group of backbench MPs who believed that world peace was too important to be left to Governments. They walked their talk by visiting the world’s trouble spots to promote the democratic peaceful resolution of disputes.In 2007 I was honoured to be asked to lead an international delegation of MPs to one of the most dangerous places on earth: the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Looking back I realise that maybe I was asked because there were not a lot of volunteers. We went to help tackle an issue that no army can help solve: HIV/AIDS. The MPs from the region said that they feared more of their constituents were going to die of AIDS than from the effects of the war and in such a conservative country they could not even raise the issue. They hoped an international delegation of MPs could talk about AIDS. Our convoy was stopped by the Taliban but we got through and met with tribal elders. The hardest challenge was explaining how the disease is spread but once over that hurdle we got the elders’ consent for an HIV/AIDS awareness programme. I discovered that I was well-qualified for the mission. I had held similar discussions with the very conservative pastors in Auckland’s south to get their support for an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign.Three years ago Parliamentarians for Global Action comprised of MPs from 139 Parliaments elected a backbench MP from Manukau East to be their world president. As president of Parliamentarians for Global Action I have advanced the ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and have led a campaign to get Governments to ratify the Arms Trade Treaty to regulate international arms sales. Since World War II over 40 million people have died in wars but it is difficult to fight a war without weapons. More than 2100 MPs from 114 countries including 89 from New Zealand have signed a declaration in favour of the treaty. I believe that the treaty will become international law and will save many lives. To date 118 countries have signed it and 41 have ratified it—we will this year.My involvement with Parliamentarians for Global Action has been challenging and rewarding and I have appreciated the opportunity to work with and support parliamentarians from around the world as they have faced rebellions and massacres in countries such as the Central African Republic and have endured human rights abuses in the name of freedom in Malawi Bahrain Chad and Colombia. These things have reminded me every day of how lucky we are to live in our own country.I acknowledge that I owe my career to my constituents in Manukau. I have loved every minute of it. For me work is love made visible. I have given it my best. In my retirement I am going to do some work for my church I have been elected to my local board and I will continue to work for the place that I love South Auckland.Let me thank again my wife Grace and family—Cherie who is watching at home in Papatoetoe with my granddaughter and grandson Paree and Reno; my son Daine who is watching in Singapore with my daughter-in-law Lyanna; my son Lee who is watching in Ellerslie with my daughter-in-law Sarah and granddaughter Piper; my daughter Lisa and her partner Mike Cross who are here in the gallery today—I am so lucky to have you. My sisters Yvette and Vivienne are also here today.I thank my out-of-Parliament electorate assistants over the years the late Murray Haliday the late Mark Nee Bill Marshall Rae Waterhouse and Michael Clatworthy for a job well done. My parliamentary executive assistants—and in particular my first executive assistant Kath Barrett and my longest-serving executive assistant Marilyn Smith who for 17 years has worked tirelessly on my behalf—awesome. I thank Speaker’s assistant Roland Todd and those on the Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board who have been most supportive especially Efeso Collins Lotu Fuli and Mary Gush. And I know that all MPs will join me in thanking the marvellous people who work in Parliament and look after us so well. I will always appreciate the opportunity and privilege I have been given to serve as a South Auckland MP in this Parliament. It is now time to hand the reins over and wish the Labour candidate Jenny Salesa who is sitting in the gallery every success. I am sure she will do well.Honourable members tātou tātou—together together. Courtesy is contagious and we will all prosper if we keep within the spirit of the Standing Orders. The House is a symbol of integrity the integrity of all honourable members should be upheld and every voice should be heard in accord with our Standing Orders. Mr Speaker nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa ka huri.Waiata