Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I am proud to be an ACT MP and to represent all New Zealanders in this 53rd Parliament. Thank you to my family and friends for their enduring love and support as I embark on this journey and thank you to the ACT Party volunteers for their hard work on the 2020 election campaign. I acknowledge the hard work by ACT deputy leader Brooke van Velden and leader David Seymour. Their End of Life Choice Act passed by the previous Parliament shows how good ideas can prevail for the benefit of all New Zealanders. They showed a constructive and principled approach and that kindness and compassion are not the preserve of one political party or another.I promise you citizens of New Zealand this is just the beginning of a real change led by the ACT Party. My family has been in New Zealand for over 200 years. They were missionaries pioneers merchants farmers accountants and engineers. One of my grandfathers built a ski club on Ruapehu which is still there today and has been enjoyed by families for more than 60 years. My other grandfather was a former fighter pilot who with his mates after the war bought a kitset glider from Britain. They each built a section in their garages apart from my grandfather who glued up his piece on the living room floor. They both built sailboats in their Auckland backyard. That's pretty normal stuff in my family: innovators free-thinkers people who know what it takes to get things done and people who are not afraid to take a calculated risk.Now I choose to live and raise a family in West Auckland: a place which represents some of the best things about New Zealand. It is nature: wild beaches forested hills down to sea level. It is the pioneer spirit: brave Polynesian and European settlers who crossed thousands of miles of open ocean seeking a better life and more recent migrants who enrich our community not only with their skills but their cultures all of them taking a risk for a better future. It is self-reliance: the idea you can get ahead in life by your own effort get a trade get a degree start a small business and own your own home.I have worked as a civil and environmental engineer for almost 25 years—for contractors for consultants and in local government. I have worked on road and highway projects in Auckland and Wellington and in Fiji I worked in some really difficult and remote conditions building infrastructure there for the benefit of those communities. In local government I managed investigation design and remediation of closed landfills Auckland's most dangerous landfills and some of the worst landfills in New Zealand. I worked to clean up toxic timber chemicals and the dioxins found in Agent Orange—that toxic defoliant sprayed all over Vietnam half of which was manufactured in New Zealand. Now those companies took a risk-based approach to the clean-up to demonstrate to those communities that contaminated sites would be safe after the clean-up. They cleaned up using technology not even considered by Government at that time. Those companies cleaned up because it was the right thing to do.And that leads me to why I'm here. It's not just because politics needs more engineers; it's because I'm also a radical environmentalist. Don't worry I'm not about to chain myself to an oil rig climb a chimney stack wearing blue body paint or glue myself to the road because those behaviours are no longer radical; those behaviours are now mainstream. I'm a radical environmentalist because I'm a rational environmentalist. What is radical now is to propose real solutions to environmental problems; not all about taxes regulations and banning things. So I'm a radical environmentalist because I believe in natural rights to life liberty and property and I believe that before a Government grants itself more rights their duty is to uphold our natural rights. Ultimately as citizens we know that our rights go hand in hand with our responsibilities. That shouldn't be radical but it is.I'm a radical because I believe that farmers businesses and communities should lead conservation efforts but in a partnership with Government not under threat of prosecution and persecution from bureaucrats who fail to understand their way of life. I'm a radical because I believe that business and communities are best placed to solve our worst environmental and infrastructure problems but through innovation and in a partnership with Government not by heavy-handed counter-productive regulations. Businesses and landowners have skin in the game. They will invest in doing the right thing because that's what their customers want. And anyone who's ever run a small business knows that the customers are always right.My experience working as a civil and environmental engineer for more than 25 years has shown me that responsible business led by smart people should be allowed to innovate and show Government what the solutions are to these problems. As an engineer I've worked for businesses that actually adopted much tougher international standards because that was the best way to manage their risks. So when friends and colleagues ask me Simon why ACT?" I tell them "ACT is the party of real reform—the party that takes on the most difficult problems." It's because ACT is the party that puts its trust not in Government but in the citizen the business owner and the taxpayer. So you may ask "How did an engineer like me come to be a radical environmentalist?" because engineers are generally regarded as steady-as-she-goes types right? Well before I was an engineer I studied a degree—or started one—in history and politics. It was Russian Revolution Stalin and Trotsky and the Cold War. I went on the odd protest march at uni; it was a lot more fun than lectures after all. And in the innocence of youth I had my share of indiscretions—I even voted Green a couple of times! David Seymour says he won't hold it against me. The ACT Party believes in redemption for even the most egregious of sins. But to return to my student days for a moment while I was sitting in dusty lecture theatres and playing protester half a world away students my age rose up and tore down the Berlin Wall with sledgehammers and their bare hands. Those people were prepared to die for their freedom so to me this was no longer a laughing matter; it actually seemed pretty inspiring. So after a while I quit my arts degree and went to see for myself. West Berlin was glitzy and modern charming and traditional at the same time. At the famous Checkpoint Charlie where captured spies were traded between East and West I marvelled at all the way our fellow humans had tried and often died to escape their workers' paradise. Using high-tension power lines for a flying fox escape is still the highlight for me and it confirms pretty much everything you see in a James Bond movie is real. But as you can see parts of the Berlin Wall preserved you cannot miss the warning from history—the warning to those who take their freedom for granted. Let us not forget: socialism wasn't just tyranny it wasn't just poverty; it was an environmental disaster. And for those of you old enough to remember I'm not just talking about the Trabant motorcar. The Eastern cities were ugly crowded and dimly lit covered in soot and grime broken roads and footpaths. I remember the air was blue with exhaust smoke. And from trains passing through towns and villages I saw factories spewing industrial waste into the supposed blue Danube on its way to the more aptly named Black Sea. As I travelled closer to the border with Ukraine fellow backpackers told me to stay out it's still highly radioactive it's too dangerous to go there. I don't think it could have made a starker contrast with clean green New Zealand. It also struck me that New Zealand was a very wealthy country and that our prosperity is key to our quality of life. So back in New Zealand with a new appreciation for this incredible country we live in I switched to environmental science and then I studied engineering while I worked full time. I wanted to put everything I'd seen and learnt to good use.So when people ask me "Simon why ACT and why now?" well I tell them big government and heavy-handed regulation has failed to solve our worst environmental transport and infrastructure problems and it always will. We have a responsibility to rest lightly on the earth but government is too often the cause of not the solution to our problems. Every year there are hundreds of raw sewage overflows on to beaches from councils' networks in streams and harbours around Auckland—not big evil corporates but local government. We know that is wrong but the Resource Management Act (RMA) lets councils in places like Auckland and Wellington get away with it because they can obtain consents which are readily granted. This needs to change. The RMA makes getting a permit for waste to energy almost impossible. As a result we now bury 3½ million tonnes of waste in landfills every single year. And how does big Government big regulating Government think they're going to solve this one? With more landfill taxes—or the RMA denies New Zealand the very technology which solved the landfill crisis in under 15 years.We need a Government whose instinct is technology over taxation innovation over ideology incentives not more indignation. We in ACT have a radical vision of how to solve that particular environmental problem—and that's to repeal the Resource Management Act altogether. It is ACT standing up for real change in that area to replace bad law with good law. It's ACT that wants to actually protect the environment not just pay lip-service to it through placards and PR. It's ACT who will instigate the kind of business-led innovation we need to solve our worst environmental problems—real solutions to the challenges we face. In the aftermath of COVID-19 New Zealand has to focus on growing our productivity and growing our wealth as a priority. We need to grow our productivity and our wealth in order to pay for the pristine environment we aspire to and to deliver the vital infrastructure that is lacking. ACT will propose good urban development law to allow our cities to reach their potential and a simpler process to deliver vital infrastructure without the kind of political interference that leads to a light rail fiasco. In closing thank you to the citizens of New Zealand. You stood up and made your votes count on 17 October 2020. On that day you elected nine more ACT MPs including me to Parliament—people who do understand how to deliver real-world solutions to the most difficult problems we face. So I say to the citizens of New Zealand—all of you not just those of you who gave your votes to ACT—trust ACT. We are working hard to change your future for the better. We want a country which aspires to be wealthy and to have a clean environment; a people who are not afraid to take risks who give each other the benefit of the doubt and trust each other to do the right thing; and a society which values freedom and opportunity above all else. Thank you Mr Speaker. Thank you.[Applause]"