English BillVALEDICTORY STATEMENTSRt Hon BILL ENGLISH (National): The Parliamentary Library tells me I've spoken 1000 times in the House and answered or asked 2000 questions and answers. I suspect I've made probably about 10000 interjections 23 of which were witty. Enough of the numbers. The strongest feeling I have today in this last speech is gratitude. That is gratitude for the opportunities that I've had and for the many people I've served with but most importantly for the many moments of connection and witness to the lives of others which I believe is the deepest privilege of public life—to see the joy of their achievement to see the courage in their suffering and to be grateful for the strength and the wisdom given to me by so many. I can say today that it almost didn't happen. When I was the National Party candidate in 1990 for the Wallace electorate and not really that well-organised I had a brilliant plan to lodge my nomination form at the electoral office at 4 o'clock one hour—a whole hour—before the deadline at 5 o'clock in Gore. About 11 o'clock in the morning I visited the Christie household—Richard and Julie—to get them to sign my nomination form and on the way out one of them casually mentioned that they'd heard on the radio the deadline was midday. I whipped round to the electoral office. A very stern lady said to me Yes it's midday and there are no exceptions." and I found myself stranded in Gore with enough signatures but not the deposit. I had no cheque book and no card. I stood paralysed in the middle of the street and then had a brainwave and ran into my bank the trustee savings bank. I walked up to the cashier and I said "Give me $200 cash—now." She started asking a few awkward questions that I couldn't really deal with like "Do you have a cheque or a withdrawal form?" I said "No." and she went off and got the manager. As it turned out the manager was a member of the National Party—as many of them were—and he said "Look just give him the bloody money. We'll sort it out later." and I got round to the electoral office literally at 11.55 a.m. If the manager had followed the rules if any number of other things were to have happened the new MP for the Wallace electorate would have been Dougal Soper Labour because I wouldn't have appeared on the ballot and I would have spent the rest of my life driving trucks in the outback of Australia. I know I'm meant to be here because a year or two after that—my large rural electorate used to have a lot of single-track gravel roads. One day I was on the back road from Dipton to Mossburn doing 120 kilometres an hour because I was late as always. I came over the brow of a hill and right in front of me was a farm truck. I want to thank Mike Heenan our near neighbour because we both pulled the steering wheel the right way and I ended up with a car that was a write-off but still alive. I could take you through all of my accidents because there were a number of others. All I can say is that some of the political accidents I ran into were also from going too fast that's for sure. When I first came here Sir Robin Gray who was the member for Clutha at that stage said to me "Never forget where you come from." Well you could never forget where Sir Robin came from because he had a very thick Scottish accent—that was where he was from. Of course where we come from is principally our families. My background which I brought to politics was rural and Catholic and in some respects was an interesting mix that gave me as much familiarity with binder twine as with the beatitudes and a love of shearing as well as a love of Latin. And then I married into the Scanlon family. Well we had some things in common—faith and family—but they have a completely different tradition of New Zealand. Migrants from Samoa and Italy—theirs was a totally different world in which they lived which we just called "town" which was a generic word for anything bigger than Dipton. But there's not much that happened in these two families that didn't happen to every New Zealander because Mervyn and Norah English who have passed away and George and Jean Scanlon who are here today between them raised 25 children. Can I say I am pleased you did not all accept the invitation. My children have 66 cousins so far. I remember the discussion with the officials when we were arranging the swearing-in when I became Prime Minister. They said "Well you can have the large one with the officials and the important people and we'll put out a whole lot of chairs and fill the room or you can have the small family one." I said "Well I think we'll have the large family one thank you." and 80 of them showed up on the day. But what I learnt from these families is the grit and the effort that it takes to start in a new country and the pride of hard-earned achievement. I want to thank them all for their constant support when I know there must have been times when they saw me on TV and weren't quite so happy with what was said. But I do like to think that when I was at my best I represented the best of them. Of course every family has its secrets. I was always pretty interested in politics. I can recall in 1987 in the Wairarapa seat Reg Boorman held it by one vote on a recount. I found out that just on 7 o'clock one of my sisters who lived in the electorate went in and voted Labour for the first time in her life. For those of you who knew my mother you would know that to tell her would have been to destroy her. So we never did tell her and now I've got it off my chest. So that was my background with the families but also from Dipton or to be more correct—for those who might be tuned in from Dipton—Dipton West. You won't all be—Hon Members: Ha ha! Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well there is a sign that says Dipton West. When I was being brought up the town people lived in Dipton and the real country people were Dipton West. That's how it was. In my world Sir Brian Talboys loomed large as the member for Wallace—followed by Derek Angus—and at quite a young age I decided that I wanted his job. Unfortunately I never grew up to be 6 foot 4 and as eloquent and as charming as Sir Brian but I certainly enjoyed his company because he lived in Winton the rest of his life after he retired from politics. But I have to say I never tired of representing the electorate. I never tired of its shifting beauty of the landscape. I must have flown from Wellington to Invercargill and back a thousand times literally as I counted up a marvellous display of the vibrancy of our landscape. You looked out the window and it was never the same through those thousand trips and I always admired the laconic determination of the people who make that place such a productive part of New Zealand. So some of my views about politics were formed by events prior to coming to politics. I was farming and I remember going to a large protest meeting in Lumsden that was addressed by now Sir Roger Douglas. I was hoping a couple of years later when I found myself by myself in his office on a Sunday morning eating Kentucky Fried Chicken and giving him advice as a Treasury official on the flat-tax package that he wouldn't recognise me—and I don't think that he did. But the lesson from that time which was a time of severe impact on my community was that New Zealand should never get into that situation where the only choice—and it was the only choice—was massive disruptive and damaging restructuring. And I'm pleased that years later when I had the opportunity as a policy maker we acted in a way that meant we could avoid that kind of disruption. The other lesson was that to achieve that you let people see what actually happens. If you're a small open economy they need to be able to see the prices. I was farming. We were getting wool and meat subsidies supplementary minimum prices which enabled us to pay the then 20 percent interest rates. It was all quite misleading. It's better to back people so that they can make the changes that they need to make. If I can point to a contrast in my time when the first freezing works closed in Southland at Ocean Beach it was a massively difficult and disruptive event. A couple of thousand people were out of work. The last one that closed in Mataura—I can remember working with Tracy Hicks the Mayor of Gore to get ourselves set up to deal with the fallout and there was none. People went and found jobs. This was in the 2000s. Our community had become resilient and capable and able to deal with the pressures and changes and I'm proud of them for that. Of course I had in that community my own National Party volunteers and I want to thank my four electorate chairs who are here today: Graham Drummond Ailsa Smaill Kate Hazlett and Nigel Moore. We all know as MPs that our volunteers are the beating heart of political activism. In the National Party the electorate chairs do the meetings—and the miles in a large rural electorate—and I want to register my appreciation for them. I also want to thank the National Party and its recent presidents Judy Kirk and Peter Goodfellow and Greg Hamilton who along with Steven Joyce rebuilt what was a shattered organisation in the early 2000s into the successful well-organised and functioning political body that it is now. I thank also the thousands of volunteers particularly those who showed up at the 2017 election. It was a pleasure to show up in that campaign and find that after three terms in Government when a party has usually run its course and lost its energy that had not happened. That's what leaves us with an Opposition of strength and spirit. Can I in that context congratulate my successor Simon Bridges. Simon you have my full support. You have the qualities to be a very effective political leader and I know that the discussions we had in our caucus in the lead-up to this changeover have meant that you have the best-possible start. One of the funny things about politics is that you get to know people without necessarily being their friends. I can still remember at our first caucus meeting in 1990 when we handed out the silver plates a couple of senior members of my party leaving the caucus room and greeting each other outside the caucus room—and I just happened to see this in a moment—in a way that indicated to me that despite their long years of service together they didn't really know each other that well in a personal sense. I've been fortunate to have had some real friends who've come through with me—that is Nick Smith Roger Sowry and Tony Ryall. We all started together as part of an intake of 37—a colourful bunch I have to say. We were kind of the secondary school students I suppose or certainly regarded that way. The four of us have had opposing views on everything from conscience issues to leadership coups. The real test though has been 27 years of family holidays together where we've managed to create a tradition for ourselves and our families that keeps us bound whatever our political views. I can recall Nick in our 1990 caucus which still included Rob Muldoon giving a speech as part of his campaign against the—well to shrink MPs' superannuation. He's not so sure about it now but when he was 18 it all looked pretty straightforward—sorry 25. When he sat down Rob Muldoon stood up and said "Well some doctors make you well and some doctors make you sick." He didn't just pick on Nick though. One day I got in the lift and he knew my mother reasonably well—who was one of the few people that he was a bit scared of I think. And he said to me—in his accent—"How's your mother?" and I said "She's fine Sir Robert." shaking in my shoes. And he replied "Pity you weren't." So that was it. And I can remember Roger standing in the House arguing against the bill that was going to allow for the invalid's benefit to continue to be paid to paralympians. Don McKinnon as Leader of the House did a deal in the middle of the speech where we switched sides and we were now going to support the bill and without blinking Roger changed his speech halfway through in support of the bill. Now those of you who know Roger know he's not usually that flexible and reasonable. One of the most enjoyable nights I ever had in this House was with Tony Ryall who in the boredom of a long session of urgency came in the door mimicking a certain MP and we had to guess who it was which we did correctly. So he went back round and kept coming in and did a fantastic job—including Mr Speaker that kind of threatening bikie gang - type thing that you used to do back in the early 1990s. You're such a grandfatherly sort these days. Through the 1990s actually most of my focus was on health where I'd become a parliamentary under-secretary in 1993 which I regarded as very important and I was actually involved through to being the Minister in 1999—so six years. It was a tumultuous period as we moved to MMP and I want to recognise the leadership of Jim Bolger through that time. It was about as tough a political environment as you could possibly have. He woke up one morning to find that a number of his MPs including a Cabinet Minister had gone off to found another party—rather surprising and a bit of an indictment on the whips I suppose. He was then followed by Jenny Shipley. The strong impression I have from that time in my role was that that was when we were having the deinstitutionalisation—that ugly word—of our mental health and intellectually handicapped children services. Gore Hospital still had a psychopaedic ward when I became the MP in 1990 and I found myself both as an MP—as all MPs did—but particularly as a Minister working with the abused and the traumatised the victims and the perpetrators. This included the families involved in a mass shooting at Raurimu where a young man who was being treated as part of our mental health services shot six people up in Raurimu and I had to visit his mother and him. What I learnt from that is the Government can do harm particularly to the most vulnerable if it's not incredibly sensitive to their needs. I was proud of the new forms of health provision that were fostered then. Māori and Pacific providers took off. Some of them are here today actually—people I worked with then including Tariana Turia before she got into politics—and now they have become many of them the basis of Whānau Ora. It gives one a great deal of satisfaction to think that something that happened 20 years previously turns out to be useful as a basis for further progress later. Hospitals were a big issue—small rural hospitals which in the early 1990s still had surgeons in them. Some of you may remember the Hands Around Our Hospitals protests in Balclutha—a town of 5000 to 7000 people marched against the closure of the hospital. I recall being under a bit of pressure in a Grey Power meeting in Gore and I lost my cool and said "We should bulldoze the bloody thing and build a new one." and actually that's what we did. I'm proud to say that in the South all of the small health services outside of Dunedin and Invercargill hospitals are in community ownership and I have to say they've never been better run more stable and more secure for their communities. The idea that Government has to run everything to make it work is simply wrong and in small communities it is almost certainly not the answer to have third-level managers running your services for you. If I had one shortfall on that it's that I didn't manage to get the Queenstown hospital into that structure because it would be a much better facility than it is today if it wasn't in public ownership. All of this now of course seems a long time ago—particularly to my children who are sitting in the gallery. I realised a couple of years ago that they don't know everything that happened. One day when I was at home I came down the stairs and into the kitchen and my kickboxing-trained son said to me "Surely not." I said "What do you mean?" "Surely you are not the skinny old white guy in that boxing fight on TV." He had coincidently happened to turn on Sky TV and there was a rerun of the 2002 Fight for Life. For politicians who think no arguments have been had before that was about raising money for youth suicide which had affected my family very directly. That was a fantastic experience. My coach was Chris Kenny and when I went out to his gym in Tītahi Bay he was keen to get in the ring—and he wasn't a young man; he was an older guy—and spar. I said to him one day "Chris why are you so keen to get in the ring?" and he said "Mate it's cos you're a Tory and I want to hit you."—which made you look a bit gentle Mr Speaker. He did say to me "I don't think I've ever met a National-voting person in my life." and I was it. I did go out there one day and he had two of these young guys there for sparring. One of them hopped in the ring and he was a very organised and clearly expert fighter and gave me the odd pop here and there—pretty restrained. Then he hopped out and the next one hopped in and took to me in a pretty devastating manner actually. I said to him at the end of a shortened round "Mate what's going on?" He said "Well that's my brother and he's in the Commonwealth Games team. I didn't get in and I'm a bit hacked off about it." So there were a couple of lessons out of that and I went home with a headache and a blood nose on my shirt that night. One lesson was politicians get blamed for everything—that's for sure. The second one though was it turned out—and I mean this in a reasonably serious way actually—to be a great practice run for the 2002 election and the period beyond for me because the composure that I learnt under the tutelage of this hard-core Labour supporter about how to stay composed while you're taking the punches made all the difference to the capacity to lead my party through a very difficult period. And that's just one of many examples of the way in which I think those of us in public life can be inspired unexpectedly. I have to say though I was grateful for the opportunity to get back up again in 2006 and join a fantastic team. Under John Key along with my colleagues Steven Joyce Gerry Brownlee—Murray McCully was there—Paula Bennett and others it was a pleasure to go to work every day and I must compliment John in his absence. As I've said before he was almost as good as he said he was some days. But he did have a relentless optimism which was not just in front of the TV camera; it was in dealing with every person every day on every detail about every issue and I think it had in my view an effect for New Zealand in raising its confidence about its ability to handle the world as it was. And of course the world as it was was pretty messy. Can I also acknowledge the efforts of Gerry Brownlee through the Christchurch rebuild. As a finance Minister the danger of course is an open cheque—who knew what would happen? There was never a moment when I didn't know that Gerry was getting a balance of what needed to happen with what it cost but more importantly—and I think this is a testament to his character—he never once mentioned his personal circumstances which I discovered years later were very difficult. A remarkable tribute to a sense of selflessness that was required to do what he did. I used to worry a bit when he argued with the engineers I must say. They would say this—and here was the engineering report about the liquefaction—and Gerry would go "No that's a load of rubbish. Don't believe that." An excellent education at St Bede's—I'm sure that's what did it. But that was in the financial crisis and my job was to understand what was going on to understand what the decision makers were doing—and of course it was a global crisis so that meant global decision makers—and to help explain to New Zealanders how we were going to find our way through what looked to be very difficult circumstances. Now of course the main decision makers turned out to be Reserve Bank Governors. Now if there's people put on earth to make finance Ministers look interesting and charismatic it's Reserve Bank Governors. I think Graeme Wheeler may be here today—he knows what I mean. Now that made monetary policy interesting. I won't bore you with monetary policy but there were a few interesting—Hon Member: Oh go on! Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well there's a few interesting details. The staff who get you a cup of tea and look after you in the Bank of England are middle-aged men who wear pink jackets. It's quite striking. The other thing that's striking is that the chief adviser on monetary policy to Ben Bernanke who basically made the decisions that mattered was Bill English who was 7 foot tall—not me. I did get a text from an American friend of mine very excited to find out on the front page of the New York Times that the Federal Reserve Governor was listening to my advice. Well I met all these people and occasionally I gave them advice but one of the most touching moments was with Mario Draghi the Governor of the European Central Bank in incredibly difficult political circumstances. We were scheduled for a 20-minute meeting that ran on to about an hour. One of his staff came in to stop it and he felt like he had to explain so he said "This is the only person who's come in here in the last six months who hasn't tried to tell me what to do." And I think that's part of the New Zealand way of exerting influence: to listen to engage—because in fact we don't matter most of the time—but in fact people occasionally listen to us when we say something. My job was to also raise debt. We were running up debt in New Zealand to pay to keep our benefit levels up to keep our services running and to rebuild Christchurch and so I had to go out and tell our story. There was one moment though where I got a bit frustrated. After about three nights on planes while talking to some 28-year-old in Boston I think it was who indicated he wasn't particularly interested really I said to him "Do you know where New Zealand is?" and he said "Yeah. On our list it's between Netherlands and Namibia."—which is not actually correct. It's between Netherlands and Nicaragua. But you don't have to go that far to have a problem. I went to Australia as part of this and I remember having a quite intense discussion with a group of people all about the New Zealand economy. They were reasonably interested and quite engaged and on the way out one of them patted me on the back and said "Mate it's great to know things are going OK in Tasmania."—a reminder of how small New Zealand is and how important it is that we have a positive story to tell to the world because it is a financial reality that we borrow money from them and we need that to keep ourselves going. In all these endeavours I've been supported by excellent staff who were capable and good-humoured and any politician who's worth their salt knows how important staff are. I've worked with dozens of people but there were some who were core particularly through that period—Eileen O'Leary Craig Howie Paul Dyer Grant Fleming Matt Burgess Cam Burrows and Grant Johnston—and before that in Opposition in the tough times Tim Grafton Sue Foley Bevan Graham and Jason Eade. I've always enjoyed working with the staff. I always think that the best way to get the best product the best decisions in politics is to be open to anyone telling you what they think because everyone's got something that you should listen to. I've also worked with many excellent public servants. Sometimes they're really useful. When I was Minister of Health my office got a panicked call from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade who told my receptionist "The Minister's kids are out on the roof of his house." They were just over the fence from Bolton Street where we were living and my kids had indeed gone up opened a window climbed out on to the roof and were sitting there sunning themselves—while the public servants had their hearts in their mouths—and they all got back in safely. But they did a lot of other useful things as well. Hon Paula Bennett: The kids? Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Oh no not my kids. Actually I've been looking at the Wellington rents lately and all I want to say is it's not always going to be free! One of the mild frustrations of being a finance Minister is that you get involved in a whole lot of things that people don't understand about because it's not of media interest or you've got the wrong label and particularly that was the case for me. One of the areas where I spent an enormous amount of time—from which I've gained great satisfaction—is work with Māori and with the iwi leaders group. It was intense and we developed in what I think typifies New Zealand's flexible constitutional development a practical and pragmatic solution to the idea of Treaty partnership without the courts and without too many academics. Actually none have shown any interest whatsoever in this. Even though they write books about it they don't know what's actually happened. But 8.5 the Cabinet committee room which the new Government will now be familiar with—the only other people who came in there apart from us and the officials were the iwi leaders group. It was the most efficient focused and accountable process I've been part of in Government in the whole 27 years and it gives me great optimism actually for New Zealand. I thank Amohaere Houkamau for her commitment and integrity over 9 years supporting this process and liaising with the Māori Party.In fact when you look at events around the world I'm increasingly of the view that New Zealand's ability to deal with cultural difference is going to become a strategic advantage not just to us but relative to the rest of the world. We see deep sophisticated cultures such as Europe struggling with issues that we have grappled with intensively for 30 years. I want to acknowledge the work of Sir Doug Graham and Chris Finlayson and Jim Bolger—in particular those three—around the settlements and Chris's extraordinary effort in recent years. You know I've been going to Waitangi for 27 years. I've seen the Governor-General spat on and the flag tramped on felt the palpable threat of violence and seen the head-butting—some of it pre-emptive and very impressive I must say and I'm pleased I never had to learn how to do it quite like that. The reason it's manageable now is because much of the tension has been dealt with—not buried but dealt with—and I want to pay tribute to the iwi leaders. In another lesson—another inspiration—we were about to sign an agreement and one of the kaumātua said he'd spent the night walking the street. I asked why and he said it was because of the burden of responsibility of giving up the grievance and being accountable to future generations for that. And you realise the courage of these people who in a multigenerational context made a decision that is good for them but even better for New Zealand. I want to acknowledge that generation who made the settlements but also the generation that's come after them who are such impressive bicultural bilingual organised focused people but most particularly with a strong sense of purpose. In that context can I also acknowledge the Māori Party. We worked on some pretty tough issues for a long time. I think it was a political mistake on behalf of Māoridom to vote them out. They'll learn they'll re-learn and they'll change again and I'm pretty sure of that. They don't want to go back to the way it used to be—but Tariana Turia Pita Sharples and my friend Te Ururoa Flavell who's here today. For those of you who may not have noticed the other focus I developed as a finance Minister and would have put a lot of time into as a Prime Minister is social investment. Why does it matter? Well I referred earlier to the harm I'd seen done in the 1990s by Government institutions to so many people and we're now—20 years on going on 30 years on—going to have a royal commission into all of that which will tell us what we already know. But the conclusion will be this: Government looks after the weakest worst. It does the worst job for the weakest and I've never understood the argument that the structure of delivering a service matters more than the people to whom you deliver it. You know at the core of my belief—and it comes from Catholic theology and to some extent National Party principles—is the utter integrity of the individual person their importance and our obligation to them to ensure that they can realise their aspirations and their full humanity and much of what Government does does not do that. That's a shame because I've never met a person in 27 years who had no hope—never not one—including the worst of our offenders and I've met them. There's always some hope. In fact often that's all they have. So that's why I in my small opportunity to do so injected into the Public Service at least the word "customer"—mainly because they hate it. They don't like that word. Who thinks they're a customer of government? Well in the real world they have choices they have preferences so why can't someone with multiple disabilities have choices and have preferences? Why do they have to put up with what we give them or what some professional group says is the way the service should be and why say that you can't do something different because it might undermine the integrity of the service? Well what about the integrity of the person? What about them? Actually that's who we are here for and my sense of that over 27 years of public service is stronger actually than it's ever been. I used to tell this story which I'll tell again. It's from the Auckland City Mission which tracked a hundred families. They interviewed them every couple of weeks for a year and they created this case study. It was a solo mum with a child with disabilities and after everything she did in two weeks she said at the end of it "Absolutely stuffed. I've visited 23 agencies. There was one that treated me with respect knew my story helped me gave me a cup of coffee. It was Instant Finance." We're getting outdone on compassion by the people who charge 37 percent a month. You know that's telling and if there's anything I want to leave as a lesson here it is the dangerous complacency of good intentions. There's too much of it in New Zealand—that somehow if you say you mean well that's going to make a difference. Well actually it can cause damage because you're not actually talking about what actually happened. The services we provide are not about us; they're about those people. The only measure of it is whether it changes their lives—whether we reduce the misery—but we have a system built still too much on servicing that misery. So social investment will roll on because ideas are powerful. Knowledge is powerful—more powerful than Governments. Now people know it can be different—enough of them—and I want to compliment particularly those brave public servants. We had a fantastic time doing some of the hardest stuff because it's hard to do and I must say if it was as easy as just giving money—I used to think of this as a Minister of Finance. If I believed every claim made to me and my predecessors about the benefit of the next $100 million there'd be no problems in New Zealand—none. They would have all been gone 20 years ago. The fact is most of those claims are wrong because the people claiming it'll make a difference have no idea and they never go back and see whether it made that kind of difference. So I think as you can see I've never quite lost my energy for that one. Really the only regret I suppose I have after 27 years is that we were ready to do some good stuff if we'd been re-elected but that's politics. You get great opportunities without having to earn them and they can be taken away just as easily. I could go on. The temptation of a valedictory is to give the policy speech that you thought you could have all given summarising everything that you wanted to say but I'm not going to do that. I just want to finish with a few remarks particularly acknowledging my family who are here today. Mary my love I can't put into words what I owe you for your strength and support and keeping me anchored in our family. To you and to Luke Thomas Maria Rory Bart and Xavier this was our adventure—[Drinks water] excuse me; they told me not to do that—particularly 2017 and the campaign where I discovered that our rule of having no politics at home hadn't worked. That was our rule. We shifted the family to Wellington and made a couple of rules: no politics on Sunday go home for tea every night—so I have not eaten in Bellamy's for 20 years—and we don't talk about politics when I get home because there's plenty of other stuff to talk about. I discovered that actually they'd been reading the paper surfing the internet and had developed political views of their own some of which are wrong. But it's our togetherness that matters and the great gift of me leaving politics will be that we can re-craft that sense of togetherness. I want to just finish with a quote from James K Baxter that I've always liked. It's from his poem called "New Zealand" where the first line is These unshaped islands on the sawyer's benchWait for the chisel of the mindOn March 13 when I officially resign—it feels like you leave the building about six times when you're going; six last times—it will be 10000 days since I was elected and I want to acknowledge my brother Conor who pointed that out to me. Ten thousand days since I was elected and I'm satisfied that every day I took my turn at the chisel. Waiata[Applause]The House adjourned at 4.47 p.m."