Moroney Sue: Address in Reply 
Moroney Sue: Address in Reply 
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SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 I second the motion that a respectful address be presented to Her Excellency’s speech. In doing so I record my respect for Her Excellency Dame Silvia Cartwright and her role in representing Queen Elizabeth II. 
My congratulations to you Madam Speaker on your re-election. From one Waikato woman to another I celebrate the dignified and fair but firm way you conduct business in this House. It is personally fulfilling for me to be able to deliver my maiden speech through you. I offer hearty congratulations to the Prime Minister the Rt Hon Helen Clark on her historic third successive term as Prime Minister—an awesome achievement for a truly awesome leader. 
I pay my respects to the member of Parliament for Ohinemuri from 1905 to 1925 Hugh Poland who is the great-grandfather of my husband Shane Vugler and therefore the great-great-grandfather of our children Quinn and Logan. In doing so I acknowledge the involvement and support of Shane Quinn and Logan in everything that I do. I am so proud to have them here with me today along with my parents other members of my family and friends. Welcome. 
I thank the people of the Cambridge branch of the New Zealand Labour Party for their hard work their encouragement and their support. After 31 years of chipping away in a part of New Zealand that has not always welcomed their views that hardy bunch of visionaries now has a member of Parliament among their ranks and I am privileged and humbled to carry that mantle. I thank the New Zealand trade union movement and my colleagues in the Waikato in particular for their mentorship and support. 
My being a list member of Parliament allows me some latitude in deciding who my predecessor is. I choose to acknowledge former Labour list member Helen Duncan in this regard. Helen worked tirelessly in this House under the most difficult of circumstances with her health to ensure that the voice of working women was heard here. In particular I acknowledge her involvement in supporting the introduction and review of the Employment Relations Act 2000. I applaud her courage in deciding that the time was right to leave this House in order to focus on spending time with family and friends and I wish her well. 
It pleases me to have contributed to this Parliament’s returning a higher proportion of women members than ever before. Women now make up 32 percent of this House. However given that women are 51 percent of this country’s population we have some way to go before this House can live up to its claim of being truly “representative”. I note that the New Zealand Labour Party is doing better than most with 38 percent of its members being women and I stress the importance of women being elected to Parliament who will stand up for the rights of women and children. The important contribution we make to this House is that we do bring a woman’s perspective and we must work to protect and enhance that. 
There are three key defining experiences in my life that form the foundation of my principles and beliefs. The first was not unusual for a New Zealand child; it was the experience of growing up in a small rural community. For me that was the Waikato community of Walton where I lived next door to two sets of cousins who along with my four siblings made up a fair chunk of the roll at Walton primary school. Like my colleague Lynne Pillay our family never had Michael Joseph Savage on our wall but we did have a very tasteful mural of a horse race over our fireplace. My mum and dad were dairy farmers and the 80 acres provided our family of seven with the means to get by. Although it was not always easy for my parents to make ends meet as children we enjoyed a carefree existence in a loving and supportive family. 
It was in this setting that I learnt the importance of working together of valuing each other’s strengths and of accommodating weaknesses for in small communities neighbours draw on each other’s resources all the time. That is how we get by. Nothing is more devastating for small communities than infighting and bickering. Energy spent on those destructive forces soon makes small communities dysfunctional. New Zealand Aotearoa is a small community. There is no doubt that we do best when we draw on each other’s strengths and value diversity. We have witnessed just how successful this approach can be when it is taken as it has been in the past 6 years. When we pull together we are unbeatable. 
That brings me to the second defining experience of my life so far. Again it is something that is not unusual for a New Zealander of my generation—the big OE. I headed off overseas by myself a little earlier than most at the tender age of 18. In my naivety I packed an overnight bag to take away with me to see the world. Inside were two sets of clothes a sleeping bag and—my most important cargo—as many cassettes full of Kiwi music as the bag could handle. What I brought back with me 2 years later was a deep love and appreciation of New Zealand and its people and a head full of what I now know to be political awakenings. 
Two things struck me in particular. Having spent much time travelling in Ireland Britain and the Middle East during the early 1980s I saw the close connection between intolerance and oppression. Coming from New Zealand it had never occurred to me that intolerance of others’ religious or cultural beliefs would be used as an excuse for so much bloodshed just so that one group could gain power over the other. It caused me to reflect on how vital it is for New Zealand to foster tolerance and understanding. We are a shining beacon of light in a world dimmed with hatred suspicion and fear. We must work hard to retain our stance on that. 
My other lasting impression from that defining experience is of the unique gift we have in our tangata whenua. The fact that Maori are our tangata whenua gives us a perspective on life that no other country has yet although my life is partly defined by that fact I had never set foot on a marae until I was in my early 20s. In fact I had been the editor of a community newspaper before I had engaged with Maori in their place in that unique and thought-provoking way. When I look back I find it disturbing that I was in the position whereby the newspaper I edited and partially wrote purported to be the voice of the community without having a good understanding of Maori within that community. 
But here is the good news. Our two sons aged 6 and 7 have already been on to a marae because their State-funded kindergarten took them there. Because of what they hear and are taught at home and at school they both have the most natural pronunciation of the beautiful Maori language. For them it is already a part of being Kiwi and they do not have to go overseas to find out about it. So that is progress and it bodes well for our future. 
If that is what I came back with what did I leave behind? Well all that great Kiwi music was left with overseas acquaintances who got a head start on the rest of the world in appreciating our unique creativity. Th’ Dudes Dragon Herbs Split Enz Sharon O’Neill and Hello Sailor were all great ambassadors. 
I speak now of my third defining experience. It was the one that drew on all my other experiences and put them into context—my involvement over the past 18 years in the trade union movement. At this point I wish to acknowledge the direct and lasting impact on my life of unionists James Ritchie the Hon Mark Gosche Carol Gosche Dr Linda Sissons Steph Breen Stephanie Doyle Linda Holt Carol Beaumont and a group of wise Waikato union women who are just too numerous to mention individually. It is the many experiences and discussions I have had with those people union delegates and union members whom I have worked with that gives me the strength of my convictions. 
It is through the trade union movement that I learnt once again the power of working together the empowerment in valuing diversity the futility of feeling threatened through ignorance and the wisdom of collective decision-making. I learnt the art of advocacy the importance of strategy and the satisfaction of standing up for what one believes in. I learnt that we win some and we lose some but that we never ever give up—we just regroup and develop a better plan. Another lesson from the farm was reinforced during my time in the trade union movement. It goes something like this: if one wants to know how best to get the job done ask the people who do the job. It sounds simple enough but time and time again I have seen bad management decisions made because the actual workers never had a say or were not listened to. 
The health system of the 1990s was a particularly bad example of that and the damaging effects remain with us today. I represented the predominantly women members of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation through the harsh industrial climate of the Employment Contracts Act. I learnt how quickly things can be torn apart and how much longer it takes to rebuild them. National awards that had been negotiated by that union over decades were decimated within just 18 months of the Employment Contracts Act being enacted because that legislation made it illegal for workers to strike for agreements that bound more than one employer. Even after Labour introduced the Employment Relations Act which promotes collective bargaining and gives back to workers the right to strike over multi-employer collective agreements it has still taken 5 years to get back a national agreement for nurses in the public sector. The disparity that took place over the 1990s for workers doing exactly the same job was so large that national consistency had to be put back together piece by painstaking piece. Most New Zealand workers are still nowhere near to getting back the types of agreements they lost under the Employment Contracts Act. It is much easier and faster to tear things apart than to rebuild them. 
Because of those three defining experiences and all of life’s other lessons in between I am extremely proud to be a member of this fifth Labour Government. Anyone can rule the roost by using the tactics of divide and rule. The plan is to attack those who are most vulnerable or a little different so that then the rest will want to be in “your gang”. We can witness that style of “leadership” in any school yard. But what takes real skill a high level of intelligence and determination and results in a better place for everyone to live in is the ability to lead by inclusion to involve everyone and to harness the benefits of diversity. Those are the leadership qualities that I most admire in Helen Clark and are the factors that have led to New Zealand’s success in recent years. 
Understanding the difference in the two leadership styles I have just outlined puts the political correctness debate into context. Some have struggled to define what political correctness is. It appears that anything not believed or accepted by the majority is politically correct and therefore must be eradicated. However I will stick with the literal meaning. Strictly speaking the term “political correctness” means the correcting of power. Power is corrected when recognition and rights are given to those who previously did not have them. This has the effect of taking power out of the hands of the few and putting it into the hands of the many. Therefore when I hear people complaining about something being politically correct I know that they are worried that it will pass some power on to another group. It is called power sharing and I am all for it. 
Following the election the media have focused on divisions within New Zealand. However what I see are significant areas of consensus that create opportunities to keep moving forward. For example during the election campaign everyone agreed that wages are too low in New Zealand. Well let us get on and get that sorted. Another area of general agreement was the need to build a sustainable future for New Zealand including how we plan for our energy needs how we invest in infrastructure and how we invest in skills development. Those issues will not wait. 
I believe that the timing is right to improve the balance between people’s lives and their paid employment. Surely the whole point of having growth in the economy is to improve our lifestyles. Why else would we strive for economic growth? Several pieces of research now point to us working some of the longest hours in the developed world. This does not make us more productive; on the contrary it adversely affects our productivity as fatigue sets in and the risk of making a mistake or having an accident increases. It also has a significant social impact as families miss out on spending valuable time together. That is why I welcome a minimum of 4 weeks’ annual leave for all workers from 2007. It is why I want to work on other initiatives that address those issues. 
As a new member of Parliament I feel I am about to have my fourth defining experience and I expect it will build on my previous three. I have nearly completed my maiden speech and I have mentioned horse racing only once. But for those who appreciate the subtleties in life please note that the light-blue silks the black sleeves and the red cap are very much in this House today. For those members who have no idea what I am talking about it does not matter because getting horses to run very fast is one thing—and is very exciting—but helping to improve people’s lives well that is something else and that is what I have come to Parliament to do. With the love and support of those who share this vision with me I will do my very best to achieve that. Tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa.