McCully MurrayHon MURRAY McCULLY (National—East Coast Bays): On the day that I stepped down as the Minister of Foreign Affairs I received an email from a person who had been in my class at school remarking that it was a wonderful thing that someone could come from Arapohue School and Dargaville High School and go on to serve in the New Zealand Parliament and as New Zealand's foreign Minister. In the small farming community in which I grew up the notion of a university education for less than stellar students like myself was regarded as fanciful and any idea of being elected to the Parliament absurd. So as I come to the end of a 30-year term in this Parliament including a lengthy period as a Minister of the Crown it is very hard to convey how incredibly fortunate I feel to have had the opportunities that have come my way.We had lost the East Coast Bays seat for the previous three elections before I won it in 1987 with the princely majority of 311 votes. I leave Parliament having achieved a majority of 15000. Today I want to record my enormous appreciation to the people of East Coast Bays for the confidence and support given to me over 10 elections and for the great honour and privilege of serving as the member for East Coast Bays for 30 years.I give my sincere thanks to the hard-working East Coast Bays electorate team who over the years made it possible for me to win and then consolidate a previously marginal seat. Many of them are here today. Many of them have worked for me throughout those 30 years and I am truly grateful to them. I thank the many staff members and officials who have kept me in business and the close friends and family who have supported me.I want to extend my best wishes to Prime Minister Bill English and Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett and the about-to-be former colleagues of mine. New Zealand today is in better shape than virtually any country of our type in the world. Occasionally in the past this country has got some runs on the board but then lost its focus. You have a unique opportunity to build on a tremendous base and you have my best wishes.When Maurice Williamson and I were first elected to this Parliament it was a very different place especially prior to the introduction of MMP in 1996. The combination of the need to be personally present to cast a vote in the interminable hours of urgency made this a much more intimate and sociable place. Cast-iron discipline was required from the whips with any absence requiring a pair from the other side. Back in the late 1980s Maurice Williamson Winston Peters Ross Meurant and I determined that it would be logistically possible to depart towards the end of question time attend the North Harbour - Wellington rugby match at Athletic Park and return before the end of the general debate with no risk of a vote being called or our absence being noted. Whether it was a result of a leak or the obvious difficulty Mr Peters had with the notion of remaining inconspicuous we returned to find a very angry chief whip who instituted formal disciplinary proceedings and required us to sit through an hour of carefully choreographed speeches about loyalty teamwork and commitment at the following caucus.The election of the Bolger Government in 1990 followed by the mother of all Budgets" seared some harsh political messages into our hides. Having been elected with 48 percent of the vote in 1990 fewer than 12 months later some polls were placing us as low as 19 percent. It was in this grim climate in October 1991 that I received an early morning call from the Prime Minister's senior private secretary who advised that the Prime Minister wanted to see me. Convinced that this was to be yet another of the disciplinary discussions that were then a regular feature of my parliamentary timetable I not very politely declined. Eventually the senior private secretary convinced me that it would be very much in my interests to get my useless carcass up to the Prime Minister's office right now. So Jim Bolger informed me bluntly that he was making me the Minister of Customs but that would not make me very busy and that he had decided despite our political predicament that he was going to win the next election that I was going to help him and that we would discuss it on a later occasion. We never did discuss it later but I did find myself fairly quickly immersed in the political management machinery of the place a role I came to play for many years.I acquired a great respect for Jim Bolger. I developed an excellent working relationship with him and gained valuable experience in dealing with the intractable political challenges at the business end of the Government. In both Government and Opposition right through until 2008 I was involved in one way or another under five leaders in the deeply unglamorous even more unpopular and extraordinarily difficult area of political management.At about this period of my career in which I am told I acquired the nickname "the Black Prince" a good number of very colourful mostly unflattering things had been written and said by political opponents and media commentators alike for which I am sure they are now all deeply remorseful. I take this opportunity today of thanking them all for their vigorous efforts to enhance my notoriety. They had made me appear very much more effective than I really had been and certainly much more interesting. It was during this period that I ran a weekly blog McCully.co which was widely read for its intellectual rigour and dispassionate analysis of important political affairs—an option for the future perhaps if nothing else works out.In 2008 the decision was made by John Key looking towards the election later that year that I was to move seriously into the area of foreign policy. Members will recall that the right honourable now knighted former Prime Minister had a wonderful capacity for lofty Shakespearean prose. In early 2008 addressing me in such terms he said: "My little friend there is one portfolio where those guys can hand me my ass and that's foreign policy. I want you to make sure they don't." Ha ha! Never before or since has the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs been so graciously bestowed. Ha ha!I think most people who come into this place bring an ambition to at some stage play a serious role in a Government that they can be truly proud of. In that respect I regard myself as among the truly fortunate. For 8 years I had the enormous privilege of serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs under New Zealand's greatest Prime Minister of modern times and of serving as a member of what he called his "Kitchen Cabinet".As I have said on many occasions in any Government the real foreign Minister is always the Prime Minister. Regardless of geographical location time zone or any other considerations Prime Ministers and foreign Ministers must always be on the same page. To be otherwise is to confuse other Governments and international agencies and the vast bureaucracies they retain to analyse every word or nuance not to mention to provide fodder for troublemaking political opponents and commentators. I am pleased to say that in 8 years there was not one occasion on which there was daylight between John Key and myself. But much more important was the fact that while former Prime Minister Key quickly demonstrated a complete mastery of international relations at the highest level he also bestowed the huge level of trust and confidence in his foreign Minister that is critical to making that role effective in its own right.These were an important 8 years for New Zealand's role in the world. We managed after 30 long years to bring about a normalisation of New Zealand's relationship with the United States while maintaining our nuclear-free legislation and remaining outside of ANZUS. Our relationship with China was taken to a new level with exports multiplying by 500 percent requiring careful management of a dynamic and complex diplomatic relationship as well as one or two private sector challenges along the way. We made major progress with other non-traditional relationships in ASEAN Latin America and the Gulf States. We managed to break through a longstanding blockage in the relationship with the European Union and I am especially proud of the way in which we stepped up to deal with our role and responsibilities in the Pacific.New Zealand's campaign for election to the UN Security Council in 2014 was unlike any other diplomatic challenge. You see foreign ministries from all nations have this wonderful capacity to record every meeting as a diplomatic success. But the problem with the UN Security Council election is that one day the numbers go up on a board in New York and the numbers do not lie.The fact that three quarters of the countries in the world voted for New Zealand on the first ballot leaving heavyweights Spain and Turkey to fight out the subsequent ballots says something that is both totally objective and massively positive about our standing in world affairs. I am extremely proud of the way that New Zealand conducted itself during our 2-year term on the Security Council. We were diligent fair-minded consistent and prepared to call out poor conduct wherever we saw it even from our friends. I take this opportunity to thank the many hard-working and talented foreign affairs staff who over 8½ years supported and collaborated with me in places all around the globe.I also served for many years as Minister for Sport and Recreation and more briefly as Minister for the America's Cup in 1999 and Minister for the Rugby World Cup in 2011. The hosting of the America's Cup in 1999 involved close collaboration with Sir Peter Blake and his team. Sir Peter's habitual question "Will it make the boat go faster?" was the greatest possible lesson on focus and a question I was to ask myself many times subsequently when trying to decide which fights were worth having.The whingers and whiners were out in force before that event—New Zealanders were not going to be interested in a rich man's sport all the cafes and restaurants in the Viaduct Basin would go broke as soon as the event was over and it was therefore a waste of public money and so on. But of course New Zealanders embraced the event in droves. The hospitality sector in the Viaduct Basin seemed to be just keeping its head above water last time I checked and of course the economic and profile benefits to New Zealand were huge. The same will be the case in 2021. It is my sincere hope that rather than pandering to the whingers and whiners both Auckland and central government authorities will recognise the huge opportunity that is coming our way and invest wisely and strategically in maximising the undoubted benefits.The Rugby World Cup 2011 was as complex as it was huge. It was one of the great thrills of my time in politics to be given the opportunity to play a role in something so large that gave so much pleasure to so many New Zealanders and banked so much economic benefit along the way. It also gave me an opportunity to work alongside some highly talented and very committed New Zealanders many of whom remain my close friends today. I hope those responsible are thinking carefully about our next bid to host this event because surely we must.There is one outstanding Rugby World Cup matter that I do want to touch on briefly. In the lead up to the event I had occasion to host a dinner for all of the members of the International Rugby Board. Because they were official guests of the New Zealand Government the Department of Internal Affairs was supposed to have arranged for payment of the account but for some reason best known to itself had not. So to avoid any embarrassment at the end of the evening the bill was quietly charged to my office credit card. Even though we were reimbursed the next day the subsequent release of my credit card receipts containing five bottles of Ata Rangi pinot noir at $185 a bottle attracted an unhealthy and it would be fair to say universally negative interest from the nation's media. To make matters significantly worse for weeks afterwards every time I attended a public occasion addressed by the then Prime Minister he would draw attention to my presence and to my expensive taste in pinot noir.It is a sad comment on the state of investigative journalism in this country that not one media outlet asked such blindingly obvious questions as: does the Minister for the Rugby World Cup drink pinot noir? Did the Prime Minister attend this dinner? Does the Prime Minister drink pinot noir? Now I can no longer recall the answers to any of these questions but I do recall clearly that I lamented the very poor state of our investigative media at the time.Of course I was to enjoy my own career as an international athlete while in Parliament as a founder member with Trevor Mallard and Damien O'Connor of the Parliamentary Rugby Team.Hon Michael Woodhouse: Bill English.Hon MURRAY McCULLY: And yes the right honourable Prime Minister as well. Our first coach John Hart rode into his All Blacks coaching job on the strength of our success. His successor Richie Guy neatly summed up my prowess when planning one of our Parliamentary Rugby World Cup campaigns when he said: "We can win this competition if we use our speed and skill out in the backs. McCully you are playing in the forwards."In 2009 we started to put in place some changes to both the structure and funding of High Performance Sport with the goal of making New Zealand on a per capita basis one of the top sporting nations in the world. Too many New Zealanders fail to understand the huge benefits our top athletes bring to our brand and profile in a country that produces and exports food. And by using our word-class athletes as role models we have a much greater chance of motivating our young people to play sport and live healthier lives. The decision to give High Performance Sport its own identity recognised that being world class requires a level of focus and resourcing that is different. We decided to focus resources at that level in the sports where we had a competitive advantage creating a hothouse environment for our top athletes coaches and staff.In both the 2012 and 2016 Olympics our targets were exceeded but the real test comes in 2020 when the true benefits of this programme will flow through. Provided we stay on track we will be able to look back on this as a critical formative period in our evolution as one of the world's most successful Olympic nations.When the Prime Minister farewelled me from Cabinet back in May with some uncharacteristically generous remarks he said that on his research I had served for longer as a Minister in National Governments than anyone other than the late Sir Brian Talboys. I had never thought about that statistic but I went away and checked and I think the Prime Minister was probably correct.With the indulgence of the House I want to offer therefore one or two thoughts as I depart this institution.Hon Member: Oh this'll take a while.Hon MURRAY McCULLY: Ha! First some personal advice: always keep an open mind about people. When some financial whiz-kid who gets elected in your neighbouring electorate irritates the management and you are asked to take him out behind the woodshed for a chat always leave room for the possibility he might end up being your boss for 8 years. Ha ha! And when some overconfident young woman marches into your electorate office interviews you and then instructs you to hire her on the spot before you tell her to get lost always leave room for the possibility that she might end up being your Deputy Prime Minister. Ha ha!We hear a great deal about how technology is changing and will continue to change our lives but we think too little about how New Zealand's international interests have changed and will continue to change and about the need to configure our institutions and polices so that they reflect our future interests rather than our past. I grew up in a New Zealand that saw itself as an offshore farm for Great Britain. When the UK joined Europe we thought we were the unluckiest people in the world and senior Ministers lobbied for years to maintain access to the European markets that took the bulk of our goods.Today we are one of the truly lucky countries camped on the rim of the Asia-Pacific region that will be the powerhouse of world economic growth for as far ahead as we can see. Today our exports to China are roughly equal to our exports to Australia which is traditionally our largest market. But in the next 5 or 6 years our trade with China will be 50 percent bigger than with any other country. And like any sensible business that does not want to be too dependent upon one customer we will be trying to balance that growth with new markets in Asia the Gulf States and Africa. We have been slow to adapt from a world where we can do business inside our comfort zone with people who speak the same language and have similar history values and systems of Government to one in which a substantial part of our business is with countries that do not. But the next decade or two will see an overwhelming proportion of our trade conducted with nations that are outside that traditional comfort zone. The same is true in relation to our security and defence where the simple alliance arrangements that defined our interests for most of the last century have given way to an independent foreign policy a complex and evolving series of regional dialogues and a backdrop of major shifts in international power structures. Yet statistics for the study of foreign languages in this country remain truly dismal and even important foreign policy issues are denied media space by editors besotted with the eating habits of reality TV stars their medical ailments wardrobe malfunctions and revolving love interests. Increasingly the pursuit of this country's economic and security interests will take us outside the comfort zone that history has bequeathed us requiring a much greater investment of our time our interests and our skills.Those who have worked with me will know that I am not a great fan of multilateral institutions but we must persevere with bodies like the United Nations not because they are good but because they will get a great deal worse if countries like New Zealand do not play their part. Good international rules and effective international institutions are important for countries like ours. The alternative is to live in a world where the big guys always win and the little guys always lose. But New Zealand needs to remain a forceful advocate for UN reform. Last year the international community spent US$16 billion on providing humanitarian support for victims of conflict and another US$9 billion on UN peacekeeping operations. The world's capacity to create human misery through conflict now greatly exceeds its capacity to prevent or resolve it or its willingness to meet the growing humanitarian cost. That simply has to change.I previously described our work in the Pacific in my time as foreign Minister as both the most challenging and satisfying part of the job. We are a small player in international affairs but we are a large and important player in the Pacific and we are making a difference. New Zealand leadership has been the key to bringing over $2 billion to projects that are shifting the region from its heavy dependence on fossil fuels for electricity to renewable energy with huge environmental and economic benefits. Many islands that were 100 percent dependent on expensive diesel for electricity generation are now 100 percent powered by renewables.In the fisheries sector we have made bold progress in helping the region move its largest economic asset a $3 billion-a-year tuna fishery towards sustainable management and towards achieving a significantly greater return for its owners. We are playing an important role in the growing success story that is the Pacific tourism industry again creating sustainable economic benefits from the region's natural resources. I greatly value the many friendships I have been fortunate to make around the Pacific and my retirement plans include a continuing involvement in the region.The great temptation in this institution is to simply go along for the ride to spend 3 years getting elected for another 3 years. I came here 30 years ago to make a difference. This is a tough place and I have spent the greater part of those 30 years at the tougher end of it. I have tried to get things done and sometimes that has not made it easy for colleagues friends and family but I could never really see the point in being here if I was not going to move the furniture around a bit. Thank you for putting up with me for so long. It has been a hell of a ride.[Applause]"