Simich Clem: Valedictory Statements 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Simich Clem: Valedictory Statements 
[Sitting date: 23 September 2008. Volume:650;Page:19037. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon CLEM SIMICH (National) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker and thank you. I want to first of all thank Katherine Rich and Mark Blumsky for their kind references to me. I do not know whether I deserve them but they are much appreciated. 
Mark Blumsky made some reference to something that many commentators have referred to in a jocular way over the 17 years that I have been here. I have accepted it as that but now and then it got annoying. It was about my taking a message to Wellington. Those commentators had it wrong of course because it was not my taking a message to Wellington; the question was that if they wanted a message taken to Wellington—that is the voters in my Tamaki electorate—then I asked them to give it to the Government not to the Opposition. But it developed from there and many have had a little fun over it. 
If members doubt that a message came to Wellington I invite them to read my maiden statement in  
Hansard 
 Volume 522 at page 6912 on 17 March 1992. From the middle of the page the next four paragraphs set out very clearly what the message was. After reading it members will accept that the message was taken on board and it still is today because we are a quite different party from what we were in 1991. The message is there I know that it has been taken on board and I am very pleased. 
Mr Assistant Speaker I have been delighted to work with you over the last 6 years. Ross Robertson you are a top MP. Along with the other Assistant Speakers whom I have had the pleasure of working with—a Deputy Speaker in Ann Hartley and an Assistant Speaker in Marian Hobbs—you have formed a team of Speakers and we have operated I believe very very well. A lot of that is due to your knowledge of the rules your calm personality and the fact that you do not take too much rubbish. I thank you Ross for being a colleague of mine for 6 years in the role that I have had to play. I also thank Marian Hobbs. It has been great fun working with you more latterly and I respect what you have done. 
I pay particular tribute to the Speaker. The Hon Margaret Wilson is in my book a very very fine person indeed. I first met Margaret when I was a student at Auckland University in 1985. She was a lecturer then and for the last 3½ years she has taken up that role again. She was a delight then although it was a student-tutor and student-lecturer relationship but down here away from this Chamber most of those who have been with Margaret will know that she has a sense of humour she has absolute integrity and she is just good to be with. She has taught me a lot and we have been able to work together over the last 3½ years and that is something I have really really appreciated. 
Before Margaret there was Jonathan Hunt. I was with him for 2½ years—another superb Speaker. I first met Jonathan in 1966 slightly before he came to the House. Time slips away; that is only what 42 years ago? When I met him he was at a dinner with Roger Douglas. We were out together and the acquaintanceship went from there. I was delighted to work with such an experienced person a top-class Speaker for 2½ years here. 
Colleagues I want to say thanks also to two special people. The first is Roland Todd the Speaker’s Assistant. Members would probably notice that we would go a fair way astray but for Roland Todd. He does a superb job and I thank you for that Roland. I thank the Serjeant-at-Arms Brent Smith who likewise plays a role up front but also in the background. To those two people my special thanks. 
To the Clerk Mary Harris to you and your people I am deeply grateful for the help that you have given me and the other Speakers in the work that we do. You and Debbie Angus are invaluable as are the other Clerk-Assistants. 
I make mention here of David McGee who was very special to all of us here in Parliament. He was with the establishment for 20-odd years and was an absolute authority on parliamentary procedure. He is recognised right around the Commonwealth and in fact the English-speaking world including the USA for his expertise on how a Chamber and the parliamentary system should work. I was lucky to be with David McGee for much of the time that I have been in Parliament and certainly when I have had a Speaker role. 
I now pay special thanks to—hey this could be a speech all of thanks! But that does not matter. In my view everything belongs to the future but I am actually going to talk about a lot of things in the past. You might gather that that is the stage of life I am at. It has been a long past and I will go on to that. 
I first came to this Chamber 51 years ago. In 1957 I sat in the Speaker’s gallery right where my wife is sitting with a small group of people. I was hosted here by the Prime Minister Sidney Holland. The reason he was hosting us was he was the patron of my wing at the police training school. I met him we formed a relationship and 18 months later I had the pleasure of hosting him at the training school where I was his guide and his host when our wing graduated. We have had something like 12 Prime Ministers since then. It is not big-noting it is just showing how long I have been around the establishment but I have known personally every one of them. I have not just met them but have been with them and spoken with them every one right up to the present Prime Minister. 
I have been delighted to know Helen Clark. That goes back a few years too. The thing that really stands out in my mind is that Helen Clark was one of the few who came to see me on my by-election night. She was the first there and it was a very warm greeting. I thank you Prime Minister for the courtesy you have shown me and my family through all of those years. It has been much much appreciated. 
So 51 years ago I was in the gallery. I was 17. Some years down the track—almost another 17 years—I started coming to this Parliament for 1 day a month and I did that for 15 years in a row. I did it because I was on the governing body of the National Party and we met for 2 days every month. I would spend the late afternoon and evening of one of those days here. 
By that time I had established a relationship with David Lange. He did not particularly like me when we started. We had a battle in another by-election which I knew I would never win but at a late stage even my family thought I might have a chance. I dreaded the thought because it was not my intention to start a parliamentary career at that point. But during that by-election Lange was making fun of me saying I had been born with a silver spoon in my mouth and he had not and so on. But I knew his history. He had a very upmarket upbringing if you like. One night after a television interview I reminded him about something. I said: “David you should really stop saying that. My mother was your father’s housekeeper.” He just laughed and said “Nah!”. I said: “Well you go and check with Phoebe.”—his mother who lived in Kohimarama. He did and she told him that mum was his housekeeper. Indeed she was his uncle’s housekeeper as well. Both of them were doctors. From that time on we were as close as we could be. 
So I used to come down to the House. I looked after Rob Muldoon for 18 years. There were ups and downs—mostly ups—but I looked after him both in his electorate as a councillor and here in Wellington against the hordes who were trying to get at him. I would come down here and Rob would sit there and he would just wave. David Lange would see me in the gallery and without fail he would come and get me and I would sit at the back of the Chamber. That went on year after year. It went on while he was Prime Minister too. So we had a very good relationship and I enjoyed it thoroughly. 
I will move a bit closer to where I come from. I came down to the police training school from Aranga. Aranga is a small swamp up north near the Maunganui Bluff. It was from there that I went down to the police training school as a 17-year-old. We had only recently come back from my old country which was then Yugoslavia and is now Croatia where I had spent 5 years. 
At the time that I came to Parliament in 1992 Aranga was topical. Aranga was part of the Te Roroa claim. The Maunganui Block was part of it. Te Kopuru was part of it—that is where I was born. Tokatoka was part of it. Waipoua was part of it. It was at that point that the claim was surfacing. Lots of things happen very quickly here in Parliament; within 5 minutes the whole scene can change. However the issue that was just starting to bubble then has taken a wee while longer. But it was something that I noticed when I was first here. On 3 April of that year just 1 month after I had been sworn in the Waitangi Tribunal reported to the Minister and to the claimants on the work that had been done with a recommendation—actually a recommendation that had been made by the Maori Land Court in the year I was born 1939—for lands to be returned to that tribe. Down the track I come into Parliament and it is right up there up front. Tomorrow the Te Roroa Claims Settlement Bill will receive its third reading. That is my second to last day in the House and it is just a coincidence that that has happened. 
The people who were involved in those claims—Lovey Te Rore Alex Nathan lots of them—were footballers with me up north. They were my coaches. My brother and I were playing senior rugby in Northern Wairoa when I was 14 but that was only because there were very few people in the neighbourhood in the area. But we were big guys. So I was playing with these people. They have gone now but they pushed those claims a lot of the way. So did Syd Morunga. 
At the same time that I came into the House Croatia was in turmoil. If I have a home country Croatia is it. As I said before I spent 5 years there. It was in turmoil. It was at war and the Balkan area which had been Yugoslavia was breaking up. Croatia wanted to be recognised as a nation State. At my first meeting as a candidate with the then Prime Minister Jim Bolger in January of 1992 he told me he had had a request from Croatia and he asked me what I thought of it—whether our Government should recognise Croatia. I said: “Do it straight away.” He spoke to the honorary consul here and gave him the message: “New Zealand will recognise you immediately.” I know he had done some work on it before but that was thrilling for me because of my relationship with the Croatian people. Today as I leave Croatia is on the verge of joining the European Union. It has a little way to go but it is right there. There is such a stark difference between Croatia today and what it was when I came into this House. 
It is a very similar position to that of the Te Roroa claim which was just gaining speed then and is going through the House tomorrow. For a lot of that thanks go to all of the Governments over that time but especially to the Hon Dr Michael Cullen for speeding it up and for working on it. 
It looks like my life has been in lots of 17. I was 17 years old when I first came here to this Chamber and another 17 years later I joined the National Party. In between were the most exciting 17 years because I got married to my wife Ann. I met her 47 years ago and we have been married for 43. I have three wonderful children. They were born in that second tranche of 17 years. My third lot of 17 years was spent doing my charity work for the party. They were absolutely wonderful times but one needs an understanding family for them to put up with it. I was at most times looking after four electorates in Auckland I was a councillor and on the governing body for almost all of that time and I was away from home 3 or 4 nights a week. Lots of members have done that; it is quite common for people in the party organisation to do it. 
Then my opportunity came up—the fourth period of 17 years—and I came in here. This has been the most delightful time of my life—to have been a member of Parliament to have been a representative. I have no regrets at all. I think it is an enormous privilege just to be here but also to be able to achieve things and to do the work. I have had so many opportunities come my way and I am deeply grateful to all of the people and the parties who have given me those opportunities. I was a backbencher for a while I was chairman of a select committee and I was fortunate enough to serve time in Cabinet. For that I am deeply grateful to Prime Minister Jenny Shipley just as I was grateful to Prime Minister Jim Bolger for what he did at the time of my by-election to come in here. 
I have special friends in this House. I could say that all of the other 120 members in this House are my friends and I am very proud of that. I have special friends like Katherine Rich and Simon Power which I found rather odd because I was the oldest one on this side of the House—almost the oldest one in the House—and they were the youngest. Yet we hit it off very well. 
I am a liberal conservative and I have thoroughly enjoyed the liberal issues that I have been able to take part in in this Parliament. In fact they are my proudest moments. I have been on the right side of I think every one and I have been very pleased to do it. It is all about making people feel better about themselves. It does not matter how small the group is; if you can make just one person feel better about what is you have done a good job and it is worthwhile doing it. With a whole host of these issues that is what we were able to do. 
I pay special acknowledgment to my good friend Georgina te Heuheu. She was my benchmate in Cabinet as was Tau Henare. We were at the same end of the table. We were in Cabinet together. I am very grateful to Tau for other reasons of course. He is partly responsible for my being in Cabinet because he stuck with us and stayed in Government in 1998. Those were thrilling times. For the last 4 or 5 years Georgina has been my benchmate here. 
I shall finish up because you all want to get away. I want to say thank you very very much to a whole range of people. My sincere thanks go to the Hansard people; the security people in this establishment; the messengers; the Crown transport drivers; the travel office; Bellamy’s; my House committee with Warren Biddington and Nicola Fenton on it; and the Standing Orders Committee with its chair Margaret Wilson its deputy chair the Hon Michael Cullen and David Bagnall the secretary. To my personal assistant in Parliament Noeline Thresh who has been with me since I arrived we have had the same journey with many office changes. I thank you Noeline and Derek for your great work and for your support for me and my family. I thank the library staff Bev Cathcart from the protocol office and Alison Allen from Inter-Parliamentary Relations. I thank all those people for their courtesy their goodwill and the help they have been to me and to others in my 17 years here. 
Colleagues I have people in Tamaki whom I am deeply grateful to. John Tremewan was the chairman when I began there. Some great people have led that electorate ever since and I thank all of them. In particular I thank John and Vicki Tremewan for being my agents and for being great workers and supporters. I am greatly indebted to David and Sue Morris and to people like Jim Mungall Tom Barton and Graham Malaghan. Graham Malaghan I met in 1974. I knocked on his door and met him and his wife Dale. They have been great friends ever since. Graham ran most of my campaigns up until last time in 2005 and I thank you for that Graham. I also thank Jonathan Kinsella who was my chief runabout in my by-election in Tamaki. He was later my press officer when I was Minister of Police as well as having other portfolios. He is now the public relations and press head honcho at the British High Commission but he is leaving there soon to go back to the UK. So I say thanks to him also. The most recent chairman of Tamaki is Andrew Hunt and he does a superb job. At the regional level I am deeply grateful to Stuart Masters who was my mentor when I first came in and to Ross Armstrong who was my chairman when I went out. I was deputy chairman of that region with Ross for 7 years. I thank all of those people sincerely. 
I want to say to you all that I go with no regrets at all. When I came in here in 1992 there were 67 members in the National team albeit two of them had become Independent. Of the 67 members there are eight left. There were 99 members in the House and there are 19 left. That tells me that change has to happen that I am part of that change and that I need to move on. I am happy to do so. 
I do it in the knowledge that this country is in great health. I have no doubt about that at all. It is better every day that we go on—some downs mostly ups. It is a bit like John Carter’s bloody phone message where he says: “Every day gets better.” That is my view of New Zealand. Every day does get better. We have some hiccups. 
I pay special tribute to my leader John Key; to my deputy leader Bill English; and to Gerry Brownlee Simon Power and all of my colleagues. Thank you for the encouragement for the support and for giving me all the opportunities that you have. 
My first opportunity in the National Party was given to me by George Chapman who is still around. I still see him. He had faith in me and I hope I have not let him down. Sir George Chapman was my first president and I thank him and Sue Wood. I have had about 10 presidents leading up to the most recent one who is Judy Kirk. I thank them all for the many opportunities they have given me 
Finally because we all need to get away I want to speak briefly about my family. Ann I love you. You have been a tower of strength to me and to our family. You are as fantastic now as you were when I met you 47 years ago and I am just about to embark on another life with you on leaving this House. Thank you Ann. Thank you to my children Karl and Jacki who are in Europe. To Simone and Paul and to my grandchildren Natalia Sofia Liam and Niko I thank you. 
And I thank my youngest son Ricardo who is in Los Angeles at the moment. He sent me a note because he could not be here: “To my darling father Clem. From the day I was born 36 years ago I have had a father that is the kindest man in the world. Growing up in a family with such love and morals is a blessing few children have. I grew up to the smell of politics happening around me jolly conversations with thumping tables and debates vintage cars in a by-election where you stood against David Lange the son of the man whose house your mother used to clean. Mum asked you to rest your Wellington ambitions until we were finished at school. My how cool it would have been if you had been an MP when I was at school.” I would have thought the opposite but that is the way he sees it. “Over these years you have juggled entrepreneurial business with National Party duties. Dominion councillor policy—you have done the lot. You stepped through the politics of the party with a gentle approach always making sure everyone was happy and being a loyal friend to all.  
After 17 years you entered Parliament. You went to Wellington for the right reasons. It was never about you it was about making things right and helping others—a feat I fear many MPs hope to do but the world in Wellington often changes the paths of even the noblest cause. Dad I know how much you love the House and I know how very sad it will be to say goodbye. The New Zealand House of Representatives gained more than a politician 17 years ago; it gained a true statesman of the House. You are this quite simply because you are above the fray and have no ego or personal agenda. Congratulations on being a legend to our entire family and I will be listening to your speech online from the States.” He says: “God bless you the Hon Clem Simich and many thanks to Mum who has stood by your side throughout.” 
Those are just some thoughts from my son and they are endorsed by his brother and sister. I appreciate them and reluctantly share them with you. Thank you for bearing with me. I do thank my family. I also thank my brothers Alex and Frank. Indeed my family have been my main helpers in my entire 34-year career in politics. God bless you all. 
I want to finish by saying that it is hard to leave this place but we all must. But I can take with me my love for this institution my absolute confidence in the future and my deepest gratitude for having had the opportunity to serve my country and our people. Tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa. Haere ra. Dovijenja i zbogovan. Good bye and best wishes to you all and thank you. 
Waiata 
Sitting suspended from 6.18 p.m. to 7.20 p.m.