Barker Rick: Member Vacancy — Northland Electoral District—Hon John CarterText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBarker Rick: Member Vacancy — Northland Electoral District—Hon John Carter[Sitting date: 04 August 2011. Volume:674;Page:20368. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RICK BARKER (Labour): This is an unusual event. Normally it is impossible to say things about a member of Parliament who has resigned their position. Normally the valedictory is said and that is it but I have been given the rare opportunity to talk about—I have just learnt his full name—John McGregor Carter.I have known John for quite some time and would like to make a few comments about him but before I do so I make the observation that this circumstance we are in here is very unusual. I have been here since 1993 and I can recall this situation happening only once before and that was with the resignation of Michael Laws in the Hawke’s Bay seat. Michael Laws got himself into a spot of bother about a signature on a so-called referendum or survey done in his area and he thought the only honourable thing for him to do was to resign. At that point there was no election date set. Within a matter of hours the then Prime Minister the Rt Hon Jim Bolger announced the election day. As a consequence of that the House could consider a motion to say that there was no need to have a by-election because it was within 6 months of an election.It was a remarkable circumstance to have an election date set so early and it changed what happened in this House. I was going to undertake some work with the then Minister of Justice Mr Graham but when I approached him after the adjournment of the House he said he could not do that work then because we were in an election campaign. The whole thing changed.We are in a remarkable situation now because we have an election date set so far out but still the House carries on its work. It has not quite got to the election phase yet.I have worked with John over a long period of time. I put on the record that I found John to be a very good member of Parliament and an honourable member of Parliament. I dealt with John on many occasions as a whip. Those people who have held the position of a whip in this House will realise that there is quite a distinct and different relationship between the whips. One of the roles of the Opposition whip which was a position I held was to make the life of the senior Government whip as difficult as possible and I did the best I could. I plagued him with all sorts of tricks—moving people around moving motions and so on—but all through this John kept his sense of humour. John was always very level-headed and simply accepted that this was the way the role was played.John was always very good to deal with. In my opinion he was a man of integrity. Whenever I had an agreement with John there was never any doubt about the agreement being held to. His word was his bond and I think this is a fine quality in him for New Zealand when he takes up his position representing New Zealand overseas. I think the people he represents will find him as I did to be very trustworthy and very reliable. I have a great deal of respect for the man.That brings me to the point that we now find that the far north has no representative. That is effectively what has happened. It is unrepresented. Some people could exercise some concern about this but I am not sure that all would be of that opinion. This is no disrespect to John personally.I recount one occasion when that fine institution of this Parliament the Parliamentary Rugby Team was invited by John Carter to tour the far north and play some games. We were playing in Kaitāia and the local team was a team of locals who were very large strong-looking farm-type men. Two of them had seen some service in the All Blacks and they looked a pretty formidable crew I can tell members that. At one part of the game the ball was kicked up high into the air and the line of defence for the Parliamentary Rugby Team was John McGregor Carter. A line of forwards was fanned out—a large line of forwards—and they were hunting as a pack. They had one target and it was the local member of Parliament. The captain of the Parliamentary Rugby Team shouted so all could hear “Don’t kick! Don’t kick! For God’s sake don’t kick!” but John was torn between two lines: self-preservation and orders. John chose self-preservation. He put his boot into the ball it slid off the side of his boot and spiralled away and this line of four lumpy forwards scooped up the ball powered over the line and scored a try. The captain was standing there shaking his head and then someone from the sideline said “Don’t worry. He doesn’t listen to us either.” There was good humour. I want to say that even though it is politics people can see the humour in it and I am sure they said that with affection.One thing I will miss from John is his jokes. I do not think I can recount any of them here tonight—partly because it is a family show and partly because I cannot remember them all. Whenever there was a down moment in the House John would give me a nudge and say something. I would meet him out the back and he would recount his latest list of yarns.He was also a person with incredible knowledge of how this place operates. I am sure that in recent times National will have found that John’s advice on tactics and howto operate things in the House has been invaluable. I can think of no other position than when we were discussing the Auckland bill. Once John moved back into the centre stage we thought we have a tough opponent here and so it proved to be.I am sure National will miss John just as Labour will. We do not always have to agree with people in this House; I do not think that is important. What we have to see though is that they make a contribution and without a doubt John made a contribution. It was not always in the debates but he certainly made a contribution in how the House was structured how the House was organised and how it ran. He was very conscious of the principles of this House its protocol and its traditions. He was always very supportive of those and made sure that people understood that these were the rules of how the place ran. Yes there are formal rules and the Standing Orders. Yes there are Speakers’ rulings. But there are other ways in which people go about their business with integrity and by viewing with due respect each member here as an honourable member and John was certainly one who upheld that. From that point of view I will miss him because that collective knowledge is important to how this place runs.I thought John made a great contribution. Yes he might have cluttered up the car-park down below with his collection of ancient and semi-ancient vehicles—Chris Tremain: There are plenty of parks down there.Hon RICK BARKER: There are plenty of parks now; the parking space has increased. The humour will be gone just as I miss Mike Moore’s humour around the place. When I talk about Mike Moore and John Carter I think how Mike Moore always used to say when someone was saying good things about him: “Oops I must be dead; they’re praising me.” I want to say to John that we are not saying this because we think that about him. We have always thought this.Finally I want to turn to the last point which is the issue raised by the Hon Trevor Mallard—that we now have a vacancy in John Carter’s seat and we still have in this House 121 members of Parliament. I do think there is a gap here and I think we should put our collective minds to how this could be better managed in the future. It could be that the public find it acceptable to have a vacancy for 6 months. I am sure the public in the far north are thankful that we are going to pass this resolution because the last thing they will want I am sure is two elections in 6 months—two occasions when their letterboxes are festooned with newsletters and direct leafleting there are ads in the paper hoardings up all around the place and adverts for votes driving the public mad. I think their tolerance is for an election once every 3 years; any sooner than that becomes a little less tolerable. So I think the far north public will see this motion as a good thing.On the downside there is no clearly recognised person to whom they can go as their local representative. Yes there are list MPs in the area and yes we could look at formalising those things in the future. The Hon Trevor Mallard has made a very good suggestion. I also accept the point he has made that given that we are looking at our electoral system this is most probably not the best time to look at such a detail. But it is something we should keep in the back of our minds and think of.In closing I would just like to say a final thankyou to John for all the contributions he has made here over the years. I want to say thank you to John for all the goodwill he has shown to me and I want to say thank you to John for the way in which he has conducted his work in this House. I personally found him to be a man of integrity someone I could do deals with and someone whose word was his bond. I think that is a very important thing. I never had to ask John for an email or a letter to confirm something. I knew that if John stood there looked me in the eye and said what would happen I could go to the bank and say it would happen. There are not many people one can say that about. I would like to say it about more people but I can certainly say itabout John Carter. I do not think there are many finer tributes one could say to a person than that he always kept his word. Thank you.Sue Kedgley: Mr Deputy Speaker.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry for the member. The Business Committee allocated only three spots to this debate so I am sorry the member does not get a call. I say on behalf of all the comments that have been made today that I am sure the former member will be very impressed and encouraged by those comments. It may be fortunate that he does not get a right of reply.Motion agreed to.