Prasad Rajen: Maiden Statements 
Prasad Rajen: Maiden Statements 
[Volume:651;Page:370] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
Aum bhoor bhuwah swaha 
Tat savitur varenyam 
Bhargo devasaya dheemahi 
Dhiyo yo naha prachodayat. 
Oh God! Thou art the Giver of Life  
Remover of pain and sorrow 
The Bestower of happiness 
Oh! Creator of the Universe 
May we receive thy supreme sin-destroying light 
May Thou guide our intellect in the right direction. 
E nga iwi o tenei rohe tena koutou katoa. E nga iwi o te motu ka nui te mihi ki a koutou a no reira tena koutou tena koutou a tena koutou katoa. 
[ 
To the tribes of this region greetings to you all. To the tribes of the country a huge greeting to you as well. So greetings to you greetings to you and greetings to us all 
.] 
To my friends and colleagues Raymond Huo Ashraf Choudhary Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi Melissa Lee and the Hon Pansy Wong I give my warm greetings. Mr Speaker I add my voice to others who have congratulated you your deputy and your two associates on your appointments. Even as a new member I can see the importance of the role and the demands it places on you. I wish you all well.  
In this my maiden speech I want to recall my journey to Parliament and the many voices that have travelled here with me. I remember my arrival in New Zealand on 21 April 1964. The TEAL Electra flight took 300 minutes from Nadi in Fiji. It landed at Whenuapai airport in Hobsonville west Auckland. On the walk from the aircraft to the air force hangar which doubled in those days as the international terminal the cold of that early autumn morning had frozen the toes of this Pacific Indian. I just wanted to go back home. My grandparents however before me had taken a much more hazardous journey from Uttar Pradesh in India to Fiji as indentured labourers under colonial rule. My father was born in Fiji and there he pioneered public transport. I come from a large family—I am No. 11 out of 14—which includes also an extended family across several generations.  
As an immigrant I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to New Zealand for the decent education it gave me and for the series of opportunities it provided to work with thousands of its citizens in my various professional and public roles. To now enter New Zealand’s forty-ninth Parliament as a member is an honour beyond belief because this Pacific Indian from Fiji had no business dreaming of this possibility in 1964. To have become a citizen was a privilege; to serve its people a duty; and to now represent them an honour.  
Many people have been part of my journey and in a sense they are here with me today. My journey to Parliament is essentially their journey and those with whom I have travelled here will always remain my reference point. My maiden speech is a tribute to them and to all they have contributed to in my life. The best way I can say thank you to them for their generosity over the years is to ensure that my privileged knowledge of their experiences informs the next generation of policies and programmes that are devised here in their interests. My wife Prem and my two children and their partners are extremely important to me. In exactly an hour from now Prem and I will have been married 40 years. Prem has been my constant companion and the bedrock of our family. She often tells others—I think in jest—that the only reason I married her was for the “green card”. I do not often get a chance to tell her that I appreciate all she has done and continues to do for me and for our family but I do so today.  
I also have two very special children who together with their partners are wonderfully principled adults who seek to make their special contribution to our society. My mother-in-law—God bless her—who lives in Auckland has a unique relationship with me. When Prem is not around I am treated like a prince and I thank her for that. When Prem is present I take my place in a different pecking order.  
My life in New Zealand however did not have a smooth beginning. Soon after we got married I was asked by the Immigration Service to return to Fiji as I did not qualify for residence. Despite a 3-year battle to have this decision overturned we were unsuccessful. We made preparations to leave New Zealand to have our first child in Fiji and to set up home there.  
A group of community leaders from west Auckland—and the Hon Pita Sharples knows them well; kia ora Pita—where we lived led by the principal of the school at which my wife taught decided to question the decision and ask for it to be reversed. They believed that an injustice had occurred. On 24 December our dear friend Nigel Langston arrived at our home with a letter to say that I had been granted permanent residence. The power of advocacy was alive. I have never forgotten what this group of friends did for me and I owe a debt of gratitude to them to this day. But out of this act of kindness grew something I will always value. Nigel Langston who lives in Henderson and Elwyn Richardson who lives in Taupaki in west Auckland are both pioneers in the field of education and have remained close friends of ours. They have taught me social conscience and they have taught me about sustained work principles and values contribution to society and the value of a good education.  
I have often wondered why people go out of their way to assist strangers and expect nothing in return. They were of a culture very different from mine yet they could see what I could not see—that is the contribution I could make in the years ahead. They nourished me accepted me into their families and developed my imagination about how things could be in New Zealand. They demonstrated to me their faith and commitment to the human spirit the human family and the communities in which we were embedded and they expected nothing in return. They are mentors today. They gave me confidence to have faith in people especially the poor and the powerless. They taught me that it was a privilege to serve those people and never to give up on them. I thank them sincerely.  
For some people this is not a particularly remarkable story but when I try to understand my life in New Zealand and what I bring to Parliament it takes on a significance that is sometimes beyond comprehension.  
I acknowledge my mother who lives in Vancouver—90 years old—and my brothers and sisters and their families 140 of them who live around the globe. My mother is the matriarch of the family and holds us together exceptionally well. This is a proud moment for her too and like other members of my family she travels in this Parliament with me.  
I remember a particular family I worked with as a child welfare officer. I had been visiting this family of mum dad and three children for several months without any real idea of how I might be helpful to this family. The father was not well socialised and was reluctant to engage with welfare officers. The children attended special classes the house was filthy and the mother had serious disabilities. Without fail every week produced complaints to us from teachers health nurses visiting teachers doctors and others to do something about them. Even my head office inspector said to me: “Rajen don’t bother with this family; you won’t change them.” A crisis occurred with the family when the mother was to be admitted to hospital and the father was desperate for someone to look after the three children. I was able to place the eldest daughter in one children’s home and the two boys in another. The children missed each other so terribly and were so unhappy in their respective foster placements that I took them back to meet each other. When I saw them interacting with each other the first time I brought them together I realised what an awful option we were pursuing and concluded that the emphasis should always have been on supporting the family intensively. I took the children home to dad. I made a case to my head office to provide 20 hours of home help so that this family could be assisted and the Lions Club agreed to commercially clean the property. When head office refused to provide support for a family in work I made another case to head office with an estimate of what it would cost the State to care for the three children in foster homes. They then approved it immediately.  
A lady from the local church offered to take on the job. She became a role model. The children quickly learnt new behaviours. The mother despite her disabilities became more involved and life changed dramatically. Complaints from the school and others ceased. Family outings became regular and my “inspector” was proved wrong. A few years later I followed up the case. The family had won the lottery. I wish that all my clients had won the lottery. The mother who had succumbed to poor health had died and the children were doing just fine. For me this story confirms the resilience of families and that we should never be too eager to write off families when we find them at a low ebb.  
The importance of the early years for children and their implications for families is now accepted as the best approach to social well-being and positive human development. In my opinion the best out-of-home site to locate support systems for our children and families is the school. New Zealand has an excellent framework for the delivery of education that locates our schools in the midst of the communities they serve. The huge plant and infrastructure that schools represent can be utilised much more effectively for the delivery of support during the early years. I had a role in pioneering school social work in New Zealand in the early 1990s and now it has been generalised to several hundred schools. The potential for schools of the 21st century to be family resource centres is enormous and provided they are appropriately funded they represent an opportunity that has yet to be maximised.  
Most recently I was privileged to help establish the Families Commission. We are fortunate in New Zealand that we have an institution that is growing in stature with the unique but simple mandate to advocate for all New Zealand families in a manner that enhances their well-being and resilience. It is required to do this in consultation with families and the institutions that support them. They are also expected to undertake research examine international systems and provide policy advice and information to families. This is a very effective commission that quietly goes about delivering a high standard of work in a timely manner. In my view it has one of the most talented and committed staff in this field and their independence enables them to make proposals that are evidence based.  
Those who criticise this commission have not had the benefit of fully understanding its legislated mandate its completed work and its ongoing work programme. The commission operates a solid scientific model to bring forward policy advice and provide information to families. I have the privilege to have worked with this group of people and they walk with me in this Parliament as well.  
Since the 1975 and 1987 reviews of immigration and a shift from a white immigration policy to a merits-based policy the cultural landscape of New Zealand has changed dramatically and irreversibly. I acknowledge the significance of New Zealand’s ethnic communities and the sizable contribution they make to our society. Their impact on the lived experiences of New Zealanders is quite pervasive and extends beyond diet language friendships and celebrations to impact on those who are included in our families and the ethnicities of our future grandchildren. This has happened in my observation with considerable speed and is a good omen for cultural acceptance and integration.  
The real future challenge however for New Zealand is to develop a new cultural policy based on our creative diversity. According to one writer: “Unless a country is united and cohesive it cannot act as a single community able either to take and enforce collectively binding decisions or to regulate and resolve inescapable conflicts between its constituent communities. It also needs unity and cohesion to provide a focus for collective self-consciousness to encourage a sense of common belonging and citizenship and to foster a spirit of shared national identity without all of which its members lack mutual trust and goodwill to make sacrifices and accept compromises required by the pursuit of the common good.” I say thank you to the many ethnic groups that I have worked with over the years and especially members of my own community for their support and guidance. You all travel with me today to the forty-ninth Parliament.  
Much has been said in the past few months about our troubling incidents of violence. Many promises have been made about how this will be fixed in quick time. While acknowledging the depth of concern about this and the need to address the problem I want to caution against developing solutions that do nothing for the complex reasons behind violence. The record of Draconian measures that receive public support as the only response is not impressive in changing national performance. Well-thought-out measures on the other hand should be developed implemented evaluated and reviewed as the considered response. The unintended consequence of producing a fractured society even when trying to address a problem must always be factored in. There are no silver bullets to resolving this problem but it requires careful thought and planning. The stories of the victims of violence including the children we have lost also travel with me to the forty-ninth Parliament and I commit to doing all I can to alter our national performance in this area.  
A final group of people who travel with me to Parliament is made up of those who are the victims of leaky buildings. In particular I think about those for whom their buildings are their homes as opposed to those for whom they are an investment. The problem has been well publicised and many of us know of families whose mental health has suffered; some have taken their lives in desperation. Honourable members if you have not done so already I ask you to find out the extent of the problem in your areas and meet some of the desperate people who are victims. You will find their stories compelling. Many currently live in limbo and are out of pocket while lawyers builders and developers are benefiting enormously from their situation. I hope this can be resolved.  
In concluding my first address in this House I acknowledge friends and supporters from my community who are here today and thank them all for their friendship and guidance over the years. The well-being of all New Zealanders depends on a strong economy strong families and strong communities. The formula that national development is the product of a balance between economic development and social development is the most persuasive aspect of Labour Party philosophy and therefore in my view the best vehicle to advance the interests of the people who have brought me here. I look forward to working with them over the next 3 years. No reira tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa. Dhanyabad and thank you.