Rurawhe AdrianVALEDICTORY STATEMENTSSPEAKER: I just want to inform members that following the valedictory statements the House will suspend for the dinner break and resume at 7.30 p.m. for further consideration of the Appropriation (2023/24 Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (Second for 2023/24) Bill. Members I call on Dr Emily Henderson to make her valedictory statement.Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): E te Māngai o te Whare Pāremata for the last time: tēnā koe. This is an incredible job. This is an incredible place. This is an incredible team. Admittedly it's a team I never expected to join—and let's be honest you were as shocked as I was!But the welcome especially from Kelvin and Willow my brother and sister in arms in team Te Tai Tokerau and from the gloriously talented team 2020 the warmth and the wraparound has made the decision to leave so soon so much harder.And not only the team here; I'm also leaving the team up there in the gallery. The wonderful crew from my office: Audrey Van Dalen Denise Phillips Emma McLean Glen Service and Judy Riggir; not to mention my wonderful local party exec and volunteers family everyone. But the truth is I didn't really stand in 2020 with any expectation of winning. And as wonderful as this caucus is and as deeply as I believe in its work—and if you cut me open you would find Labour" stencilled across my heart—I have come to believe in the words of the prayer that opens every sitting day in "justice" in "humility" and with as much "wisdom" as I can muster this is not the way I best serve New Zealand.I had been researching and writing about how to reform the court system and make it safer for vulnerable people for 25 years before I entered this place. Over the years I'd helped introduce a plethora of practice reforms culminating in the sexual violence court. I'd even managed to shoehorn a few ideas into legislation before becoming MP. There's been any number of Ministers of Justice of all political persuasions who have had the dubious privilege of listening to my unsolicited ideas.When I sat down and really thought about the next term I realised that as much as I enjoy this job and this team it's in that generating of new ideas that I believe I add most value. Maybe the ideas I come up with won't be the best ideas; maybe I won't save the justice system; maybe I will leave this place come up with nothing and persuade no one; but it's still the wisest decision I know how to make.And to those who wonder why with such a knife-edge seat as mine I didn't just quietly wait to lose the election and then go back to my books well: once bitten twice shy. When the Whangārei Labour Party asked me to stand in 2020 they were crystal clear that we had no chance of winning then either. When your hometown has been blue for 45 years it's hard to expect anything else—even though we are also the town with the most to gain from a Labour Government. For decades Whangārei has been coming in first at the wrong end of every socio-economic race. When you've been deprived for that long it's hard to generate any hope for anything better or energy to ask. Poverty is the only thing that ever trickled down the neoliberal pipeline in Whangārei.So I didn't stand to win; I stood to protest. I stood to protest being taken for granted for 45 years. I stood to protest being ignored. I stood to protest the National Party's abysmal failure to get funding for our abysmal hospital for their allowing our social housing to fall apart for their decision to strip the regions of road maintenance funding for nearly a decade. I stood to protest the sheer failure to make an effort that comes when you're arrogant enough to take a region for granted for almost 50 years even when you know the depth of its need.And if there is one thing Labour proved to Whangārei on election day 2020 and every day since including the day we got our new hospital funded and all the days we got our hundreds of new social houses and the day we got our Port Road bridge and funded our Vinegar Hill bridge and our port rail link and opened our cardiac catheterisation lab and our colonoscopy unit and all the other days we proved that day that Whangārei won't be taken for granted anymore.Whangārei has stopped feeling whakamā about our modest hopes. We can and will demand better for ourselves and our children. And I'm warning you now: I've made it my mission while in this job to talk to our people especially our young people about how to demand better. I mentioned our new hospital; I'd almost say my proudest moment as MP was when the usually very patient health Minister Andrew Little stood up at its announcement and complained bitterly that he'd had to give in because the local MP made his ears bleed.But my actual proudest MP moment was one of my regular Whangārei Girls' High visits where I learnt that a group of girls from Raumanga and Otaika—two of our poorest suburbs—had taken on board our previous session about petitioning Parliament and now had over 1000 signatures demanding we extend our free school lunch policy. Now it might not be great party discipline to be encouraging constituents to pressure your own Government but that's my single proudest moment. Because those girls—so shy they had to come and see me in a little huddle and took many attempts to get their words out—now know how to demand better.I know who I think should take my seat. [Points to Angie Warren-Clark] I believe in her so much I've even become her campaign manager. But whoever takes over don't you ever do Whangārei the disrespect of taking it for granted again. Because if you do the girls from Raumanga and Otaika and Tikipunga and Otangarei and Morningside and Raurimu—the girls and boys of all our beaten-down suburbs—are rising up and they demand better. What will stop them—especially will stop them from fulfilling my ultimate dream of seeing some of them in this House—is not just the challenges of the places they come from it's also going to be the challenges of this place.I'm here as part of the most gender-equal Māori- Pasifika- rainbow-inclusive Government ever—a Government in which my Whangārei rangatahi can for the first time truly see themselves reflected. In this caucus I knew I could say anything argue hard be myself and say my piece. I knew my views were respected even when we disagreed. But the space for constructive debate and the ability to tolerate opposing views outside the caucus room and amongst the public—especially in the toxic swamp of social media—that space has changed significantly.Now don't get me wrong: it takes more than a bit of trolling to silence a tough old courtroom lawyer especially one who survived raising four extremely opinionated teenagers—and I'm also Pākehā. But for young political aspirants without similar advantages politics is starting to look like a very difficult ask. Every day in Whangārei I hear concerns about how intimidating even ordinary voters without political ambitions are finding entering into political discussions. No one who has led through the last few years—even obscure backbench MPs like me in my beloved Whangārei—can be in any doubt that the culture has changed. But the people in this place still have the power to steer us away from division. As someone about to step back into the mass of ordinary voters I'm asking you today to use that power. I get we won't ever play "Kumbaya" and hold hands across the aisle here. I'm not naïve I come from the courts—we invented adversarial argument and this place is nothing if not democracy's courtroom.We need a strong Opposition to test the Government from every angle. But as someone from the courts—someone who's spent a lifetime trying to reform the courts—there's danger when adversarial argument stops being about testing and becomes about winning alone. That's the nub of the problem in the courts. In rape cases or cases with vulnerable witnesses lawyers who think their sole responsibility is to get a win will do virtually anything with any means necessary—even when that drowns out and distorts the evidence. In a normal election that might not matter so much. But these aren't normal times. Normally extremism rolls right off New Zealanders but this is a time of heightened anxiety when many voters are undeniably on edge struggling to come to terms with an uncertainty we haven't had to face since the 1930s. Scared people notoriously seek scapegoats and it's the easiest and oldest trick in the book to tap into that fear and prejudice and drive a wedge into the community.I would not suggest anyone in here is about to jump the conspiracy bandwagon but in an election year there's a temptation to at least try and tap into some of that energy. It's there when politicians start using the language of "taking back our country" from minorities. It's there when politicians ignore the actual facts and instead go around telling people that they're unsafe and crime is out of control—and when confronted that the facts don't matter as much as the fears. It's there when politicians start saying "the apocalypse is nigh" because we're about to put two of our official languages on street signs—even when their leader led the charge to turn our major carrier into a hotbed of bilingualism. Demonising the neighbours is as simple as turning a deeply boring bit of legislation about pipes into a crusade against overreaching Māori. The temptation to divide in order to rule is clearly present and it is a danger—including in the increasing attacks on the independence of the judiciary coming from this House.Every time someone in leadership weaponises the power of that scapegoating—against whatever people—it licenses some unbalanced person to take their frustrations out on an actual person. It's only a few years since UK MP Jo Cox was murdered by white supremacy conspiracy theorists. Now Jo Cox herself in her maiden speech just over a year before her murder famously said that all of us whatever our ethnicities or allegiances "have far more in common than that which divides us."As someone about to fade back into the mass of ordinary Kiwi voters who depend on you to keep us safe I'm asking you to heed her words. All it takes for democracy to crumble is for people to stop believing in it to stop honouring the concept of shared power shared decision-making; the idea that he waka eke noa—a whole community can be represented in here in this place and make decisions for the whole with a reasonable degree of fairness and efficiency. We need a new way to debate this. We need a politics that doesn't play games with peoples' emotions. We need a politics that isn't afraid to lead from the front. We need a politics that isn't afraid to admit solutions are complicated that isn't afraid to make tough decisions and trust us to catch up. We need a politics that has more respect for the people it serves for our intelligence for our realities and for our futures.So as an ordinary voter I wish you all sufficient courage of your convictions to stand firm against those who seek to stoke the fires of hatred and resentment and divide our community. This place may not be perfect but it is a good place—the beating heart of a strong democracy. I wish you the confidence to stand firm and assert its strength and goodness even if it occasionally means admitting you agree with the other side of the House.It only remains for me to look up into the gallery and thank my wonderful family and friends for their support of me personally especially my sisters and brothers my mum and dad my wonderful argumentative kids and most of all Thomas—I'm so glad to be coming home at last. Mr Speaker this House is ultimately not my home. I resign it to those who in justice in humility and yes with a considerable degree of wisdom will go on to serve here for the welfare and peace of the people of Aotearoa New Zealand. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa.[Applause]Waiata—If I Had Words"