Huo Raymond: Maiden Statements 
Huo Raymond: Maiden Statements 
[Volume:651;Page:742] 
RAYMOND HUO (Labour) 
: 
 I congratulate you Mr Assistant Speaker and your associates on your appointments and I wish you all the best for the term of this Parliament. Greetings to all members and to the diverse group of citizens that each member represents. ???! Greetings to you all. 
It is a privilege to stand and present my maiden speech to this forty-ninth New Zealand Parliament. I wish to recognise the Governor-General and the dignified calm that he brings to that office. I should like to pay my respects to the Rt Hon Helen Clark the former Prime Minister and leader of the New Zealand Labour Party. I am very proud to have been a part of the recent campaign under Helen Clark upon whose vision and leadership I believe history will look back favourably. Her vision and leadership have strengthened my Kiwi identity and made me proud to be a New Zealander. Equally I am very proud to have now become the first Chinese member of the Labour caucus serving here under the Hon Phil Goff. I recall that my very first meeting with a Labour Cabinet Minister upon seeking the nomination to run for Parliament was with Phil at his Mount Roskill electorate office. I thank Phil for his support. 
I owe my presence here to many people whom I consider to be my mentors. To name names unfairly omits others but some do need special mention: the Hon Chris Carter for his passion to fight for the values the Labour Party stands for and for his trust and confidence in me; the Hon Dr Michael Cullen; the Hon Lianne Dalziel; the Hon Darren Hughes; the Hon Judith Tizard; the Hon Maryan Street; and the Labour Party president Mike Williams. I also pay tribute to the Hon Parekura Horomia and through him to all our Maori colleagues in the House and to Aotearoa’s tangata whenua. It is to them that we owe a profound debt for the foundation they laid for a bicultural nation that is now multicultural. Kia ora. 
Thanks also go to many of my free-thinking friends intellectuals and teachers: Professor Yongjin Zhang—with whom I am proud to be a fellow alumnus—and Mr Gavin Ellis the former editor-in-chief of the  
New Zealand Herald 
 who duly became my first employer in New Zealand. I followed Gavin’s advice of listing all the pros and cons and adding them up to help draw a conclusion when I was not certain about vacating my legal profession in order to run for Parliament. He did not give me an answer but he showed me how to get one. That reminded me of the way Gavin taught me in the news room more than 10 years earlier to distinguish between news and views when writing articles. However sadly it appears that few media in this country appreciate the difference nowadays. 
My most heartfelt thank you is extended to my wife Yunfang and our children. Thank you xiao fang for all the love support and wisdom that you continue to share. I know you are watching this on the Sky TV network together with other friends and supporters at home and abroad. I am thrilled to learn that the live broadcast has been arranged via the Internet as far away as Beijing Hong Kong and Taipei. Thank you for your support. ?????????????????????????!I offer my sincere greetings to Chinese all over the world from me the first Chinese MP of the New Zealand Labour Party. 
I am not sure whether it is appropriate on this occasion to thank many of my loyal clients. They often fall into a category of the most ideal clients of any law firm: rich and always in trouble. Some had troubles that were not of their own making. For instance a young Chinese couple purchased a residential section in Auckland but their development of this section which was purely for residential purposes was hampered by legislation passed in 1915 that meant consent for the required works—in this case the excavation or cutting of less than the 40-degree minimum—could be granted only by the Governor-General. The Auckland Volcanic Cones Society demanded that work stop on the affected slope citing the 1915 legislation. Others however strongly argued that the relevant provision should be repealed simply because of its redundant role. 
I have just learnt that a bill is currently before Parliament that was postponed because of the election. Under the proposed amendment the Minister of Conservation would be able to delegate responsibility to his or her officers thus making the process a lot more streamlined. Currently people must go to the Department of Conservation then to the Minister and then to the Governor-General all because of a 93-year-old Act that was designed primarily for mining. This change would be beneficial for all affected parties. As one reporter following the case correctly suggested—showing a strong sense of humour—my election to Parliament represents some level of comfort both to the Auckland Volcanic Cones Society and the developers like my clients because from now on my service to all parties is free. 
Cases like this one make my transition from lawyer to parliamentarian much easier. I have a sense of obligation to work with all parties to create durable and effective laws. Clearly my focus is to become the best possible advocate that I can possibly be for the best interests of our peoples our communities and our society. In that regard I trust that my fellow parliamentary colleagues from a variety of ethnic backgrounds share with me the same sense of mission—that is to bring our migrant community members closer to mainstream society. “Mainstream” may be the wrong word but without integration alienation will inevitably follow. So our job among other things is to help communicate build bridges and bring people together. 
Many will recall that much was made of the concerns of Kiwi Asians about crime rates leading up to the election. The related press coverage prompted around 15000 people to take to the streets in Auckland to air their fears. This was despite police statistics showing an overall drop in crime although referring to such statistics would get any messengers including myself into trouble. But what cannot be denied is that these people were genuinely concerned about their safety and that they took exception to the police’s priority policy. They argued that sometimes we cannot distinguish between property-related crimes and life-threatening ones as was demonstrated with the death of Joanne Wang after her handbag was snatched in Manukau. 
Many Asians have migrated from countries with civil law jurisdictions where the inquisitorial system enables the courts to determine the truth in the first instance. When the prosecution is successful sentencing is delivered to fit the crime and its specific circumstances but here in New Zealand many Asians do not understand or appreciate our adversarial system of justice or due process. When their expectation of a speedy and fair delivery of justice is not met they often become frustrated. This is where we as MPs can help guide our new New Zealanders to understand and appreciate these differences. 
I want to promote in this House the value of looking forward not backward. But it is worth noting that the process of migrant integration or settlement requires two-way communication not one-way application. 
Until about the early 1970s New Zealanders did not talk much about ethnic groups what rights they might have and how a variety of them might be accepted or incorporated into the political arrangements of the country. Rather they thought about race. As Professor Andrew Sharp said at the Learning and Practising Democracy symposium in 1996 when we had our first election under MMP: “Chinese and Indians were thought of as races too indeed as ‘race aliens’—the point of saying which was to deny that they could assimilate into the population at large.” On the other hand Professor Sharp went on to suggest that “the more you think of yourselves as not ‘ordinary New Zealanders’ the less you will feel your interests and your cultures to be represented.” 
I am confident that New Zealand can and will do remarkably well—indeed it has already done reasonably well—in constructing a multicultural society. The rationale—if I have not oversimplified it—is that for example we are free and encouraged not only to be Chinese or some variation of racial linguistic and ethnic Chinese but also to be an ordinary New Zealander. To celebrate our differences is to promote our common purposes. Positive media will therefore play an important role. The ability for ethnic minorities to move from the margins of social and political life relies largely on the willingness of mainstream opinion to hear their voices and the ability of the media to correctly report their differences. 
To some extent ethnic minorities are vulnerable. If we allow ourselves to satisfy the appetite of the commercial mass media for stereotypes in whatever form we are facing a risk of inflating intercultural misunderstandings rather than alleviating minimising and overcoming them. After all this is not just your home; this is not just my home: this is our home—our Aotearoa! 
I came to New Zealand in 1994 and after some initial cultural shock in terms of settling in I came to appreciate and celebrate the differences. I regard myself as someone who is extremely lucky to have been a witness of change and transformation not only of China under reform but also of New Zealand in an increasingly globalised era when multiculturalism has become entrenched and when New Zealand’s identity is consistently shaped and reshaped. 
I taught myself to speak English when I was a teenager in China by listening to the radio. This was furthered by my middle-school teachers in Qianshan and my brother-in-law Professor Jianming Xu. Of course he was not a professor at that time. He had the same fate as his peers and at the age of 16 he was sent to a remote countryside to be “re-educated”. He taught himself English and science and 20 years later he graduated from two top medical schools with one bachelor and two doctoral degrees. I followed that DIY spirit and was lucky enough—and successful enough if I may add that—to be one of the very privileged few to attend university in China in the early 1980s. 
My upbringing plays a big part in who I am today. My father was a doctor and my mother was a head nurse at that time. In their early 30s they volunteered to move from the big city to a remote countryside town to help locals fight a parasitic disease known as  
Schistosoma 
 or blood fluke. On many occasions I witnessed how my parents resuscitated patients and saved them from death. This was approaching the later stage of the Cultural Revolution. Being a medical doctor working in harsh conditions in a remote countryside town did not mean you were immune from persecution. My father like other “intellectuals” was ordered to stand still at the main entrance to the hospital holding a wide whiteboard with his name painted in black followed by the title “counter-revolutionary medical expert”. Sixty minutes a session three sessions a day—those in power believed that this would help him to be scrutinised by the public which would eventually help him to “purify” his mind. 
Like any naughty 5-year-old boy could and would do I duplicated a smaller whiteboard and voluntarily joined the roster. I even invited my father to write my name and my title on the little whiteboard with something like “little counter revolutionary medical expert”. And guess what? He did! The Cultural Revolution ended shortly afterwards and from then on I secretly believed that it was me who brought the nationwide political turmoil to an end with my little whiteboard. 
In hindsight my journey to this honourable House stretches back to my birth in that small rural town from that small stage I once shared with my father and from the desire for free will that I inherited from my parents. That experience was relevant. It influenced—and will continue to influence—my politics and world outlook. I have learnt to be resilient. I have learnt to be kind caring and more philosophical when confronting difficulties. To those who have asked me of my secret weapon behind successful careers in Beijing and now in New Zealand I say it is a simple one: double your efforts halve your expectations. 
Let me borrow from what the Hon David Cunliffe said in his maiden speech in February 2000: “Where there is a wrong right it; where there is injustice fight it; where there is hunger feed it; and where there are no jobs find some.” I am so proud to be part of the Labour team that has striven for those very principles under the great names including Michael Joseph Savage Peter Fraser Walter Nash Norman Kirk David Lange and Helen Clark and that will now continue to do so under Phil Goff. Kia ora. ??! Thank you.