Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou katoa ko Waitakere te maunga ko Manukau te moana ko Whau te awa nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa. [Salutations to you all. Waitakere is the mountain Manukau is the sea and Whau is the river. Therefore greetings acknowledgments and accolades to you collectively and to us all.]Kia ora kia orana talofa malo e lelei namaste salaam ni hao mabuhay and good evening. Congratulations Mr Speaker on your new role: poachers gamekeepers—seems to be working out well so far. I'm honoured to stand in this House today and it is a great privilege to enter the House with the class of 2017".In my mihi I spoke of the mountains and river and sea where I now live. We are perhaps not accustomed to thinking of urban Auckland as a place of great beauty but I assure you that is only because more of us need to travel west to the Waitakere Ranges home to magnificent kauri. There is another mountain that is precious to me: the mountain I grew up under Te Maunga the Mountain Mount Taranaki. Whenever I travel up and down Te Ika-a-Māui I look for Taranaki and when I see him I feel joy. I have lived in many places in our country but Taranaki is my oldest home. I love its bush and its black sand beaches so much like Pīhā and Karekare.I was born in Whangamomona in the backblocks of Taranaki to a farming family. Many of my family are farmers still and being a Labour MP I am perhaps the family disgrace—or perhaps not. The support of my family as I have worked to become a member of this House has sustained me—especially from my farming cousins. I'm also very grateful to my Labour whānau people from Palmerston North and from Rangitīkei and Auckland who have travelled to be here today and who have supported me throughout my campaigns. I'm deeply appreciative of the support from people who are now my colleagues especially the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway—Hon Member: He's behind you.Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: —always—who was the first to suggest that I should run and my neighbours in Auckland the Hon Carmel Sepuloni and Phil Twyford and Michael Wood.Mr Speaker following my mihi I greeted you and everyone here in just some of the languages that people in my electorate speak: Te Reo Cook Islands Māori Samoan Tongan Mandarin Hindi Urdu Tagalog English. People come to live in New Lynn from all over the world; over 40 percent of the people in the electorate were born overseas. It's incredibly diverse. Its representation in Parliament has perhaps not been quite so diverse: four white men and now one white woman. Rex Mason Jonathan Hunt Phil Goff and David Cunliffe served New Lynn and the country well—all of them as Ministers and excellent electorate MPs. Thank you to Jonathan Hunt for his support of my campaign and to my old friend David Cunliffe. David and I have been friends for over 30 years now since we were both students. He is held in great affection and very high regard in New Lynn. David I very much doubt that I will do things exactly the same way as you—red hair aside—but I do hope to emulate your service and your kindness as an electorate MP.I am somewhat of an intellectual as these things go in New Zealand but it does take all sorts to form a Government. As I prepared for this moment I thought of the people who have guided me and taught me and helped me to form my own ideas. From my mother Marie Russell I learnt feminism. I am an only daughter and Mum taught me to stand up for myself amidst the rolling maul of my three brothers. She taught me the value of independence of being able to provide for myself so that I might operate as a free woman and she taught me the value of speaking out and in a very practical way found the money for me to have speech lessons so that I could speak out. Later on I learnt the word "feminist" from my Auntie Marie and from many conversations with my fabulous feminist friends I learnt about structures of power in our society and how we might make things better for everyone.From my father David Russell I learnt integrity. Dad was a very successful primary sector accountant and one of the reasons for his success was that he was very honest. He would always work to get the best outcome for his clients firmly within the law. For Dad if it was a bit grey it was black and he simply wouldn't go there. He was often a counsellor for his clients talking them through personal issues always taking the word "professional" to mean so much more than just "technical expert". I admired my dad so much that I followed him into accountancy working in both the private sector and the public sector and running my own small consulting company.But I've always had a hunger for ideas so I returned to university to study philosophy. From Dr Andrew Brien and Professor Philip Pettit I learnt the ideas that have driven my commitment to Labour. I am absolutely committed to equality. Not the thin formal version of equality where each person is theoretically equal before the law but real substantive equality where each person can look the other in the eye when no one is the master when no one must bow and scrape and ingratiate in order to get by. If we believe in the fundamental worth of all human beings then we must aim for real equality. A person who is truly equal is a person who is free to make choices a person who can flourish and live to the best of their abilities. That might sound highly individualistic as though we are all little atomised units living in some libertarian paradise but the theory I studied recognises another crucial fact about human beings one that comes to us from as far back as Aristotle: human beings are social animals living in the warp and weft of communities. We need to find ways for each person to flourish for each person to live their own life as they choose while at the same time understanding that we do this collectively together.So how do we achieve this? We do it by law and we do it by institutions. We create freedom not freedom from the law but freedom by and through the law and freedom guaranteed by our institutions. We must actively enable people to be free and to be equal. We do what Labour parties have always done. We ensure that each person has a decent education so they can participate in our society. We make sure we have a proper health system so that illness and accident do not mean disaster. We have a welfare system so that we can tide people through the bad times and they are not reduced to living on the capriciousness of others' charity. We support unions so that employers and workers can negotiate together as equals. We ensure that people don't live in fear of others.In June this year I visited a young woman in New Lynn. She aired out her house she cleaned she heated the one room she could afford to heat and still her ceiling was black with mould and her baby was in and out of hospital. But she didn't want to ask her landlord for assistance for fear that she would be evicted. That is why we need the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act.To put these ideas into a phrase it is the difference between subjects who are bound to obedience and citizens who are free and equal. When a young mother doesn't dare ask for basic repairs then she is a subject not a citizen. When a worker can lose his job because he talked to the union then he is a subject not a citizen. When we say to a woman who was raped "But what were you wearing?" then she is a subject not a citizen. When we decline to take action on the coming catastrophe of climate change we treat our children as subjects not citizens. When an LGBTQI+ person fears to go into Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ) because they have been treated as less than human then they are a subject not a citizen.There have been many stories about the difficulties people have had with WINZ in recent years and it's tempting to blame the individual staff but I know myself as a former public servant that people who work for the Government take those words "public" and "servant" very seriously; they are there to serve the people of New Zealand. I'm sure the workers in WINZ are proud to be public servants but through the policies and procedures that have been set up there we have forced our public servants to turn their fellow citizens into subjects over whom they rule. That is demeaning to both and a fundamental failing of Government.We need to make people citizens again not just producers in an economy or the objects of data analysis for social investment but people individuals who matter in their own right free and equal citizens in a society that cherishes everyone.When I wrote my doctoral thesis I used these ideas and applied them to the problems and opportunities of living in multicultural societies. That multicultural society is a reality in New Lynn where people from so many different cultures and ethnicities live together in tolerance and respect. I especially want to work on ways of helping people from all the different communities to participate in Government at the local level and at national level.And I want to bring that understanding of subjects and citizens to my specialist area of taxation. I learnt about tax through working with the extraordinary public servants in the policy advice division at the Inland Revenue Department through teaching tax at Massey University and through writing about tax with Terry Baucher. Having a fair tax system is part of enabling citizenship both in terms of how we collect taxes and how we use them to pay for the institutions that let us flourish.There is another person who taught me: my beloved uncle Tony Russell. He was my third parent. Tony was a priest in the Roman Catholic Church although eventually he left the church altogether. He wrote his doctoral thesis in liberation theology and he was the first person to suggest that I should study at doctoral level myself. When he was diagnosed with cancer he wrote a last testament distilling the wisdom he had learnt over many years into a few words. I read that testament aloud at his funeral. He said that the greatest value he had learnt was compassion; that we ought always to remember the humanity of the people we deal with and to treat each other and ourselves with compassion. That is how I have tried to work with my students and how I will now try to work as the servant of people in New Lynn and in this beautiful country.There are four people here today who are the world to me. I am so proud of my three beautiful daughters young women of good heart and compassion who reach out and look after other people who are the great joy and delight of my life. Ruth Sophia and Bridgid thank you for all the support you have given me.And my husband Professor Malcolm Wright. We've been together for nearly three decades now but we kept a secret from each other until well after our wedding when we eventually discovered that we are both Star Trek fans. We both love Star Trek for the science the wonder the hokeyness the humour and the belief in a better world. It's what we both aspire to. Malcolm: thank you for your belief in me. Because of you I'm setting out on this continuing mission to explore new ways of doing things to seek out new ideas and new visions to boldly go and make New Lynn this country and this world a better place. Thank you for journeying with me. [Applause]"