Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I rise to speak grateful that so many parliamentary colleagues from around the Chamber have made a special effort to be here for my humble opening remarks. It is also a privilege to make my maiden statement while you are in the Chair Mr Speaker and I thank you for that opportunity. It is an appropriate time to thank and acknowledge others who have helped me in my long and winding journey to this place which began with a bright and rather optimistic challenge to the member for Pakuranga some 15 years ago. I thank my Labour Party colleagues and caucus and the wider party for their support and for the occasional brutal but useful lesson meted out over that time. Representing harmoniously the two intertwined wings of my party I acknowledge the presence here today of both my leader Andrew Little and members of the New Zealand Council of the Labour Party. I also want to acknowledge my opponent from the Mt Roskill by-election on the other side of the House Parmjeet Parmar and thank her for an energetic campaign that ensured that Mt Roskill voters had a real choice on offer at the polls. Finally my undying gratitude goes to those who provided political and personal support to me during the long by-election campaign. I had an outstanding campaign team made up mainly of young activists with a strong desire to make life better for their fellow citizens. They also had an understanding that doing so requires hard graft discipline and winning elections to make change. Led with precision by my campaign manager Shayne Misselbrook who at just 28 years of age marshalled over 900 volunteers from all walks of life it was a campaign that showed that politics is still relevant in people's individual and community lives—a theme that I will return to later. At all times I have had the unflinching support of my wife Julie who balances her support for me with her own local government career the understanding of my boys Jacob and Daniel and the relative indifference of my 1-year-old son Thomas and the backing of many friends and wider family—my aroha to you all. I intend to do your support justice. The electorate I am proud to represent in this House is a place that people have been coming to for a start in life for hundreds of years. The Waiohua people first settled in Mount Roskill some 600 years ago attracted to the bounty of the harbour and the wetlands and to the protection of our maunga Puketāpapa and Te Tātua-ā-Riukiuta. Pākehā settlers arrived in the late 19th century to farm and labour seeking to build better lives than the ones that they had left behind in the grim industrialised cities of the United Kingdom. Then in the 1930s and 1940s the first Labour Government began building the Mount Roskill that we recognise today. State homes were built in their thousands around places like Three Kings Wesley and Mount Roskill South providing housing and the basis of community for huge numbers of working-class families who flooded into the area seeking their start in life. In Mount Roskill change has been constant. From the 1960s onwards large numbers of people from the Pacific communities came to Mount Roskill seeking work education and a place of opportunity for their families and in more recent decades people have come from every corner and continent of the globe with the Indian and Chinese communities in particular deciding to settle in Mount Roskill. Some have fled war and persecution; others poverty and insecurity but all have come for that same reason—to make a start to build a life for their families and to contribute—and that has certainly been the experience of my own family. Julie and I settled in Mount Roskill in our early 20s. With reasonable middle-income jobs we could buy a modest house and put down roots. We have made friends joined groups and raised our children. Our eldest boys go to our local decile 2 public school Waikowhai Primary School—a melting pot of people from different faiths backgrounds classes and socio-economic situations and one of the beautiful beating hearts of our community. Because we have a stake in our community we have been able to give back in different ways and we have also received help from others when we have needed it. Mount Roskill gave my family the start in life that we needed and others are no less deserving of that opportunity. What I have seen in Mount Roskill and elsewhere is that individuals do well achieve their potential and contribute back when they live in strong and fair communities. It is a false choice to suggest that we must choose between successful individuals and a fair society. The two rest upon and reinforce one another. And so in this House I see my fundamental duty of representation to my constituents as being to work towards just structures and systems that build strong and fair communities allowing individuals to flourish. Sometimes I feel that with good hearts we put band-aids on problems in our communities but that is often ineffective temporary and expensive whereas communities with decent housing high-quality education good jobs with living wages and a bit of stability and hope will have the resilience and resources to get through with fewer ad hoc interventions. Decent affordable housing lies at the heart of stable successful communities. It worries me deeply that a young couple today—like Julie and me 14 years ago but today—need $1 million to buy into my working-class decile 2 street in Mount Roskill South. I fear that my mixed community risks being homogenised when ordinary working people are being priced out of basic rentals. My predecessor Phil Goff spoke about the centrality of decent housing in his maiden speech some 35 years ago. Grant Robertson: Is that all?MICHAEL WOOD: That is all. His pleas received a brusque and simple interjection—Heh!"—from one of the right honourable Prime Minister's predecessors. I live in hope that members across this House might work together more constructively on solutions for housing during this term. Phil has been both a mentor and a friend to me since Julie and I moved into Mount Roskill 14 years ago. His record of service to our community has been outstanding as evidenced by his long tenure which was interrupted only by a brief sabbatical between 1990 and 1993. Phil's decency warmth and capacity for sheer hard work made him a parliamentarian respected in Mt Roskill and across this House. On behalf of Mt Roskill Phil I say thank you for your service and also thank you for our forthcoming discussion about paying for Dominion Road light rail. Mount Roskill's proud history of Labour representation extends back even further. Since 1931 our community has been represented by Labour MPs for all but 12 years and every time by people of substance and conviction including the pacifist Frank Langstone who rebelled over peacetime conscription; the chief whip from the first Labour Government Arthur S Richards; and third Labour Government Minister Arthur Faulkner. Those members represented Mount Roskill during its great post-war expansion when it was transformed from swamp and farm into New Zealand's largest borough. It was a period when far-sighted central government and local government leaders invested in the infrastructure that a growing city needed. They recognised that growth requires investment if we are to provide a decent standard of living and realise the benefits of an expanded urban population. Today Mount Roskill Auckland and our other growing cities are at a juncture. We can either choke on our growth or realise our potential by investing in modern high-quality infrastructure especially decent housing and quality public transport. In line with this I intend to work within this House as promised during my campaign for the realisation of modern light rail on the Auckland isthmus—something we had until 1956 when one of the Southern Hemisphere's most patronised tram networks was foolishly torn up. Modern public transport in our cities is not just about moving people around our communities efficiently. It is about revitalising our local centres reducing harmful emissions and creating the right incentives for investment in high-quality affordable medium-density housing along our main streets. It is about Auckland and our other urban centres taking their place as grown-up international cities in which growth is an opportunity not a millstone and I hope to work with other open-minded members across this House who care about Auckland and our cities to make this a reality. From the deeply practical matters of trams and tracks I want to turn now to the importance of ideas in shaping what we do in this House. It has become strangely fashionable in political campaigning—and in fact almost de rigueur in local government—to declaim any actual interest in politics and political ideas. You know mechanics are generally thought better of for knowing something about mechanics and I do moderately value my general practitioner's medical qualifications and expertise but being "political" tends to be a term of derision even for those we charge with making the most serious political decisions. And some of that is earned. Political trust in this country was badly corroded in the 1980s and 1990s by Governments of both stripes that regardless of what you might think about the contents of their programmes fundamentally broke faith with their electors. Bad decisions are made by every Government and across Western democracies there is no doubt that a range of economic and cultural factors have led to a greater disconnect between people and their Governments. Yet it is entirely the wrong response for those of us who have the privilege of sitting in this House to shrink back from the responsibility that we have to engage in serious political dialogue with our communities. Repeating key lines having fun with selfies and hosing down problems—which come up from time to time I am told—are a part of the job but we also have a duty to engage with the real long-term issues our country faces to raise ideas and to participate in meaningful debate with each other and the people of our country. If we do not we leave an emaciated public sphere in which public disengagement deepens and people lose faith in the capacity of democracy to provide solutions and that lays the groundwork for cynicism blame and demagoguery. I reject the notion that New Zealanders do not care about politics any more. Every day in Mt Roskill I meet people who care deeply about the issues but who struggle to engage with our system beyond casting a ballot every 3 years. I say that if our systems are inaccessible and if our democratic institutions seem remote and technocratic then it is up to us to change them not to blame our voters—our citizens. I believe that people are hungry for ideas to solve problems and create opportunities. As parliamentarians we have to carry with us and communicate a set of values and a positive vision for what could be. But more than that I believe it is important to set out and develop a coherent set of ideas about how we get there. That is our task. For my own part my interest in politics and my commitment to the labour movement is an external expression of what I most deeply believe in. My Christian faith—I am an active Anglican—imbues me with a profound belief that every life has an essential dignity that we flourish when we are connected to one another in community and that the world we live in is a gift to be cared for not exploited for the benefit of a few. Those are the values that I will always go back to in this House. But as St Francis of Assisi once said: "Preach the gospel to all the world. Use words if necessary." Values alone whether held in your heart expressed in flowing prose or brilliantly tweeted are not enough in and of themselves; it is the doing that changes things for the better. The people I draw special inspiration from are those who take their deep aroha for others and drive practical real-world change—pulling down unjust structures striving for peace and building communities that enable people to truly flourish and reach their potential. They are people like the great British philosopher Bertrand Russell who travelled a road from scholarship to activism protesting against the scourge of nuclear weapons in his late 90s; people like Michael Joseph Savage who considered Labour's peaceful political revolution to be "applied Christianity" as his Government changed New Zealand for the better; and people like Helen Kelly one of the great New Zealanders of our time and someone I was proud to serve alongside in the New Zealand trade union movement—a person who had a capacity to turn conviction into real-world change. In her courageous final year Helen spoke simply of kindness love and decency. There was no divine driver for Helen but different routes up the same hill I think. The progressive politics that I believe in picks up our values and works through our imperfect democratic systems to make life better for people. I believe in Government that shows vision and leadership and is always restless to solve problems and build on our strengths—the Government that recognises that change is constant but that we are not helpless in its face—and as change happens my party has a proud record of ensuring that there is a place at the table for all and that the interests of the many not the few are served. Coming out of 6 years working at the grassroots in local government I also believe in Government that is more trusting of local communities and that is willing to devolve power not as a smokescreen for walking away but because partnering with and resourcing and giving power to local communities can build enduring solutions. Finally I want to speak about the value of balance in our society and our political system. Humans are complex and the societies we live in even more so. If the needs and aspirations of some are given overwhelming weight over others then resentment and discord are the result. In my view then one of the core tasks of Government is to ensure that balance is maintained—a fair balance of interests power and resources recognising that an imbalance in any of these areas privileges some and inhibits others from achieving their potential and that such injustice will hurt us all in the end. I believe in a balance between having a clear world view and striving to achieve it and being open to the ideas of others. I believe in the value of careful scepticism but we should balance this against the temptation to become hard and cynical. And in our roles as representatives of the people of New Zealand in this House we should seek to balance our strongly held beliefs with a bit of grace and decency towards people with alternative views. During the Mt Roskill by-election campaign I was cast as a pugilistic maniac by a certain media outlet one weekend only to be labelled a boring machine politician by the same network a week later. In this House I will be aiming for balance and seeking a happy mid-point between those two extremes and I look forward to working for positive change here for however long I am privileged to serve. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa. Thank you. Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7.30 p.m."