Wilkinson Kate: Address in Reply 
Wilkinson Kate: Address in Reply 
[Volume:628;Page:295] 
KATE WILKINSON (National) 
: 
 Madam Speaker I too would like to congratulate you and the Deputy Speaker on your respective elections. To be constantly fair impartial and unbiased is no easy task and I am confident that you should do this well. 
I remember well my first trip to Parliament. I was a very young country kid from Chertsey Primary School—one of those very special rural schools offering a very special education. The school was the centre of the community a wonderful place of learning. It encouraged us to learn and develop. It encouraged us to succeed and if we failed to try again and fail better or even succeed the second time. Chertsey school is now on this Government’s death row for rural schools awaiting execution. I remember standing at the Chertsey Railway Station waiting for the train to take us to Lyttelton. Chertsey Railway Station is now also gone. I remember taking the overnight ferry from Lyttelton to Wellington. The ferry no longer sails. And I remember my first visit to Parliament. Thankfully at least Parliament still remains. 
As I look back through maiden speeches relating to the Waimakariri electorate—albeit somewhat changed due to boundary adjustments—I realise that so much has changed yet so little. Roading water and infrastructure are still issues; little has changed there. But as Derek Quigley the member of Parliament for Rangiora said in his own maiden speech many many years ago: “One of the most serious of these [problems] in my electorate is the loss of people from the country areas and their movement to the cities.” Now the opposite is true. More people are moving from the towns to the lifestyles of the country. The farms are becoming fewer and the number of people greater. 
So much change yet so little change. The rail has gone the railway station has gone the ferry has gone—the school should definitely not go—but what must not go is our sense of aspiration and confidence and pride as New Zealanders our freedom of choice our common sense our self-responsibility and accountability our insistence that mediocrity is OK but excellence is better and our belief in the dignity of work and the incentives of hard work. Those beliefs must stay and be reinforced and practised every day of every week of every month of every year. 
 So I now enter Parliament armed with a firearms licence a heavy trade and trailer licence plus an LLB and a licence to practise law trusting that my own arsenal of experience qualifications and ability is sufficient to make the difference that I am sure every one of us aspires to do. 
With your indulgence Madam Speaker I would like to have a brief interlude to thank the wonderful people of Waimakariri my campaign team my army of supporters and friends and most important the National Party under the great leadership of Don Brash for getting me here and for giving me such an exciting yet humbling privilege of serving not only Waimakariri not only our farmers and our primary producers who are so vital to our country’s well-being and so often overlooked but also all New Zealanders. Without all that support I would not be here. 
I am a fifth-generation New Zealander hugely patriotic passionate about New Zealand and a hugely parochial Cantabrian. I am also fortunate to have UK patriality. I am proud of my ties with the UK with the history and the traditions of the UK—ties that we as a country still have and from which we can still benefit. I am not at this stage ready to cut those ties. I do not believe in change for the sake of change. We do not throw out the dirty bathwater unless we have clean bathwater to replace it. One day we may be ready for that change. But when we are truly ready we will all know and we should take care that it is the right decision at the right time with the right mandate. 
The mandate was not there to cut our ties with the Privy Council. We cannot let that happen again. Political expediency—personal leanings—must take second place to what is in the best interests for New Zealand and for New Zealanders. That is the only and ultimate test. New Zealanders are too important to be used as pawns in the chess game of politics. 
We all have to believe that New Zealand is the best country in the world and it really is the best country in the world which is why we must avidly protect our borders and allow entry to those who have that belief and that passion and not to those who want to change our Kiwi spirit. We must jealously guard that Kiwi spirit and evolve that spirit—let it change but not enforce change—enhance that spirit but not destroy that spirit. 
So what is it about our Kiwi spirit of which we must be so protective and so proud? Our forefathers have fought for us have sacrificed for us and have given us what we must now defend and protect for our own ascendants. We owe them. We have a duty. We have an obligation and in return for that obligation and duty we are granted the rights and privileges to be New Zealanders and to live in the best country in the world. 
We should not be bludgers and I am ashamed that some regard us as bludgers. That is not part of our Kiwi spirit. We must play our part in the global democracy even though playing that part may be extremely difficult. We are not so small that as a country we cannot make a difference and an impact. But we are small and isolated enough that we cannot afford to shun our friends and our allies. Our size and our isolation are our strength. They are also our weakness. 
As New Zealanders we are proud of our number eight wire innovation and ingenuity our do-it-yourself enthusiasm. We are proud of our Hamilton jets our Gallagher electric fencing and much more. Yet we restrict we hobble and we over-regulate our DIYers so that for example my Waimakariri farmers cannot erect a hayshed even though they may have done so for 50 years or so without causing any harm or any problems. My Waimakariri farmers cannot now erect their own hayshed without having it done or constantly supervised by a qualified certifier. That saddens me. The proponents of such restrictive hobbling and unnecessary legislation sadden me for showing such a lack of understanding of our Kiwi spirit. Rather than being the clarion call for DIYers it may indeed be their death knell. 
We have even heard it said that “the New Zealand pastime of inventing things with number eight wire and a four-by-two is a little romance that needs to be put to bed”. Well I do not think so. 
We have laws attempting to legislate for common sense. Lolly scrambles are banned. Pipe band marches are stopped. Can members imagine Sir Edmund Hillary trying to navigate through our current occupational safety and health and other laws when attempting and achieving the conquest of Mount Everest—and would the Department of Conservation have actually unlocked the gates? Legislating for common sense is not sensible. We must ensure our laws do not incarcerate and destroy our Kiwi spirit. 
In the words of Justice Willie Young: “It is easy and trite to say that difficult cases make bad law; but it is perhaps also right to remember that bad law produces difficult cases.” We are responsible for ensuring that we do not make bad law. We have laws of strict liability yet paradoxically we have other laws that encourage the abdication of our responsibility and liability. One has only to look at our occupational safety and health in employment laws to stumble across many an example of that. We have laws intended to reduce or eliminate some mischief yet the consequences of those laws whether intended or unintended are often worse than the mischief itself. The cure is worse than the disease. 
The proposed public access laws are a classic example of that. When 98 percent of farmers allow access over their land if asked why do we even need to contemplate a new law? Where is the mischief? And that is totally aside from the very important issue of the sanctity of property rights. The confiscation of private property rights without compensation is plain and simple State theft and we must not allow that to happen. 
We have laws for a lawless minority that are often feckless against such lawless minority but at a huge cost and disadvantage to our lawful majority. We have laws that some think do not apply to them. It has been said that “the people become more subservient to justice when they see the author of a law obeying it himself”—or herself. No one is above the law in New Zealand. It is not a subjective assessment to decide which laws to obey and which laws to ignore. Obeying our laws is a necessity; it is not a luxury. Whether it is the Official Information Act the Summary Offences Act the Crimes Act or any other Act they are there for us all to obey. No one is above the law. 
Democracy and indeed justice must be above politics. We cannot allow either democracy or justice to become merely a political expedient. It is an offence to pervert the course of justice. It is also offensive to subvert the course of democracy. We are charged with upholding both and we must do that. 
It is an absolute privilege to be part of our parliamentary process. It is also a huge responsibility—a responsibility that I take very seriously. I hope that when it comes to my valedictory speech I will be able to say I exercised that responsibility well with integrity with enthusiasm with soul with spirit and with my arsenal still intact. 
I would like to finish with a quote from Abraham Lincoln. It has been used before and no doubt will be used again. But I think it says it all: “You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.” 
Debate interrupted.