Marcroft JennyJENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Ka tangi te tītī ka tangi te kākā ka tangi hoki ahau: tīhei mauri ora!" E ngā mana e ngā reo e ngā rau rangatira mā: tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.Ko Whakarongorua te maunga ko Utakura te awa ko Ngātokimatawhaorua te waka ko Te Honihoni Te Popotō Te Ngahingahi ngā hapū ko Ūtutewhanga-te-raorao ko Hokianga-nui-ā-Kupe te moana ko Ngāpuhi te iwi ko Te Puketawa te marae ko Heeni Kingi tōku kuia ko Lyndon Marcroft rāua ko Helen King ōku mātua ko Lily taku tamāhine ko Jenny ahau."Hūtia te rito o te haraheke kei rā te komako e kō? He aha te mea nui? Māku e kī atu: he tangata he tangata he tangata!" Nō reira e ngā iwi e tau mai nei: tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.["The tītī cries the kākā cries and I lament as well: behold the breath of life!" To the authorities languages esteemed ones and others: salutations acknowledgments and accolades to you collectively and to us all.Whakarongorua is the mountain Utakura is the river Ngātokimatawhaorua is the canoe Te Honihoni Te Popotō and Ngahingahi are the subtribes Ūtutewhanga-te-raorao and Hokianga-nui-ā-Kupe are the seas Ngāpuhi is the tribe Te Puketawa is the marae Heeni Kingi is my female elder Lyndon Marcroft and Helen King are my parents Lily is my daughter and I am Jenny."Pluck out the centre shoot of the flax clump and where then will the bellbird be love? What indeed is the greatest thing? I will say: it is people it is people it is people!" And so to you the people seated about here: salutations acknowledgments and accolades to you collectively and to us all.]Congratulations to you Mr Speaker on your appointment to this new role. It is a privilege to stand in this House of Parliament before so many esteemed and honourable members and more so before the peoples tongues and tribes of Aotearoa New Zealand. I stand not for myself but for those who have invested their time effort and energy into the body and soul of the person before you. As a recipient of their efforts I feel duty to serve to the best of my ability and with the strength and determination that I have.There are many to thank for the opportunity to stand to speak to represent and to work for the progress of the nation. I firstly thank the Rt Hon Winston Peters for his leadership political vision and uncompromising quest to hold true to the New Zealand First values. My talented caucus colleagues and my fellow kapa haka mum from all those years ago Tracey Martin: for shining the light on my political pathway. The New Zealand First board and my electorate team: Lee Sarah Julian Lee and our volunteers; to my brother Paul my sisters Marian Claire and Gabriel and their families for their support in all ways; to my aunt Gillian and uncle Michael Harris; and to my heart my daughter Lily—thank you all. To my family and my dear friends in the gallery today: thank you for being here with me.There are other people I will thank people whose presence is powerful and abiding. I pay first homage to my mother Helen Marian King an artist and teacher from Wellington. Helen was a passionate advocate for the arts and pioneered the establishment of the Rotorua Art Society which has since become part of the Rotorua Museum. Mum filled our home with paintings pottery and sculpture and networked with many artists of her era. While she hung paintings for exhibitions I spent hours exploring the dusty sulphurous chambers of the historic Rotorua Bathhouse which at the time had fallen into neglect.My father Lyndon Harrison Marcroft had served firstly with the J Force and then with the K Force with the UN in Korea—now 67 years later a nation still in the news. He returned to civilian life as a school teacher and then an accountant. Dad was born in Utakura in Hokianga but grew up in Ngongotahā on the shores of Lake Rotorua. Both his parents had come down from the North to take advantage of the timber opportunities that were opening up in the region.The Marcrofts were Albertlanders a group of non-conformists who came to New Zealand in 1863 on board the Matilda Wattenbach seeking a new life but who ended up in dire straits. They would have perished if it hadn't been for the manaaki of the local iwi from Ōruawharo who fed and housed them.My poppa Hubert Lyndon Marcroft worked at the Fletcher sawmill in Ngongotahā. He would be chuffed about New Zealand First's forestry and billion trees projects. My nana Heeni Kingi also known as Jeannie from Utakura came down with her sister Carrie to work as tourist guides at Whakarewarewa. My grandparents' first house was a tent—but they had a wooden floor. Nana was a matriarch of the most gentle and loving nature and her sponge cakes were legendary. For her family was everything.My maternal grandmother Marian Lydia Shaw was born in Kaponga. Her family were early arrivals sailing from Plymouth to New Plymouth on the Amelia Thompson in 1841. The school dental nurse married Jack King an aspiring architect and engineer with Dawson and Cooke which went on to become King & Dawson a Wellington company still in existence today. Jack became a leading coolstore designer in the 1950s a life fellow of Standards New Zealand president of the New Zealand Institute of Architects and recipient in 1966 of a CBE.According to our family history Jack entered a competition to design the Wellington cenotaph. Although he didn't win his entry included lions at the base of the design. Grandpa King's lions as they came to be known were later added to the base of the cenotaph as a World War II memorial. When you leave the House today make sure you stop at the cenotaph and get a selfie with Grandpa King's lions.My parents Helen and Lyn created a loving and secure family for their five children. I'm the middle child and I have many precious memories of the love and fun we had: tramping in the bush swimming in the Blue Lake beach holidays at Pukehina church on Sunday and mucking about with our cousins and the McDowell Street kids.Our family was devastated however when my father suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 48. I was 11 years old and my youngest sister was just 18 months old. Unexpectedly our Ngāti Ngāraranui whanaunga asked my mother for dad's body. She agreed and so my father's tangi was held at Waiteti Marae on the shores of the lake. He did not go home to rest in Ngāpuhi so the dislocation from our hapū our iwi stretched out over many years to come.This knock back however was soon followed by another. About a year and a half later my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and our family like many others went through three years of radiotherapy chemotherapy doctors visits and blood counts. Her slow demise was hard to endure as the cancer took its toll.I pay particular thanks to my foster families who welcomed me into their homes: the Hill family of Rerewhakaaitu Marianne Saxton of Turakina and the Sweets of Tihi-o-Tonga. Also to Granny King a Kiwi matriarch of a staunch sort who swept in and scooped up her beloved grandchildren. For her family was everything.I note here New Zealand First's policy to increase free breast screening for women up to the age of 74. This forms part of our two-party coalition agreement with Labour. Our next challenge I believe is to include the screening of younger women. My mother was in her 30s when breast cancer rocked our world.The events I've described shaped my views on the importance of family and extended family to staunch the gaps that life sometimes opens up leaving children vulnerable. However families are not what they once were and sometimes there's nobody to pick up the pieces at which point the State must step in. For such a relatively affluent Western country 5600 children in State care is a pretty poor statistic. Do we have the moral courage to discuss the real underlying cause of it? I hope we can. Instead of just asking if we have a healthy economy we must also ask: do we have healthy children; do we have healthy families?My political beliefs and the values I hold stem directly from my personal experience not from an external ideology. They happen to be more traditional than radical more centrist than extreme because that is what has worked for me. I believe that trust underlies all beneficial human interactions and that trust is a two-way street built on mutual cooperation. These experiences make me sympathetic to the social family and mental health issues that result from people under financial stress.I believe there is a shadow over our land a shadow not cast by a long white cloud but an invisible shadow felt most acutely by those who live in poverty and debt. Poverty overshadows all aspects of life not just financial but social cultural and intellectual thus creating a poverty of the imagination for those affected to find ways to help themselves. This kind of poverty can be just as paralysing for those afflicted in 21st century New Zealand as it was during any feudal period. Political freedom is one thing but financial freedom is quite another. Liberty can be whittled away in many different ways frittered away a percentage at a time dollar by dollar rule by rule and clause by clause. When liberty is lost the accompanying losses of self-determination self-esteem and self-respect are all compounded. There's a well-known saying that "Without hope the people perish" but the problem with perishing is that it's painfully slow and it affects children who often grow up damaged.Now the media industry where I have spent almost 30 years is going through a series of crises as it adjusts to a dynamically changing news and media environment. The advent of smartphones has put technology into the hands of citizens who now have the tools to create their own content and completely bypass gatekeepers of the established media. This is an echo of a pattern that occurred in the late 1970s when magnetic tape cassettes put recording technology into the hands of rock and roll wannabes. What these enthusiasts lacked in technique and production values they more than made up for in attitude. Armed with second-hand instruments and a garage somewhere distant like Dunedin they set about conducting their jangle-and-drone experiments which simultaneously delighted their peers and dismayed their parents. The same nonconformist give-it-a-go attitude has been adopted by media-savvy millennials and Gen Xers who are simply bypassing the establishment and creating their alternative punk media. Citizen journalists with no overheads no oversight no style guides no ethics policies and no advertisers are able to create and publish content in competition with the mainstream. The quality of the content produced is of course highly variable. The mainstream media has been pushed into a losing battle for views and clickbait journalism has resulted. For all its faults this new-wave journalism does sometimes deliver doses of honesty and in a world jaded by spin doctors euphemisms and McCarthyist slogans the ring of truth will always find a listening ear.The shift and tone of the media has been accompanied by a shift away from neutrality. This shift is the result of the pursuit of a commercial imperative and the scaling back of public broadcasting. As public broadcasters now compete in an environment of clickbait commercial media on the one hand and blogger-based journalism on the other it's hard to maintain the standard of impartiality that is essential for this public service.New Zealand First values certain foundational principles that are fundamental to our Westminster-style democracy. One of these is the independence of the courts. Another is the importance of the fourth estate in communicating with the people. Both require rules to work effectively both require funding and both require the support of Government. I contend that though the court of public opinion in Aotearoa New Zealand does not meet at a certain time and place like this court of Parliament or a court of law the court of public opinion is nevertheless a space where important discussions about our nation are aired. Public broadcasting performs an essential service to the nation that cannot be served by commercial media nor by independent volunteers. The role of public broadcasting in the 21st century I believe is to shape in the minds of its people not only the trajectory of our nation but also the tenor of its flight. For these reasons I support the strengthening of public broadcasting Television New Zealand Radio New Zealand and the depoliticisation of Māori Television.My path to Parliament was unexpected although I had a background interest in politics from a news context. I was soon to realise there was a role for me. A few years ago I was called to reconnect with my Māori heritage which brought me face-to-face with the deprivation in the North. Our valley in north Hokianga is a place where extension cords stretch from windows across to lichen-encrusted caravans where there are old buildings leaning in the wind half the weatherboards fallen off and the silent poverty that blows through the region and yet it was a place steeped in political history. My tupuna the Ngāpuhi prophet Āperahama Taonui had a deep interest in politics and often expressed his ideas in visionary terms. His father Makoare Te Taonui signed He Whakaputanga the declaration of independence in 1835 and then Te Tiriti o Waitangi at Mangungu on 12 February 1840. My new-found Utakura cousins Kay and Rudy Taylor and Papa Manuwera Tohu QSM drew me into the whānau and into the heart of Ngāpuhi politics.I was given the job of pumping up the volume of the voice of Te Kotahitanga o Ngā Hapū Ngāpuhi on our Treaty settlement journey. I believe there's hope now that we can and must move forward together for the benefit of all our families. It is time to heal; it is time for Ngāpuhi.So here I stand in this House of Representatives with the korowai of my ancestors on my shoulders only too aware of the history the intellect and the pressing needs of the nation that all come together in this place. I may not be the loudest voice in the room but I will bring a strong and compassionate voice for all the people as I seek to serve this amazing nation. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[Applause]Waiata"