Clark David: Address in Reply 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clark David: Address in Reply 
[Sitting date: 14 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:348. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 Mr Speaker I congratulate you on your election. Support for your appointment extended across the House. That is testament to the success of your efforts during the first term of the current Government.  
I have the honour of being the 12th member of Parliament to represent the Dunedin North electorate. The seat of Dunedin North has a proud history of strong representation by the Labour Party both in Opposition and around the Cabinet table. The individuals who have held the seat have contributed to Labour holding it for 80 of the past 83 years.  
My predecessor the Hon Pete Hodgson can lay claim to a quarter of Dunedin North’s history with a Labour Party MP—more if you count his involvement before that. Pete pursued the integration of honest transparent and accountable economic policy with honest transparent and accountable environmental policy. He said so in his maiden speech. The year was 1990 and he argued for a price on carbon. He sought to make New Zealand “the first country in the world to have an economy that is truly sustainable”. Well we are not a truly sustainable economy yet. It was fully 18 years after Pete’s maiden speech that New Zealand finally legislated for a price on carbon. He played an important part in shaping that carbon debate. Pete got stuff done. His animal welfare private bill caused the Government to rewrite animal welfare legislation. It made New Zealand law amongst the best in the world. He did heavy lifting across 14 portfolios during 9 years in the Cabinet of the Clark Government. And he worked hard locally too. In his constituency work Pete wore his political colours lightly and was well-liked as his sizable majorities attest. As Pete makes good on his promise to withdraw from political life his talents and vigour are missed.  
The electorate of Dunedin North includes the northern coastal settlements of Waitati Warrington Karitane and Waikouaiti. The southern boundary is formed by the Otago harbour while the bulk of the central city and hill suburbs form the south-western boundary. But what of its flavour? Well Dunedin North is shaped by its Scottish heritage. Many of its important educational institutions including the University of Otago have Presbyterian roots. Manufacturing enterprises are important especially heavy engineering and the electorate contains a port with a skilled workforce that serves all of Otago. Dunedin North has more young people than any other electorate therefore the most who are single the most on lowest annual incomes and the highest proportion employed in education and training. It also has the highest proportion of people employed in the health care and social service sector.  
Those who made my election to the House possible have placed trust in me to represent this fine electorate. To them I extend my sincere thanks. In 2011 Dunedin North was the only general South Island seat where Labour won both votes. That is a credit to the hundreds of volunteers who helped out during the campaign and on election day and a tribute to the wisdom of the voters. To my wife Katrina I express gratitude for the support provided during the transition from my previous role of service at Selwyn College to one that will surely afford less reliable and frequent engagement in duties properly the responsibility of a father and a husband. Although my previous engagement in the parliamentary environment was short it was long enough to engender real understanding of the corresponding personal cost borne by wider families of the members of this House.  
Government will always be with us and as citizens we must decide what kind of Government we want. In my view Governments are elected to provide moral leadership not just to manage the economy to achieve things like market discipline and efficiency gains. Markets make excellent servants but terrible masters. Good regulation can harness markets to support people and their needs rather than the other way round. We must take our destiny into our own hands and shape the economy to benefit all of New Zealand. In recent decades those benefits have been shared too unequally.  
Politicians are elected to a life of public service; the service they are elected to is leadership. Leadership involves listening discerning assisting and decision making. Service should never be confused with servility. Politicians ought not to hide behind the term “service” awaiting a mandate of majority support on every issue and forgetting or perhaps never realising that the public have elected the politicians to do a job in good faith on their behalf. Politicians do not exist to rubber-stamp what the electorate has already decided but to articulate and share a vision of a better society.  
I will describe the better society to which I aspire. It has similarities with what founding members of the New Zealand Labour Party described as an “applied Christianity”. It is a society where accident of birth does not dictate one’s station and prospects. It is a society where every citizen can get ahead by dint of hard work that builds on their natural endowment. It is one where all have free and equal access to high-quality education a society where all have the ability to develop their talents sufficiently to ensure fulfilling and enriching lives. It is one in which choices are not driven by fear but are afforded by opportunity and in which everyone has access to legal representation regardless of their means. The society that I wish to live in recognises that prevention is better than cure. It has a health system with universal access: a trip to hospital does not require insurance or a cheque book. I believe that more careful attention needs to given to the prophylactic benefits of public health as compared with the resources required to attend to the illnesses of the dying and the diseases of the “worried well”.  
To support our objectives our economy must change and grow. We must recognise our dependence upon the primary sector and treasure and enhance it. But we must also diversify if we wish to be a prosperous nation. As a small country far from markets we must make some strategic decisions about the types of industries we wish to promote and support. The OECD recognises that we educate our kids well. We must leverage this learning for research for innovation and for New Zealand’s commercial gain. Dunedin is already a base for firms with a strong technology component. Taylormade Productions and Scott Technology are two of the most well-known but there are other weightless exporters locally like Pocketsmith Trunk.ly and 1000Minds. Squid gel DNA sequencing and probiotics illustrate the potential to commercialise science developed at Otago. We need more of this if we are going to prosper as a country.  
I have written and rewritten this speech several times. Allotted more time I would assert the benefits of placing a happiness index alongside our GDP metric as a way of measuring our progress as a society. I would suggest that a society is best judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. I would canvass the importance of New Zealand retaining a strong and independent voice in the Pacific. I would extol the benefits of universal provision of Maori language education both to brain development and to national identity. I would argue for appropriate financial instruments for the management of fresh water. I would emphasise the responsibility of current generations to hand over the planet in better shape than we inherited it. I would describe how we might reconsider financial transactions taxes gift and estate duties and a capital gains tax in order to broaden our tax base. And I would describe the nature of public services supported by a progressive taxation system that would drive greater social mobility. These topics are all close to my heart but I wish to concentrate the burden of my speech on one thing that is something of a precondition to good progress—that is greater equality.  
Sadly New Zealand has rushed towards greater inequality over the last 30 years. The truly wealthy have grabbed a disproportionately large slice of the economic growth pie at the expense of other New Zealanders. There is an urgent need to level an evermore slanted playing field. We need a broad-based and progressive taxation system that preserves the Kiwi dream of a country where a little talent and much hard work provide real opportunities to better one’s lot. My Christian upbringing instilled in me a strong sense of social justice. My theological education and my time as a Presbyterian minister have cemented that. That some people have many opportunities while others have few just does not feel right. For me this is a gut-level response rooted in firmly held values. A growing body of literature shows a correlation between societies with large inequalities and poor health longevity and other social statistics. A more equal society means better quality of life.  
Generating the conditions for a more equal society is the right thing to do but it increasingly seems that it is also the pragmatic thing to do. I believe that a fairer society also makes economic sense and here are four reasons why. First resources shared across society mean that all people are trained and available to make their best contribution to society. In New Zealand more than one in five children is born into poverty. These kids have to battle against the odds. They are more likely to suffer from diseases of poverty less likely to succeed in the education system and have higher chances of ending up in our prisons. For our country to get ahead we need all our children to realise their potential.  
Greater equality is good for a second reason. If we remunerate talent by valuing professions that support the whole of society rather than those that preserve the interests of a wealthy few we all benefit. Neurosurgeons and teachers give more to society than great brains wasted on exploiting distortions in poorly regulated financial markets.  
A third reason that greater equality makes pragmatic sense relates to public investment. Infrastructure is an example—witness growth in China’s high-speed rail network. It is 12 times bigger than it was in 2008 four times larger than that in any other country and is still growing at an astonishing rate. It is hard to imagine this happening in the USA today. Where a critical mass of the truly wealthy exert undue influence on the political process investment in infrastructure education research health care and other matters related to the common good dwindles and we all suffer. In any society with extremes of wealth and poverty the truly wealthy cease to value common assets. Able to buy what they desire they have no need for them.  
A fourth reason why more equal societies tend to be more successful is that people work harder when they know that the rules of society are fair. When everybody who does a fair day’s work can live well and when it is always possible for someone born in a family of modest means to be successful in their chosen field they are more likely to strive so to do. In New Zealand today the poverty of spirit that can result from birth into deprivation often has more far-reaching social consequences than those symptoms measured more immediately and with greater statistical ease.  
A more equal society that shares the benefits of a Western economy across its citizenry avoids unrealised potential wasted talent and a kind of selfish behaviour that results from distorted incentives and despair in the face of unfairness. Not only are the conditions for a fair society the right thing for Governments to busy themselves with but also they appear to provide for a better quality of life and the conditions for economic success. A more equal society is healthier wealthier and wise.