Hague Kevin: Maiden Statements 
Hague Kevin: Maiden Statements 
[Volume:651;Page:381] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 Ki te whai ao ki te ao marama. Tihei mauri ora. Ko te mea tuatahi me mihi ahau ki Te Runga Rawa nana nei nga mea katoa. Tena koe. Papatuanuku te whaea e takoto nei Ranginui e tu nei tena korua. Ka mihi mo nga mate ka tangihia e tatou i tenei wa. No reira e nga mate haere haere haere ki Hawaiki nui ki Hawaiki roa ki Hawaiki pamamao. Apiti hono tatai hono te hunga mate ki te hunga mate. Ki te hunga ora tena koutou. Nga mihi mo nga mana whenua o tenei rohe Te Ati Awa me Ngati Toa Rangatira hoki tena koutou. Nga mihi ki nga tangata whenua o Aotearoa mai i Te Ika a Maui tae noa ki Te Wai Pounamu me nga iwi katoa tena koutou. Inaianei ka huri ahau ki te korero e pa ana ki te kaupapa o tenei wa.  
[ 
To the world of light and enlightenment ’tis the sneeze of life. The first thing for me to do is to acknowledge the Almighty Above who created everything. Bless you. To Mother Earth lying here and Sky Father standing before us greetings to you two. I pay a tribute to the departed whom we mourn for today. Farewell depart journey on to the great Hawaiki the long Hawaiki and the distant Hawaiki. Let the dead be bound and bonded to each other. Greetings to you the living and the guardians of this region Te Ati Awa and Ngati Toa Rangatira greetings. I acknowledge the indigenous people of New Zealand from the North Island to the South Island. To you and everyone greetings. I turn now to the topic of this address 
.]  
I opened in Maori because I believe my first words in this House should be in the first language of this country. Earlier this week I took up my place in the House declaring allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen but I take this opportunity to also declare my intent to honour the commitment made by her ancestor which is the Treaty of Waitangi. 
I come to this House hoping to make a significant personal contribution to those issues that are important to me most especially the future of the planet upon which we live and depend and the type of society that our children and our grandchildren will inherit. It is perhaps fanciful to think of my own personal contribution and more appropriate to instead acknowledge that my role is as one of many: those who have come before and those who will come after me and those many working today in the very many aspects of the national and international Green movement. I salute you all. 
Being elected as a list MP perhaps brings a particular awareness that my being here is not a result of my work but a result of the work of very many others. I want to particularly acknowledge some of them. First of all I acknowledge my family: my father Chaz Hague; my brother and my sister-in-law Stewart and Bronwyn Hague who are in the Gallery today; and my partner Ian and my son Thomas who are not here today. I owe you all a great debt. I express my love and I promise to do my best to repay that debt. I acknowledge those others in the Gallery; Green Party staff members and supporters; my fellow Green Party MPs; those who may be listening or watching in New Zealand and around the world; my wider family; my friends; those who worked so hard to maximise the Green Party vote at this election particularly in West Coast - Tasman; and indeed members of the worldwide movement of Green parties. 
I want to explicitly acknowledge that I have friends from other parties in this Parliament and previous Parliaments. We all come to this House with differing personal philosophies but I hope a shared commitment to those whom we serve and to future generations. I give you an undertaking that I will listen to what you have to say and I hope that you will offer to reciprocate that commitment. 
I am conscious that I come to this Parliament bringing with me the hopes and expectations of many and I want to itemise some of those. There are cyclists who want to see roads safe and well-engineered for all road users or who see the fantastic potential of a national network of off-road cycling tracks. I acknowledge the Kennett brothers who have launched today their latest edition of  
Classic New Zealand Mountain Bike Rides 
. There are those who love wild rivers who hope for a new economics that values intrinsic natural characteristics and recreational use instead of just easily measured short-term financial gain. There are gay men lesbian women and the wider rainbow family who demand truly equal rights and equal opportunity. There are those who work in public health who know that the health of a population is largely a reflection of the power it has over its own circumstances and the environment surrounding it and that good health improvement can result only from political will. Let us provide that. There are those people who understand that the same formula of empowering communities and creating supportive environments is also the answer for problems in education in social welfare in criminal offending and in many other areas. Indeed these are not separate problems but all in large part manifestations of a common cause—marginalisation. Let us fix that too. Also there are those many New Zealanders who believe that our collective future depends on a relationship between Maori and non-Maori that honours the Treaty of Waitangi and finally the many who hope for a better future for our kids and for our planet. 
That is what I call a politics of aspiration. I guess my potential to disappoint is great! But I do not experience these expectations as a crushing or repressive weight but rather as a surging wave that lifts me up and sustains me. 
The challenges we face are very great indeed. Our biggest obstacle as  
New Scientist 
 recently reported in a grim edition that pales the international credit crisis into insignificance is a world economy geared to the sole aim of economic growth. Growth is not inherently bad but the indiscriminate approach to growth that sees any type of growth as good is our problem. Growth based on the increased use of non-renewable resources is by definition unsustainable and occurs at massive and irreversible cost to future generations. Growth achieved through the bubble economics of speculation is exploitation of another sort where the non-renewable resource is human dignity and human happiness. We must change to an economy of sustainability as a matter of urgency. We know this but we have not done so because of investment in the status quo—both direct financial literal investment and emotional investment which brings fear of the changes that will be necessary to achieve sustainable living. 
One of the strengths brought to this House by the Green Party is our charter which is based on four solid principles: ecological wisdom social responsibility appropriate decision-making and non-violence. I absolutely reject the idea that ethical or moral behaviour has its only source in religious faith. On the contrary my personal philosophy presupposes that there is no higher power that has for some reason disadvantaged some people and conversely privileged others or that will intervene to rectify this disparity or compensate its victims. In the absence of such external power the responsibility for determining how we should live together and the responsibility for acting to achieve that state is solely but collectively ours. 
Only two coherent philosophies are possible: survival of the fittest with no regard to the effect on any other person or a world in which we recognise our interdependence and have respect for the equal and inalienable rights of every person. I have a passionate adherence to the second of these belief systems. Effectively this personal belief of mine is the equivalent of the social responsibility principle in our charter. It has echoes in the idea of “to each according to their need; from each according to their means” or in my personal motivator “If not me then who? If not now then when?”. This is for me at the heart of my feelings of self-worth—that I have acted in an ethical and honourable way. 
What are these inalienable rights that each person is entitled to? Eleanor Roosevelt who was the driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights talked about equal justice equal dignity and equal opportunity without discrimination. Another valuable right to conceptualise is autonomy provided that the exercise of that autonomy does not reduce that of another person. For me the opportunity to make decisions affecting one’s own life tempered only by the effect of those decisions on others is driven directly from this idea and is exactly the idea captured by our principles of appropriate decision-making and non-violence. 
However it is the principle of ecological wisdom that is my greatest motivation for standing here today. In the same way that first-principles thinking leads me to a bedrock belief in universal human rights this thinking also leads me to consider the rest of the natural world not only from the perspective of resources that are necessary for the sustenance of human life but also from the perspective of the rights or intrinsic value of entities in their natural state. My personal principle is to take only what resources I need from the natural world and to harm the natural world to the least extent possible. This is the thinking behind my being vegetarian for nearly 30 years. But regardless of whether our attitude to the natural world is driven by philosophy as mine is or by the more pragmatic considerations of what is required for human beings to survive the logical consequence is ecological wisdom. 
My sense of urgency comes from the growing unease and certainty that I have that the human race is reaching or has reached some fundamental limits to its ability to take from the natural world. But we are not yet responding appropriately. Human beings are not well adapted to deal with gradually unfolding risk or dangers that are rare but catastrophic and our inaction now imperils the human rights of those generations yet to come. In the words of Lester Brown “We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognise. Nature is the timekeeper but we cannot see the clock. … We are in a race between tipping points in the earth’s natural systems and those in the world’s political systems. Which will tip first?”. In the past we have been saved from the consequences of our inadequate responses by technological advance. Although technology may now help us it is currently ill-directed and it will not be enough. 
At a time when across the world a small flame of hope has been kindled for the future of the human race and for the planet by the election of Barack Obama I am reminded of events that are 40 years old. One of my childhood memories is from 1968 in my grandparents’ house: a hush upon us all and tears streaming down my mother’s face as we heard of the death of Bobby Kennedy. 
As a new Green Party MP I am particularly conscious that I am standing on the shoulders of giants. When I greeted those who have passed on in my introductory remarks I thought of course of Rod Donald. But I also thought of my mother and my sister both of whom also died too young and did not live to see this day. I dedicate my time in Parliament to them. 
I know that some of you will look at the size of the problems we face and see them as insurmountable—that nothing that any one person can do will make any difference. Margaret Mead pointed out that in fact it is only the actions of individuals that make any difference. My own experience has incorporated many issues where the odds seemed hopeless but the steadfast application of individuals made all the difference. The most notable of these was the anti-apartheid movement where the apparently impregnable fortress of apartheid was brought down by the actions of individuals. 
In June 1966 Bobby Kennedy spoke in Cape Town to the National Union of South African Students’ Day of Affirmation and said this: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” Let us now cast our pebbles into the pond. No reira tena koutou tena koutou huri noa tena tatou katoa. 
Sitting suspended from 6.08 p.m. to 7 p.m.