Naylor JonoVALEDICTORY STATEMENTSJONO NAYLOR (National): E Te Mana Whakawā tēnā koe. Tuatahi he mihi ki Te Atua nāna nei ngā mea katoa! Ngā mihi ki a koutou e te whānau ngā mihi ki a koutou ki aku hoa o Te Whare Pāremata. He rā kia whai whakaaro ai ahau he rā tēnei mō te whakahari he rā anō mō te matapōuri.[An appreciation to God firstly as all things are His indeed. Acknowledgments to you collectively the family and to you my colleagues of Parliament. It is a day for me to reflect on and this is a day for me to make merry and also to be dejected.]Today is a day for reflection and a day for celebration and maybe even a touch of sorrow—maybe not. Today I stand to make my 153rd and last speech in this debating chamber. While my 3 short years here is a mere blip compared with the other speakers whom you will hear from today it also marks the end of 16 years as an elected member which started when I was first elected to the Palmerston North City Council in 2001. I want to start by acknowledging and thanking a number of people. Firstly my family who have believed in me stood by me and supported me through all of this—particularly Karen Chloe Luke and George and more recently Elisha and Ruamatahīapo. Thank you for sharing me with the public and for putting up with all that comes with public life. I have been privileged to do some pretty cool significant things in my life but there is nothing I have done or will ever do that is cooler or more significant than being your husband your father and your grandfather. I want to thank my friends who have believed in me stood by me and simply accepted me for who I am and not defined me by the titles that I have had. Thank you also to my financial supporters and volunteers who have helped me campaign over the years and who have put up signs and delivered thousands of flyers to letterboxes. Without your help I would never have had the privilege of doing what I have done. Particularly I want to acknowledge Trevor Day and Wendy Schultze from the local National Party for your unwavering commitment and your willingness to go beyond the call of duty. I have also been fortunate to have had some awesome staff in my time in Parliament. Sheryll Bernadette Gareth Katie and Elliot you have all gone the extra mile to ensure that our constituents are well cared for and to keep me on track. Thank you also to the National Party for giving me this awesome opportunity to serve in the House of Representatives. To my caucus colleagues it has been great to work with you and to be part of a great team that has been led by two incredible Prime Ministers in the Rt Hon Sir John Key and the Rt Hon Bill English. I also want to acknowledge the friends whom I have made amongst other parties across the House particularly the members of the Justice and Electoral Committee and the Social Services Committee. We have spent a lot of time together over the past 3 years and although we have had our challenges and the odd debate we have also mostly kept good humour and civility and I thank you for that. Lastly I want to thank those people who have made submissions to the committees that I have been on in the past 3 years. In our committees we have dealt with some pretty heavy issues from how coronial services work to child abuse and domestic violence and more. Your willingness to make yourself vulnerable and tell your stories has enriched our decision making and has taken a great deal of courage. The privilege of serving in this House has not been lost on me and I do not believe it is ever something that we as politicians should ever take for granted. Every day I walk down these halls I marvel that a boy from Masterton who became a youth worker and did a whole bunch of other things somehow had the opportunity to be one of 120 New Zealanders who at any one time gets to hold this position. I am here not because I am anyone special but because the people in New Zealand have seen fit to entrust their welfare and their future into our hands. We serve at their pleasure and with their best interests at heart. The good news is that I am convinced that by far the majority of people who also serve here also hold this view. We may disagree on the finer points of what we are trying to achieve for New Zealand but by and large we differ only on our methodology rather than the outcomes we strive for. It is important that we do not lose sight of this in the heat of political debate. Over my time here I have developed a love-hate relationship with this room. The challenge of speaking for 10 minutes on a topic you know nothing about is both exhilarating and soul-destroying all at the same time. The pointlessness of some of what we say drives me nuts but at the same time the to and fro of debate has its enjoyment also. I have done my best to keep what I say in here good-natured and in good spirit but I acknowledge that at times I may or may not have crossed the line. So if I have caused anyone offence in what I have said in a speech or interjected across the floor I sincerely apologise and ask that you would look at it as over-exuberance rather than it having any malicious intent. I have certainly had some fun and interesting times during my brief stay in Parliament. Shortly after starting here I was selected to represent the New Zealand Parliament at a United Nations human rights conference in the Philippines. I was not sure what to expect to be fair as my travelling companions Marama Fox and Peeni Henare were from other parties. It was all a bit of a new experience for all of us having armed motorcyclists escorting our minivan from the airport to the hotel but we soon got into the swing of it and I am sure the Manila karaoke scene will never be the same again. It proved to be the beginning of an uncanny connection between the three of us as somehow we ended up on a number of subsequent panels together over the past few years leading to the fact that every time we turned up and the same people were there we said we were getting the band back together. There have also been some very odd moments as a parliamentarian. One of the most interesting occurred during a protest at my office about the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. The police were concerned about safety and so as a good employer under the new health and safety Act I sent my staff home and the police provided me with my very own close protection squad member. He had a Taser but no gun. Shortly before the protest was due to begin someone came and sort of knocked on the window of my Parliamentary Service - approved reception window. I greeted her as I normally would and asked her whether I could help. She said: Is this where the protest is?". Given that I was about to be inundated with sign-waving loud hailer - bearing protesters it was my decision not to necessarily be quite as helpful as I might otherwise have been. I replied "What protest is that?" and—I kid you not—her response was this: "I don't know. They just said there was a protest at Jono Naylor's office so here I am." I then decided that it was OK to be polite again and I said to her: "Look I'm sure that if there is a protest of any kind it is more likely to be occurring outside the office rather than inside the office. So if you would like to go outside and wait and see if anybody else turns up that'll be fine." While I am sure that some of the protesters there may have been a little bit more informed it did make me wonder about the validity of their message. While I would like to say there has never been a dull moment in the past 3 years that would not be completely honest. As crucial and as helpful as they are to the successful running of New Zealand some pieces of legislation that I have helped progress through this House have not exactly been riveting. The Judicature Modernisation Bill in its 1200-page glory and the Private International Law (Choice of Law in Torts) Bill are a couple that spring to mind. That said if nothing else both of those bills helped me extend my vocabulary. However there have also been legislative and policy changes that I have been very proud to be associated with. The increases to benefits for families with children in real terms for the first time in 43 years the introduction of the social investment strategy to ensure that more early intervention is put in place for those who face the greatest risk of long-term poor outcomes for their lives improving our laws to deliver better outcomes for victims of domestic and sexual violence and of course the Oranga Tamariki legislation to ensure that the services for the protection of our most vulnerable children is delivering real improvements to their lives are only a few of them. It has been great to be part of a Government that has been prepared to tackle some of the difficult issues and take measures to improve people's lives. If anyone doubts the sincerity of this they only need to witness as I did the Hon Steven Joyce getting a little bit choked up when talking about how he felt seeing people talk about what a difference the changes announced in the Family Incomes Package in this year's Budget would make to their lives. A definite high point for me though in the last 3 years was one of those impromptu moments. It was an off-the-cuff speech I made on Te Pire mō Te Reo Māori / Māori Language Bill. I had not been intending to speak on that bill but wandered into this House as sometimes we are wont to do as politicians looking for somebody and I received a text from the other side of the House from Peeni Henare inciting me to inject myself into the debate. I could not resist the opportunity and I proceeded to deliver a short heartfelt speech on the importance I believe Te Reo Māori has to my family and to New Zealand. My executive assistant the next morning suggested I post this speech on Facebook and I went "Oh OK then." and then something very interesting happened. Up until that point the greatest reach that I had ever had on Facebook was 20000 people which I thought was pretty cool. That is just normal for some of you I know. But within a week this speech had somehow reached over a million people. I was overwhelmed not just by the volume of people viewing this but by the comments they were making the gist of which from Māori was: "We can't believe there's a middle-aged middle-class white guy talking about the importance of Te Reo." I learnt a couple of lessons at that time. The first is you cannot control social media as ultimately it has a life of its own. The second was a reminder of the importance of middle-class middle-aged white guys talking about issues in which we personally have no self-interest. When Pākehā talk about issues that are important to Māori when men do not leave it up to women to talk about the issues that affect women and when those who have never faced abuse talk about how to stop it from ever occurring that is when we begin to see the shift in power to enable even more an equitable society. This Facebook experience reminded me of a famous quote that I had learnt during my social work degree days from a chap called Freire who said: "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful not to be neutral." As leaders and those with a voice in our communities we must not lose sight of our ability to speak up for those whose voice may not otherwise be heard. I want to conclude now with a couple of challenges. Firstly to the media who cover Parliament please do not lose sight of the fact that you are reporting on people who just like you have families and friends. Yes we as politicians need to be accountable and we put ourselves in the spotlight to be judged but the crazed salivating pack mentality that inevitably seems to come when a scandal is in the air is not particularly becoming. Please remember you are reporters here to inform the public not New Zealand's version of the Hollywood paparazzi and gossip columnists. To my colleagues and friends of this House I salute you. This is a tough gig. It takes amazing commitment character and resolve to do it well. Never lose sight of who you are never lose sight of the importance of your family and friends and never lose sight of the reason you came here. Kia kaha kia māia kia manawanui—be strong be steadfast be willing. And with those final words Mr Speaker I bid you and this House farewell. Nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa e noho rā.[Applause]Waiata"