McDowall James; Mallard TrevorDr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. It is an honour and privilege to be sent here by the 219031 people—New Zealanders—who agreed with our principles and lent us their votes at the 2020 general election. All members owe this privilege to the people of New Zealand and it is for them who we work.To those who chose not to vote for ACT but perhaps considered it our caucus will be working hard for you in Opposition and we hope to earn your support during this parliamentary term. New Zealand needs a strong and enduring classical liberal party and growing from one to 10 MPs is just the start of that journey. We stand for economic and social liberty and the rule of law.I pay tribute to my talented diverse and united caucus and also to our candidates who didn't quite make it into Parliament last year. Please stick around for our best days lie ahead of us.As I stand here today I would be remiss if I didn't mention Stuart Pedersen an ACT stalwart and former candidate who tragically passed away at sea in 2019. Stuart was a cheerful intelligent and generous man respected by his political allies and opponents alike. He was planning to give the 2020 campaign his all and he really should be sitting with us here in this House. My thoughts are with his family and friends.My core team in the Waikato played a major role in the success of our party in that region. I acknowledge the hard work and perseverance of Myah Roger Bruce Les Garry Harry Mo and Steve and Rom and their wonderful children Olive and Elle. I a libertarian vegetarian firearms enthusiast wouldn't be here if it wasn't for all of you. You kept the faith and stayed loyal and you have the party's eternal gratitude.I was born on 6 January 1988 during the reign of David Lange here in New Zealand Ronald Reagan in the United States Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Gorbachev in the Soviet Union—what a time to be alive! A month after my birth the gradual collapse of the Soviet Union began. The dissolution actually took about three years but good things take time. Just over half of my life ago I got into politics having attended an ACT function in Auckland. I got to meet the likes of Roger Douglas Richard Prebble Rodney Hide who had just won Epsom a younger David Seymour and many others who are still involved in the party today. I found them all to be straight-shooting people who say it like it is and talk a lot of economic sense. I never thought I would go on to eventually represent the party in Parliament but here we are—life is full of unexpected twists and turns.I thank my family and friends many of whom are here in the gallery today for their enduring love and support. I have my parents to thank for my perseverance resilience optimism and even my musical upbringing. Thank you all for taking on the burden of time and expense in travelling to our nation's capital to support me from the gallery. Thank you so much.I also think of family members such as my grandfathers Lou and Laurie who I wish were still around to see me being elected as a member. I'm sure all members think about whānau who have passed in recent years especially when they never got to see their election to this House.I acknowledge my wife Sushan who has given me her full support for my political endeavours despite the many negative stories about the toll that being a member can have on families. I also thank my daughter Sofia though she's only three years old and doesn't really know what's going on for not kicking up a fuss which is unusual and for enabling an easy job transition. She loves to tell her friends at day care that her daddy works at the Beehive which is not quite true but you never know what the future may hold. I do find it quite entertaining when she tells me to be careful of the bees at work—I actually think she's wise beyond her years. As an aside my daughter is a half-Chinese seventh generation New Zealander and I certainly hope that she doesn't experience the horrendous racism that my wife has experienced and continues to experience in this country.I'm actually not the first person in my family to work within these halls though it has been a while. My great-great-grandfather Samuel Marsden Baker fluent in most dialects of te reo Māori was the chief interpreter in the House of Representatives and was a close friend of the Rt Hon Richard Seddon. This cohort of my family actually spoke te reo Māori at home which must have been very unusual for a Pākehā family at the time. My great-great-great-grandfather the Rev. Charles Baker first arrived in the Bay of Islands in 1828 and because of his association with James Busby he was present at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and he is depicted in the famous painting by Leonard Mitchell. I'm proud to have this ancestral link to the Treaty and it was a privilege attending the commemorations in Waitangi last week.From my schooling background I'd like to thank two teachers in particular—I didn't have a great deal of success until I met these two people—Mr Singh my economics teacher who introduced me to the Austrian and Chicago schools and Ms Anderson my business studies teacher who is funnily enough related to our former deputy leader Beth Houlbrooke who is in the gallery today. In addition to the practical lessons learnt they taught me to put trust in my own abilities and to take ownership of my learning. Frankly many of my prior teachers were nothing but cruel—sorry to say that. I'll never forget my teacher in intermediate telling my classmates that I was the most useless student in the class which set me up for years of verbal and physical bullying while the school turned a blind eye. But enough about that.The visits that I made to partnership schools had a profound impact on me—students have a place that they can call home; they're much more than just schools. I wish I went to one and I wish we had more of these across New Zealand but unfortunately these community-driven initiatives were torpedoed and future students will be left to fend for themselves in the same State education system that failed them in the first place.We live in a country that grants its citizens constitutional freedoms including freedom of expression that many around the world do not enjoy. That is why so many risk everything to set up their lives here. This House must maintain those freedoms at the very least and I will steadfastly use my time here as a member to enhance them. We must promote the rule of law and respect the separation of powers. This Parliament is merely a cog in the constitutional wheels of our nation; we share the power that is given to us by the people.Seemingly contrary to popular belief New Zealanders also look after our environment mostly not only because it is the right thing to do but because we are directly incentivised to do so. To act against the environment can be economically disastrous. I contrast this with scenes that I witnessed firsthand while visiting several towns and villages in Asia a few years ago. Residents were dumping all of their household waste including heavy metals directly into the tributaries of a major river. The banks were absolutely littered with rubbish that hadn't made it all the way down. That river flows into the South China Sea—this happens all over the world. So when I see images on TV of the floating rubbish islands in the Pacific Ocean I know exactly where that stuff came from. Here in New Zealand we obviously don't tolerate that sort of behaviour and I also don't think that we give ourselves enough credit for the positive work that we do.In New Zealand we have unacceptable levels of material hardship poverty homelessness and significant over-representation of tangata whenua in our prisons and in our courts among many other issues. No one in this House wants to see this. The Government has three years of seemingly limitless power to tackle these issues and I hope for all our sakes that they are successful. Take care though the more laws that are written the more criminals that are produced.I also hope that the Government looks at supply side economics in the housing market and makes it easier to build quality homes throughout the country. Our out-of-control housing market is debilitating for my generation and even more so for those that come after. I mentioned migrants before. An efficient high quality and respectful immigration system is an essential part of any country's machinery. I hope that one day we will have such a system. The bar needs to be raised significantly at Immigration New Zealand or it needs to be replaced altogether. Whether it's the appalling delays in processing visas the lack of transparency the inhumanity the inability to work remotely or immigration officers who get their own policies wrong time and again it's simply not good enough. Migrants make huge sacrifices to call New Zealand home and more often than not they show the rest of us what hard work really means. They have moved to a foreign land far away and flourished just like our own ancestors. Christopher Columbus once wrote You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore." I think of my in-laws who I'm very close to. Decades ago they left communist-controlled lands and made their way to New Zealand. My father-in-law was a refugee who escaped Pol Pot in Cambodia a Marxist dictator who murdered at least 2 million of his own people including my father-in-law's father and sisters. My mother-in-law left behind a nation still grappling with the after-effects of the Cultural Revolution and years of famine. Say what you like about Muldoon at the time but I think I know where I'd rather live. My in-laws set up successful businesses and worked hard in physically demanding jobs that they themselves created from nothing. Since arriving in New Zealand the only day they have taken off each year is Christmas Day and work every other day. I'd like to say that this is exception but actually for many migrants it's not it's quite normal and I pay tribute to each and every new New Zealander.I want to acknowledge briefly the many work and student visa holders who have been stranded overseas since March 2020 through no fault of their own with their jobs homes possessions and in some cases family members left behind here in New Zealand. I know that you're in a huge amount of distress. It is unacceptable that you have been shut out and given no certainty about your futures in New Zealand. If New Zealand is to maintain its image as a world-leading destination for work and study the Government has to work on its kindness and come up with a fair solution.My political ideology is simply that our morals and ambitions are our own and that they should not be forced upon anyone else not least of all by the Government of the day. Everything else just flows from that idea. The enforcement of immoral laws restricting the rights of citizens to make them morally upright is unjust for it violates a person's right to individual autonomy. As Rand said "A Government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a monopoly on the use of legal force against its citizens." By extension we should act as global citizens and not be afraid to call out Governments around the world that not only abuse individual and human rights but also venture into our own backyard with nefarious motives and ideals. We can ignore reality but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. The wolves are getting closer to our doorstep.I thank the many thousands of people who contacted me in support of using Cantonese in this House during my oath it was a pleasure to share this side of my family with you. I conclude by thanking the ACT Party board and caucus for investing their time and confidence in me. We're all working for a more productive thoughtful intelligent and fearless New Zealand where people seek and achieve a better quality of life. We are the masters of our own fate to also quote Churchill. Learn to value yourself which means fight for your happiness. I want my daughter to grow up in a New Zealand that is filled with ambition innovativeness and envied productivity. I honour the heritage of this nation its unique constitution and its Treaty. Thank you Mr Speaker.[Applause]SPEAKER: I call on Karen Chhour for her maiden statement."