Little Andrew: Address in Reply 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Little Andrew: Address in Reply 
[Sitting date: 14 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:351. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 Tena koutou katoa. I acknowledge the first people of this great country: the original stewards of lands and waters. I pay respects to those who have gone before us: our ancestors and those who have passed through this House and whose wisdom and achievements we inherit. Mr Speaker I congratulate you on your re-election to the role of Speaker. I knew you more than 20 years ago when I was a student leader campaigning on tertiary education issues and you were approachable and generous with your time then. I know you have established a reputation as a Speaker who acts without fear or favour and with much integrity and I look forward to playing my part in this House under your guidance.  
It is a great honour and a privilege to be in this House and to be here under the Labour banner. This year marks the centenary of one of the most bitter and violent industrial disputes in New Zealand’s history: the Waihi miners’ strike. It is an important part of the Labour story. A young Scottish union organiser was witness to that dispute and saw how workers who wanted nothing more than decent pay and a fair go were intimidated divided and—after a striking miner was beaten to death by those opposed to the strike—run out of town. Those dark events led to that organiser and many others realising that justice would be achieved only when working people reached beyond the workplace for influence and had a direct say on the laws and policies they were subject to. The union organiser was Peter Fraser who later became a Labour Prime Minister. He and others set about organising the first of the unity conferences in 1913 which drew in progressive elements brought together a social democratic programme and eventually led to the formation of the New Zealand Labour Party in 1916.  
I enter this House as a first-generation New Zealander. That means two things. I am born of a land that is steeped in natural beauty but also settled by our forebears under our foundation document the Treaty of Waitangi which was conceived in a spirit of peace collaboration and respect. And I accept my responsibility to give honour to that. The second aspect is that I am closer—if only by birth—to the other strand of our founding values: those brought here from a distant land; values that go back to the Magna Carta; values of respect for people of freedom of constitutional government and citizens’ rights of the rejection of arbitrary power and “might is right” and of due process and fairness—and I pledge to honour these traditions too.  
My parents settled in New Zealand 50 years ago this April. My father had a background in the military services and retrained as a school teacher eventually taking a post at New Plymouth Girls’ High School. My mother had a background in professional secretarial work. They arrived here with my eldest sister and with my eldest brother on the way and settled in the brand-new suburb of Marfell. By 1965 the Little household had grown to five children. I was fourth—or fourth equal—arriving with my twin sister Valerie that year.  
I look back on a great Taranaki childhood. Ours was a home that was far from wealthy dependent as it was almost entirely on my father’s teacher’s salary but what we lacked in material wealth was made up with in the rich experiences the region had to offer: the mighty Mount Taranaki—my maunga—the many beaches with the pounding west coast surf and black sand the beautiful parks and gardens and an emerging arts and cultural life. My brothers and sisters and I enjoyed a home filled with love good guidance strong educational values and supportive parents.  
Ours was a political household too. Dad was a staunch member of the National Party but one of his life experiences set him apart. As part of his military career he served in the Middle East after World War II. He observed how powerful Arab States tried to exploit and intimidate the stateless Bedouin people and he saw the world turn its back on the Palestinian people. The sense of injustice my father felt affected him deeply and it was impossible not to be influenced by it. Dad was a prodigious writer of letters to the editor. He railed at the TV whenever a political foe appeared the fiercest reactions being reserved as I recall for union leaders of the day. But there was much humour and irreverence in our house. Above all we were told to think for ourselves and make our own way. Mum would say to us: “To thine own self be true.”  
I enjoyed a good education and at New Plymouth Boys’ High School we were inculcated with very strong values of self-discipline respect and courtesy. Around this time Taranaki was beneficiary of the much-derided Think Big economic programme but that programme was instrumental in boosting the region’s heavy engineering industry. I remember in 1982 being fascinated by the huge heavy loads of process modules that had been fabricated overseas being hauled from the port to the east of the city. But it was with huge pride during last year’s election campaign that I stood with thousands of New Plymouth residents to watch a giant module being hauled in the opposite direction from one of the city’s leading and highly unionised heavy engineering firms Fitzroy Engineering to the port to make its way to Australia. It confirmed Taranaki’s strength as a world-class engineering centre.  
New Plymouth is a great city with I might add a great mayor and I enjoyed campaigning there last year although I remain intrigued by a question I was asked at one of the first meetings I held: what my position was on the merger of Air New Zealand and NAC. I said that Labour was taking a “wait-and-see” approach. I acknowledge the successful candidate and now my parliamentary colleague Jonathan Young and thank him for a clean and worthy fight.  
In 1992 I started work in Auckland as a lawyer for the organisation that would dominate my life for the next 19 years the New Zealand Amalgamated Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union. My work for the union brought me into contact with many thousands of working people hundreds of companies and important industries and many managers good and bad. I started then with a reasonably clear view about the world and society I lived in. I did not accept the reductionist view of humanity that lay at the heart of the neo-liberal Washington consensus Friedmanite Thatcherite Reaganite and “whatever else - ite” style of public policy that was inflicted on us. I am not particularly religious but my driving values are neatly encapsulated in the biblical question in Mark 8:36: “What benefits the man that he gains the world and loses his soul?”. My work for the union made this conviction stronger. My time at the union gave me insights about the New Zealand economy; about how we create wealth; about how we ensure those who help to create wealth share fairly in it; how we ensure we rise to the greatest challenge we face today—the safe keeping of our environment—and how we protect and care for our most vulnerable: our young our elderly and our sick. From the time I started at the union I saw abuses of power a growing intolerance of difference and the rise of a managerial class that thought it knew everything. I saw the frustration of skilled and experienced workers who had much to offer management but whose voice even if it was heard was often ignored. I formed the view then that it was not just enough to secure and enforce contractual rights and benefits but that working people needed to be—were entitled to be—involved in all decisions bearing on their working life. Thirty years of the neo-liberal policy programme have been a disaster for working New Zealanders. Unfortunately not even the welcome arrival of good-faith laws and better collective bargaining rights in 2000 has been enough to ameliorate the damage that has been done.  
In 1991 when the Employment Contracts Act brought radical change to workplace relations the promise was that no one would lose conditions without their agreement. But workers did lose conditions. The promise of 1991 was that there would be freedom. Workers were told they would have the freedom to choose. But when the choice made by many workers to belong to a union was unacceptable to an employer they would find their choice challenged and undermined and obstructed. Many employers welcomed workers having freedom of choice—providing the choice was the employer’s. We were promised that the nation’s wealth would rise on the back of new flexibility and better opportunities for investment and that the wealth would be shared around through higher wages. None of this happened. The opposite did. Working life in New Zealand got harder. Median and average real wages have gone down. The gap in earnings between New Zealand and Australia has grown. Inequality of income has now become so great it is an injustice keenly felt. And resentment is real and growing. New Zealand workers now work some of the longest hours in the developed world. Too many people just cannot get ahead.  
And then there is the most insidious development of all: contracting out. Whenever managers are in retreat or just lack skill and competence and creativity they contract out. Contracting out is seldom good management. It is usually the absence of management. And so at Ports of Auckland we should look sceptically at claims about the need for contracting out. The people of Auckland City should demand that management do its job—fix the problems using their management skills. That is what they are paid to do.  
In training and skills formation we have performed poorly. The numbers signing up for apprenticeships have fallen and completion rates have dropped. A new business culture has emerged in New Zealand—a culture of dominance by management and increasing servility by workers. We have forgotten the social contract of business—that through limited liability investors will be protected from full liability for the misfortunes or incompetence and wrongdoing of the company they own and that communities upon which business depends for people and resources will be respected. We have a culture in our commercial sector that says bare legal compliance is OK. Never mind whether it is right or wrong. And never mind the impact on people. The ultimate product of years of a culture of management dominance deregulation poor enforcement and bare legal compliance is surely the tragedy at Pike River Coal. A year before that dreadful event the union approached management about collaborating over health and safety. The occupational safety and health manager took this up with the chief executive and as the royal commission has now heard the reply was this: “The ‘union’ … does not come into any consideration. Please do not use the union in the same sentence as anything at Pike.”  
In the last 30 years some in New Zealand have done very well. But many more today struggle to survive. In our rush to gain the world we have left many behind and we are losing our soul. We have a massive challenge ahead for New Zealand and a new way is essential. Against a background of growing poverty of a rising threat to our standard of living the primary challenge today is to lift the nation’s income so we can afford our future and enjoy a decent society. The challenge is harder than ever before because our planet the only one we have got is struggling to cope with the demands of a growing world population. So we will not recover our standard of living by doing more of the same. And if we do not make change we are destined to a life of continual cutting slashing scrimping and grinching. We will just get poorer.  
My leader David Shearer set out his vision for New Zealand at the very beginning of this Parliament just before Christmas. It was about rejecting “business as usual”. It was about seeing new opportunities and connecting with the rest of the world offering new products and services. I am excited to be working with David and all my Labour colleagues to realise the vision of lifting the value of what we do and what we produce by being smarter with technology and lifting our national income. Our future must involve investment not disinvestment which is what State asset sales amounts to and investment in new activity and investment in people. There must be local investment and foreign investment.  
Although our agricultural sector is vital to our economy and is something we lead the world in we will need to do more than agriculture to secure our future. Our future must be in making stuff. Manufacturing and fabrication involve more technology and more skilled people and as a result generate more wealth. We have some great businesses harnessing the latest in technology making amazing products they are selling around the world. We can do this stuff. We need more of it. But our goal cannot just be about gaining a bigger share of the world. We must look after our people and we must look after our natural world. We must preserve our soul. At the heart of economic change must be a different attitude to people. We need managers to involve their workforce actively seek out knowledge from the front line and open up management decision-making to hear what the workforce has to say.  
In the project to save Air New Zealand engineering jobs in 2005 the alternative proposal that was ultimately accepted by management was developed by front-line union members. The courageous men and women of Air New Zealand provided the ideas. In the nation’s largest and most important corporate Fonterra the unions and management have been involved in a long-term project to improve productivity in the maintenance function. The front-line unionised maintenance engineers have taken on more decision-making responsibility have less supervision work fewer hours are some of the top-earning fitters in New Zealand and the processing plant and equipment is some of the world’s most reliable. In both cases management had to surrender some control and hear from the workforce about what would work practically. This Government knows there is a better way.  
Before concluding I want to pay tribute to the people who have supported me and brought me here. I acknowledge the members delegates and officials of the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union—you are the heroes of a generation and you have taught me much; the New Zealand Council of the Labour Party—president Moira Coatsworth and secretary Chris Flatt; my fantastic campaign team and supporters in New Plymouth who worked so hard last year and ensured we all had a great time; to my family—my mother Cicely my brothers and sisters Jennifer Leighton Patrick and Valerie my half-sisters Nicky and Fiona half a world away my in-laws all of whom have been so loving and supportive and my wife Leigh and son Cam without whose love and support and forbearance I would not be the person I am. Because it is Valentine’s Day let me channel Whitney Houston and say: “I will always love you.” I am inspired by these words of John F Kennedy: “I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities we too will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics but for our contribution to the human spirit.” I hope to leave here secure in the knowledge that we are a people gaining our fair share of the world preserving and protecting it and with our individual and community soul intact. Thank you.