Fenton Darien: Valedictory StatementsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Valedictory Statements[Sitting date: 24 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19552. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui kia koutou tēnā koutou katoa. I want to first of all acknowledge my buddy Rajen Prasad and tell him that I have still got the photos from our trip to Taiwan and that I am planning to divulge them before I leave. I also want to acknowledge you Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson because you will make your valedictory next week. I am looking forward to that and it has been a pleasure working with you. I want to acknowledge all members of Parliament whom I have served with and I do so without rancour or criticism because much to my surprise over nearly 9 years in Parliament I have found that despite furious debate about political difference most MPs come here with sincere intent.Since I was elected in 2005 five of my much-loved whānau have passed away. I mourn them all. Five children have been born in my close family; sadly all overseas. My kids Aish and Anna have moved to San Francisco where they are now doing awesome IT things with Netflix and Apple. I am proud of them both but I do wish they were here. Back in 2005 Twitter had not been invented and nor had iPads and iPhones. Maurice Williamson jumped the queue and got an iPhone early but it took years for Parliamentary Service to allow Apple to enter the building.Parliament has been opened up with digital TV and online streaming. I have heard from Parliament viewers over the years and I have enjoyed their conversations and correspondence even the man who often wrote to me telling I needed to do something about my hair hanging in my face. As you can see I did not take his advice—or that of the former MP who told me he had been watching my parts and that it was important to get them straight. It took me a while to figure that one out.The extraordinary events that shook Parliament and our country to the core in recent years will always be with me—the shattering Christchurch earthquakes with the shocking and tragic death toll. For many life continues to be a struggle. The needless loss of 29 men killed at Pike River mine will go down in our history as a disgraceful failure of deregulation. There has been no closure or justice for those families and that is wrong. I also want to acknowledge the families of the forestry workers who have lost loved ones and who grieve still but who have bravely come forward to challenge the awful death and injury toll in that industry. I stand with you. The death of more than one worker and countless injuries in our workplaces every week shames us all but it shames this Parliament the most. It has to stop.I know that some people think I was born a devil beast - trade unionist but my apprenticeship to the labour movement and this Parliament was forged in many different experiences and some very tough jobs. I grew up in a family where war and politics cast a long shadow. My grandfather Frederick Frost fought and was injured at the Somme in the First World War. That man started his first job at the age of 12 as a pit boy in a Northumberland mine. So if I am a bit rough around the edges I think you probably get it now. He was elected the Labour MP for New Plymouth in the wartime Labour Government led by Michael Joseph Savage and then Peter Fraser. My father Verdun Frost was a navigator in World War II and patrolled the Pacific. Like his father he was a declared socialist. My mother the very staunch and Catholic Patricia Mary Te Rata Mahuta Kerr came from an ancestry of Irish rebels. She was very stroppy. I was scared of her. Tau Henare descends from that line so you kind of know what I mean. You cannot help your relatives.My parents instilled in their two sons and two daughters the hope of a better and fairer life for all in New Zealand. My generation profited from their sacrifice and hard work. Early Labour Governments meant that I along with John Key grew up in a State house and benefited from State-funded health and education. That gave me choices that younger people do not have today. I had the freedom and security to be different and to challenge. With my troublemaking heritage it was inevitable that I would be drawn to the anti-war and nuclear movements and the remote hippy generation of the 1970s. It led me on a journey that was both good and bad.I dropped out of education. I had a range of interesting and boring jobs. I travelled through dangerous countries and I did some silly things. Some will have read the story of my drug addiction when I was a younger person in the 1970s. Despite treatment and recovery years ago I reluctantly agreed for my story to be published this year. It is still such a taboo topic so hard to talk about. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done.I blame no one but myself for my mistakes and I have made plenty. Drug taking was a means of defiance against the establishment and seemed cool at the time. I know that the threat of lawbreaking or addiction did not stop me and the opprobrium of society made no difference. I want to say that smoking a joint did not lead me to other drugs; criminals selling drugs did. That is why I believe that the war on drugs has been a total failure. That is why I think it is time for this Parliament to treat drug abuse as a health problem not a criminal offence—and that means properly funded addiction treatment. I also believe it is time for politicians in this House to decriminalise personal marijuana use and take the crooks out of the business. For me the difference was treatment a loving partner and the birth of our quite exceptional son Aish.I found inspiration in the union movement where my rebellious heart could be turned towards something real and meaningful. I owe the labour movement everything. It made room for me in a cause that has never been more important than it is today. I thank my comrades; in particular my wonderful union—the Service and Food Workers Union Ngā Ringa Tōtā. One of my proudest achievements is to be a life member of a union that seeks to build not destroy; draws its strength from the real experiences of workers at the hard end of the labour market and society; and gives them the courage to speak out.When I came to Parliament in 2005 I claimed as my constituents the workers of New Zealand who clean cook and care for others. I came with only one ambition and that was for them to be heard in this House and to make life better for them. In my first term I was part of a Labour Government. We did make a difference for those workers. Hospital cleaners food service workers and orderlies gained their first ever national agreement and the Government funded millions of dollars to increase their pay and improve the wages that had been devastated during the 1990s. School cleaners followed close behind. Aged care workers were funded $1 an hour extra. Protection for vulnerable workers like the cleaners in this place was strengthened as was collective bargaining.I am not going to claim sole credit for those achievements but I will admit to quite a lot of badgering of Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. To be fair those amazing Labour leaders did not need a lot of persuasion to do the right thing. Although I have always considered myself working class my mother was very class conscious. She used to say to me that we were either upper-middle class or lower-upper class and there we were living in a State house—bless. Class mattered then. However we describe it today it still does because the fundamental hopes of ordinary working people for a decent job on fair pay remain elusive for many.The 40-hour week 8-hour day is a joke. Hundreds of thousands of New Zealand workers are now affected by insecure work that is more casual part-time temporary contracted or fixed term and there is a growing number of workers outside the protection of employment and minimum wage legislation. During my time in this Parliament I promoted several member’s bills to guarantee basic protections for all New Zealand workers and to deal with the new reality of work in the 21st century.These protections included a minimum wage for contractors; temporary and labour hire workers receiving the same pay as the places they go to work in; providing child workers under 16 years with protection by requiring them to be employed not contracted; and ensuring that those laid off through no fault of their own have basic redundancy pay. That is not too much to ask I would have thought. However all of these bills were ridiculed voted down or discharged by National. I leave these bills as a legacy to an incoming Labour Government because this is the reality of 21st century work and it needs to be dealt with.No one will believe it but my grandfather was much more radical than me. He called for compulsory unions for all workers throughout the entire world. I could have written his Address in Reply speech in 1943. He told the House about a view of what he called old Toryism which was that the more workers got the more they wanted and that any agitation for more rights was seen as interference in natural economic laws.What is really so different today? Work is the foundation of our economy yet we still often treat workers like commodities who should just be grateful to have a job. We talk a lot about child poverty yet what about the poverty of their parents many of whom are working? Risk and uncertainty has been transferred to individual workers who cannot afford it. The notion of the social wage has been weakened. We blame people when they cannot find jobs we despise them when they join unions to try to get ahead and our social safety net is now seen as a form of failure and an opportunity for punishment. This will continue as long as we let it. The old fights now perhaps rebadged perhaps no longer couched in the terms of class and socialism still exist. We just call it the 1 percent versus the rest.My working experience is probably unique in this House. I worked as an extra in Bollywood films in Bombay and for the Master of Armouries at the Tower of London—the Royal Armouries in London would you believe—but I have done some very unsafe and challenging work as well. I do not have a completed tertiary education except in music. I celebrate our amazing musicians our extraordinary artists and the talent that makes us unique in the world. But I was dismayed when film and video workers dared to call for the recognition and rights that other workers have how they were pilloried and still are to this day.This Parliament cannot be representative if it is peopled only by the privileged. When I chose my Youth MP last year I did not go for the prominent academic achievers or the prefects. I did not set an essay competition. I chose Peniata Endemann. I asked Peniata because I knew he would never dream of volunteering as a Youth MP. He is smart and intelligent but he will struggle to pursue a university education because he supports his mum and his sisters by cleaning at night after school. I chose Peniata and he rocked this Parliament. He rocked the Youth Parliament when he called for a living wage for cleaners like himself and his mother and his sisters.I hope this Parliament and my party will make room for working people like Peniata. Labour must not get too far from its roots and whom it represents. After all two of our most celebrated Labour Prime Ministers were a miner and a train driver and look at their achievements in changing this world. This Parliament must lead the way in becoming a living-wage Parliament. MPs talk in this House about wages and poverty and people yet the current majority seem content to let many workers in this place earn hardly more than the minimum wage. Surely we the privileged and well-paid elect of all people should set an example.Some will say a living wage will ruin us. Those in charge of the wealth and the market worshippers always do. Their handiwork has resulted in New Zealand being one of the most unequal societies in the world. That is not what my grandfather imagined and it is not what I want for my country and my children and grandchildren. But there is change afoot. Inequality in this country is causing unease and the neo-liberal dominance of the last three decades is being questioned in a way that I hope will lead to real change.I owe thanks to my party and my colleagues. I start with a big shout out to the wonderful people of Labour North Auckland for their support hard work and dedication. To our leader David Cunliffe the hopes and dreams of our people are with you to lead a better way for New Zealand and you have my support. I thank previous leaders Phil Goff Annette King David Shearer and Grant Robertson who trusted a diehard trade unionist like me to take on the labour portfolio and develop Labour’s policies. I know it gave Phil O’Reilly and Business New Zealand conniptions but that is no reason not to implement the fundamental changes needed to bring better wages and fairer work for all New Zealanders.To my special colleagues both MPs and staff you know who you are. Thanks for your friendship solidarity and laughs in this sometimes lonely place. Gina and Jess my awesome workers stick with the cause. The movement needs you. I owe my family much—my sisters Linda and Joyce and my simply brilliant kids Aish and Anna. My deepest love and thanks to the wonderful loyal ever-tolerant and loving John my life partner—thank you. You inspire me and you always have. You are going to have to share the music with me now as well. Those jazz clubs—you are not going on your own any more. To my friends the parliamentary cleaners and all staff who have made my job in this place just that little bit more bearable thank you. I will not ever forget you.I brought to this Parliament the experience of working in manual low-paid jobs and the privilege of representing workers on the margins. I brought values to Parliament that I have never denied or turned my back on and never will. I leave this Parliament content with that. My grandfather returned to work in the Huntly mine when he lost his seat of New Plymouth. I will not be doing that but I will be returning to the coalface. There is much to be done and I have never sat back and left the hard struggles to others. I wish you all solidarity. Good night and good luck.Waiata