Hide Rodney: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
Hide Rodney: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
[Volume:644;Page:14069] 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 It is Christmas which is a wonderful time for everyone but it is a particularly wonderful time to be a New Zealander. Let me begin by congratulating you Madam Speaker. The Speaker often has a tough time in the House but you have had an especially tough time in dealing with the wake of the Auditor-General’s report and in achieving major change and hopefully the change in the way MPs are financed will continue. The work that you have done on that matter often goes unrecognised and is not thanked because it goes on behind the scenes. I know having observed it up close how difficult it is. I want to put on record our sincere thanks for the hard work you have done and for the good cheer with which you have done it while working and trying to achieve a consensus with all the parties on something that touches us in a manner that is near and dear. So I thank you for that Madam Speaker. 
I also thank all the messengers and the Serjeant-at-Arms who amazingly stay awake right through to the wee hours of the night sometimes through the most dreary speeches when MPs cannot. I thank the messengers for the good cheer with which they go about their job and for making our job so much easier. I thank the clerks. I especially thank the security guards who again show such good cheer towards us as MPs. I might add that they have such great discretion in the way in which they keep what they see and observe—particularly on the video cameras now—to themselves because I think it is a better Parliament for the fact that some things stay out of the public arena. I also thank the library staff who work assiduously to prepare material for each and every one of us. 
I thank everyone but I especially thank the MMP parties because I think we are achieving something that is new. I think most particularly of the ACT party and the Green Party. We disagreed with the Green Party’s position—in fact with most of Parliament’s position—on the smacking legislation. We were able to disagree with Sue Bradford and the Greens on that and still be able to disagree with good cheer and be able to work together. I feel prouder about that than I do about anything we have achieved in this House this year. Hopefully we showed the way in which we can disagree on policies and not descend to personal attacks to questioning people’s motives and to saying that people are stupid ignorant or do not understand the issue. We were still able to stand up for our position explain our position let the other party speak for its position and then have the vote. I think we would have a much better Parliament and a much better country if the other parties could take a small leaf out of the book on the approach of United Future New Zealand First—sometimes—the Green Party the Maori Party and the ACT party to debating the issue rather than the person. 
In reflecting on this year I particularly thank Minister Lianne Dalziel for her help and work on the Regulatory Responsibility Bill about which I have to say again the ACT party is very proud of the progress we are making. I thank Gerry Brownlee who has been chairing that Commerce Committee in a bipartisan way and who is doing a good job in respect of the Regulatory Responsibility Bill. I thank Maryan Street who helped us with that bill when she was on the committee and now Paul Swain Gordon Copeland and also Richard Worth and Lindsay Tisch. 
It is hard sometimes when a party has just two MPs but to have a bill of such magnitude and importance which aims to get a better legislative framework by which laws travel through this House and become the law is important. I think we should all have an interest in it. I think that the members of the committee acknowledge that. I think that they appreciate that the bill that went to the committee was not perfect. We have heard submissions we are doing work in the new year on that and hopefully a good bill will emerge from that committee it will be something that has the support of the House and it will make for a good legislative environment and better law for New Zealand. 
I thank the great staff of the ACT party here in Wellington—Sandy Sally Chas and Andrew—who do a fantastic job and in Auckland we have Priscilla Brian Willie Stu and Marg all of whom work hard for a small party. Hopefully it will not be small after next year but at this time it has been tough for them. I also thank the party’s board and the president Garry Mallett. They have done an outstanding job. 
I congratulate Mary Harris on taking on the job of Clerk of the House and I say that it is well deserved. We have worked with Mary for many years at question time and we hold her in very very high regard. We hold Mary Harris with the same regard trust and affection that we had for Mr Dave McGee which was totally unblemished and unparalleled and I know that that is the case right around this House. I congratulate Mary Harris on her promotion. It is no mean feat to achieve that level of trust and integrity in this House but both Dave McGee and Mary Harris and the clerks that they oversee and have overseen have achieved that so thank you. 
I would like to thank all the good people of Epsom. I have enjoyed being the MP for Epsom and getting to know the electorate well. It has been a great pleasure to go from being a list MP to representing an electorate. It has been a great pleasure to have a place to find oneself integrated into a community as an MP and to meet people from right across the political spectrum who need help and as an MP to be able to help them. I certainly thank them for the good cheer with which they have regarded me as a member of Parliament. I have worked hard and I hope that hard work will be returned with a vote in 2008. 
I would like to thank at this time all the ACT members and supporters who have stayed true to the ACT cause and to say yes we have had a good year and the best is still to come. I would like especially to thank my caucus. I have a remarkable caucus. It is not easy being the caucus in the ACT party in this parliamentary term because it has had to put up with me but Heather Roy as caucus has always done so with good cheer good humour and a positive outlook. I very much appreciate Heather Roy’s help and support and her friendship. 
It is Christmas and I wish each and every MP of this House the best Christmas. It is a great time to have a rest and to relax and to reflect and to spend time with our friends and our family. It is a great time to be reminded of what a great country we have here in New Zealand and to recommit ourselves each of us in our ways in this House to making this great country even greater in the new year. Thank you Madam Speaker.