Campbell HamishDr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam): It is a great honour to stand here in the Parliament of New Zealand and speak as a representative of Ilam and my community. May I begin by acknowledging you Mr Speaker and the years of service that you have given the Ilam electorate. You ably represented Ilam for over 20 years—nearly a quarter of a century. And I'm sure Mr Speaker you will agree with me in an unbiased way that Ilam is the best electorate in the country.SPEAKER: No doubt about that.Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL: Yeah good. I will endeavour to serve it well but I do acknowledge I have a lot of growing to do to get to your stature. Apart from you and I Mr Speaker—SPEAKER: That was a very career limiting sort of comment.Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL: —there've been a number of notable people that have come from the Ilam electorate and spent their formative years there including the former Prime Minister Sir John Key and of course the current Prime Minister the Rt Hon Christopher Luxon. I think there must be something in the waters of the Avon River that start there and run through the electorate.Speaking of you Mr Prime Minister—I'll be a little bit gentler—I'd like to acknowledge and congratulate you on leading the National party to one of the largest turn-arounds that this country has ever seen. Congratulations. You led ably and you'll continue to lead our country to prosperity.I'd like to acknowledge those that have assisted you Mr Prime Minister just in front of me here: Nicola Willis Chris Bishop and the rest of the front bench and of course our president Sylvia Wood.To the people of Ilam thank you. Thank you for your trust and belief in me. I am here to deliver for you and to represent you to the best of my ability. I want to be an MP that's consistently present in the electorate and part of the community—I was during the campaign and have been and will be since the election.I'd especially like to thank the National Party members of the Ilam electorate that first selected me as a candidate and then helped me through the campaign. A true heartfelt thank you to Ryan Robyn Murray Chantel Vivian Ethan Bryant and Peter—just to name a few. But I'd also like to thank their partners for allowing them to spend so much time with me during the campaign.To my current class of 2023 your maiden speeches have been outstanding. Couldn't at least one of you screw-up to make me look a little better?But above all I'd like to thank my family and friends for the support they have given me throughout my life. In particular for the last 19.9 years my wife Carol who's sitting in the gallery. You have stood by me as I not only chose to enter into politics but also previously when I made the choice to work as a scientist—not for industry but for charities and not-for-profit organisations. You shared my vision of making a difference in people's lives. I've been very blessed to have such a supportive wife. You are my rock. You are my guide. You are an amazing person. Thank you for your sacrifices.To my two young daughters up there I love you dearly. I apologise in advance; I apologise for being away from home and missing dates and events that are important to you. I apologise for the hostilities you may face in the playground because of me. I apologise for the attacks that will come on social media—and possibly from the media. But may you look back in later years and know I was away from home in an effort to make the world a better and fairer place—not just for you but for all Kiwi kids. And as the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to know even one life breathed easier because you lived this is to have succeeded." I hope you look back and know that I succeeded.To my parents who never sought the limelight I think you probably cringed when I entered politics but I'm very grateful for your support and understanding of my motivations.To my mother the sands of time are now taking their toll but happy 82nd birthday for today. Happy birthday mum. You grew up in a very conservative part of rural Canterbury but had the drive and ambition to overcome the prevailing social pressures and norms of the time and to go to university. It was a time when it was not common to go to university—far less so for a female. You not only did that but you entered the male-dominated field of chemistry. From where I'm sitting today I will never truly understand the battle you faced to get there and to be accepted and to achieve what you did. You did it not to seek attention not to upturn everything but to improve what was there. You did it because it was the right thing to do. You became a science and maths teacher. You loved teaching. You took your education and you shared it. You knew education opened up the minds and was the key to an interesting and independent life and a way to improve one's lot.I think of my father losing his father when he was just a young boy in what was essentially an industrial accident leaving six children—from 15 down to four years old—fatherless. It's events like this that highlight the importance of a societal safety net. My grandmother raised six children one with a severe chronic illness in a two-bedroom State house. Despite those challenges she did have the foresight to ensure that all of her children took a trade. University wasn't even a faint possibility. I doubt at that time anybody living in that State house would imagine one of their immediate descendants would be ending up sitting in Parliament.My father left school as soon as he legally could at the age of 15 to support the rest of his family. He later working full-time went to night school to try and educate himself. He ended up with his own business that he grew and later sold to a large international company. Retiring freed him up to follow his interests as a pragmatic environmentalist by converting a derelict apple orchard into one of the first early certified-organic export orchards and proving that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Despite being in his 80s he works every day.To my two brothers who have travelled thousands of kilometres to be here today thank you for your support. You have taught me a lot over the years. I credit you for teaching me to eat very fast. With two older brothers you learn to eat quickly or go hungry but that has proven a very useful skill here in Parliament. My life story is a simple one. I don't come from a family of famous wealthy people. My whakapapa doesn't trace back to anyone notable. But it does track back to a group of humble people that have just gone about their day-to-day lives below the radar. They've worked hard to provide for their families. But I don't look back with rose-tinted glasses. They weren't perfect and neither am I. But then again I don't think anybody is.My family have worked and worried loved and lost loved ones they've had their ups and downs but I think it's dodgy to take credit for notable ancestors because that would mean I'd need to take responsibility for those not so good.I was born and raised in the Ilam electorate. And those who are asking the most important Christchurch question—Hon Members: Ha ha!Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL: —I attended Avonhead Primary School and then on to Christchurch Boys' High School—I think there's a few people from Christchurch here.Following a fine education received from many great teachers I then moved down to Dunedin where I completed a PhD in cancer and viruses. I wrote about coronaviruses long before they were commonplace in the public lexicon. I say that not to blow my own trumpet but to highlight the knowledge that we have in our research organisations up and down this country. It's often knowledge that we pull upon in times of dark distress.Following my PhD I had the privilege of working at the Children's Medical Research Institute in Sydney where I worked as a fundamental scientist trying to understand the molecular drivers of cancer—or in other words how cancers form. This led me to immunology in autoimmune disease. I eventually became the deputy head of research for an organisation focused on multiple sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis and other immunological conditions are on the rise in our society. In these roles I met people and families going through tough times facing diseases that they never thought they would need to face. To them I would say: I have brought your memories and your stories to this place. You are one of the main reasons why I am here. Two weeks ago I had the privilege to attend the NZ science awards celebrating some of New Zealand's finest scientists working on things such as microplastics environmental resilience and seismic science. We have some amazing scientists here in New Zealand. I just do want to acknowledge the overall winner on that night: Dr Stephen Goldson whose work on combatting agricultural pests saves New Zealand between $300 million and $500 million annually. His work makes this country more productive. I mention productivity because it's so important. Producing more but using less: this makes environmental and economic sense; it is climate action in action. We need more scientists like Dr Goldson and the platoon of white lab coats that are silently driving our country forward. The reason why science is so important is that our young people—along with the rest of us—are passionate about saving the planet improving the environment and finding cures for life-threatening diseases. All these problems can be solved by science. We need to encourage more school children and university students to become engineers and scientists to make sure we have the breakthroughs that we so desperately want. But to do that we need to ensure that we educate them properly. They need to understand the fundamentals of reading writing and arithmetic before they can reach their dreams and aspirations.It's also about instilling resilience. As the famous Roman Stoics wrote—or a translation of what they wrote—"the obstacle is the way." We need to teach our children to see opportunities and to focus on overcoming. Edison took thousands of attempts to develop a lightbulb; James Dyson over 5000 prototypes to get to his famous vacuum cleaner. As James Dyson says "We should be encouraging the young to become doers rather than virtue signallers to help them strive to solve the problems of our age while looking forward to a better future."It would be a pity to educate our children only to be able to virtue signal and not be able to do anything about it. That would create anxiety. We need action not activism. It has become very easy take offence at someone who may believe something different to ourselves whether it be on climate change vaccine science race or culture. We have come to think it's our right to take offence and if you disagree you're not just wrong but amoral.We should not place a high value on our outrage. We seem to think it gives us the moral high ground failing to appreciate that our moral outrage belittles us; it belittles our society; it drives division and only creates further outrage. We need to reach out be neighbours sharing in our identities as Kiwis not as fellow members of a race religion or creed. Only then will we address some of the most pressing issues facing our country and the divisions which seem to be growing.I recently read some words of a notable New Zealand anthropologist Dame Anne Salmond. She said "There are people in the middle ground who want things to be successful tranquil productive creative. I would say most Kiwis are in that frame but that's getting splintered and it feels dangerous." I think those are very accurate and sombre words. We all live on these clusters of islands in the middle of the South Pacific—we had no choice who we were born or what we were born. We only have one shot at this life and we need to ensure everyone can play their cards to the best of their abilities.Now I do just want to finally go back to the mighty Ilam electorate. It's located on the western part of Christchurch stretching out into the countryside. It's home to the Christchurch International Airport; the University of Canterbury. Ilam is vibrant it's full of university students with a zest for life—I just wish some of those living next door to me would just have a little bit less zest for life in the wee hours of the morning. But it is exciting to see the enthusiasm and the optimism they have for life.It is an amazing place full of amazing people. A place where 31 percent of those people that live there were not born in New Zealand but have chosen to make New Zealand their home. They chose New Zealand because it's an amazing place in which to live. This is because we have a stable secular democracy and where the rule of law is applied to all. And this is something that we should protect and cherish. Are we always going to get it right? No. Are we going to please everyone? No. More personally am I always going to get it right? No. But at the soul of the matter I firmly believe that everyone deserves a fair shot at life and that is why I am here."