Maharey Steve: Address in Reply 
Maharey Steve: Address in Reply 
[Volume:628;Page:372] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I begin the same way that most speakers have started and that is by congratulating Madam Speaker congratulating you Mr Deputy Speaker and Ann Hartley and Ross Robertson. We look forward to working with you over the next 3 years. I am sure that we are in very good hands with all of you. 
I want to make one other acknowledgment if I can and that is to my wife Liz. During the last term of Parliament my wife Liz died and this is the first election I have fought without her. I have been involved in elections with Liz since 1984. It was a very strange experience to go through this election without her and I could not let the occasion of the beginning of the new Parliament go without acknowledging her and thanking her for all she has done for me in the past. 
I want to acknowledge Rod Donald’s family. I have heard a lot of the acknowledgments to Rod. He was someone I knew as an acquaintance around the House—someone whom I thought took very strong stands on a range of issues and someone who deserved the accolades he has been given over the last little while. I want to mention his family Nicola and the children. It is one thing of course to lose one’s partner in life; it is another thing to have to grieve in public. One of the things I want to say to the Green Party who I know have supported Nicola through this is that this is one of the most incredibly difficult things to do. I think she deserves a great deal of admiration along with the family for the way they have shared Rod with others during this time and have been such an obviously strong and magnificent group of people. So my acknowledgements go to them as well. 
We are at the beginning of a new Parliament when speakers as they have shown in this debate map out where they hope their parties will go and how they might contribute. This is a time when people give their maiden speeches which are sad to say one of the few occasions when people do speak seriously in this House about their ambitions for themselves for their parties and for their country. They do it in a considered way and these are often the best speeches we ever hear from each other in this House. But we do have an opportunity on major occasions like this when we are thinking about the Speech from the Throne to reflect on how we either agree and want to advance that vision or on how we disagree and how we want to provide some kind of alternative. It has been interesting to listen to what people have to say. 
I want to say for myself that I am absolutely committed over the next 3 years to a very simple vision. I want to be part of trying to ensure that we fully embed in this country what we have now come to call in a rather hackneyed way a knowledge-based society. What does that mean in practice? It simply means that we want to have more people in this country producing more knowledge and we want to apply it in everything we do. That is a transformation of our country. That is a very different kind of country. The kind of country I grew up in was of course one that was based upon low skills and low wages producing commodities. We were a very different kind of society from the one we need to be now. Over the last little while people right across this House and in fact right across the world have come to agree that if we want to succeed in the 21st century that is the way we need to organise our countries. That is where the policies should go. But the big challenge for us in this House is not to try to invent a new formula for success in the 21st century; it is to ask how we do it in a relatively isolated country—it is a long way from other countries—that has a long skinny geography a small population relative to the land mass we occupy and a particular kind of configuration of population with particular kinds of identities. How do we make our way along the road to this formula of being a knowledge-based society? I want to reflect on that this evening. 
The first thing I think we have to think about obviously is our economy. I look across at my friend Dr Lockwood Smith. We argue now and again but one of the things he has advocated I think rightly during his political career has been the agricultural base of our economy. We are more broadly speaking a biological economy. We have at times lost the plot in this country when we have forgotten that we are a biological economy that we make most of our money from being a biological economy and that we must focus on doing everything we can to make that an efficient and effective part of our economy as we go forward. But the trick of course is to add on top of that biological economy the research science and technology that allows us to take a leap upwards so that we produce more from that economy and start producing new kinds of products completely out of such things as biotechnology. That will take us into an era when we can earn more from what we have here in a way that we did not do last century. 
On top of that we have to start thinking about what we are going to do that is new. We cannot do the things the Chinese or the Indians do. They are going to run large economies with large factories doing things that we simply cannot compete with. We have to find niches for products and services that are special different and able to be transported easily and we are beginning to do that in areas like software which I think is a major victory. We know that that is broadly speaking the kind of economy we have to build—that is our special kind of economy and that is what we should be focusing on again in the next 3 years. There are other issues of course. We do not save enough as a country. We should save more. We know that our Auckland economy has to be different from the rest of New Zealand. It has to be an urban economy doing things that belong to a large urban configuration and that means we will have to solve problems like its transport problems over the next 3 years so that it can be an effective urban-based economy. 
The second area I think is social. We must focus on education. Education is the No. 1 priority for this country. We are simply not equipped as people to be part of the kind of society I have just been talking about. Unless our young people come through the world’s best education system stay in education and leave from our compulsory schooling system to go on to further education we will not be equipped in the way we all need to be. Education must remain a joint No. 1 priority for this particular nation. I want to say that the family is something we should reassert. I have applauded the fact that United Future made this into an issue in the House. Like most members I have always understood that the family is the fundamental institution. United Future I think has done a good job of moving that issue to centre stage and saying that families break up too much and that kids do matter. We should ensure that no matter what happens with the family those children have the support emotionally and financially of their parents for the rest of their lives. These should not be tradable options. There are too many New Zealanders who do not do this kind of thing. But it was a trait of this country and we should assert that it is essential and make sure it comes back. 
Community is the other part of this. There is something special about New Zealanders. The concept of social capital that we often talk about is not something that other countries have much of. New Zealanders still volunteer. New Zealanders still help their neighbours. New Zealanders still talk about community and actually mean it. We should reassert that. We should make sure that it stays part of what we do as New Zealanders. 
Diversity of population is another issue that interests me a great deal. We are now one of the most diverse countries on earth and we should like it. It is a comparative advantage for us as a nation and we should applaud and strengthen our support for the many people who make this country their home. Maori development is something we should get on with. As my friend Shane Jones said it is time to get over the grievance and get on with the development. We want jobs housing families that are strong kids who are educated and businesses. 
The environment should be one of the most special values of being a New Zealander. We live in a unique environment. It differentiates us from the rest of the world. Our stewardship of our environment should become one of the defining features of all young New Zealand children who should grow up knowing that they are the stewards of the most beautiful part of this world. It should be part of their personality. We must invest in infrastructure such as broadband—because we are a long skinny country—to take us to the rest of the world. We must invest in our roads. We should invest in innovation. 
Our creative industries—film music dance painting or whatever industry it is—now define us so well. We have become a uniquely innovative creative nation. We should use that feed it through everything we do and celebrate the fact that we are becoming one of the most creative nations on earth. That will define us in the 21st century. We should be independent. We should stand on our own two feet. We should define what we think New Zealanders are about. We should tell the rest of the world what our opinions are. We should be robust as a nation and not say to ourselves that other people are bigger and therefore know best. We are doing quite fine in defining ourselves and being independent should be a characteristic for us as well. 
As I said the beginning of a new Parliament is a time to define what we will do to make a difference over the next 3 years. I said in my last speech to the House before we went to the election that it is a very special privilege to lead this nation. Over the next 3 years let us do it.