Roche Denise: Address in Reply 
Roche Denise: Address in Reply 
[Volume:677;Page:428] 
DENISE ROCHE (Green) 
: 
 He honore he kororia ki te Atua he maungarongo ki te whenua he whakaaro pai ki nga tangata katoa. Tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa. 
Ko taku pepeha. Ko Wharepuhunga toku maunga. Ko Waikato toku awa. Ko Tainui toku waka. Ko Ngati Raukawa toku iwi. Ko Ngati Huri toku hapu. Ko Pikitu toku marae. Ko Rauti Simmonds toku tupuna kuia. Ko Bob Roche taku matua. Ko Anne Roche taku whaea. Ko Jim Roche me Andrew Roche me Ennis McLeod me Bernie Taylor me Bridget McBeth me Judy O’Connor raua ko Gloria Roche aku tuakana. Ko Robby Roche taku teina. Ko John Stansfield taku hoa rangatira. Ko Joseph raua ko Matariki oku tamariki. No te motu ataahua o Waiheke ahau. 
Nga mihi nui ki a koe Mr Deputy Speaker ki nga rangatira o te whenua o tenei Whare tenei tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa. 
[ 
Honour and glory to God peace and good will to all mankind. Greetings to you greetings to you and greetings to you all. 
My tribal identity is as follows. Wharepuhunga is my mountain and Waikato is my river. Tainui is my canoe Ngati Raukawa is my tribe Ngati Huri is my subtribe and Pikitu is my marae. Rauti Simmonds is my grandmother Bob Roche is my father and Anne Roche is my mother. My older siblings are Jim Roche Andrew Roche Ennis McLeod Bernie Taylor Bridget McBeth Judy O’Connor and Gloria Roche. My younger sibling is Robby Roche. John Stansfield is my noble husband and Matariki and Joseph are my children. I come from the beautiful island of Waiheke.  
Greatest of respects to you Mr Deputy Speaker and acknowledgments to you all leaders of the nation of this House greetings to you all 
.] 
We come to this House—all of us—as the individual expression of collective aspiration collective experience and collective effort. It has been said before that no one stands on the paepae by themselves. You cannot be a leader if there is no one with you. You cannot stand at the front if there is no one behind you. And importantly you are a leader only because others have supported you.  
As I take my place in this House I first thank all the fabulous Green Party supporters and voters who have trusted me with their vision of a richer New Zealand: a country where rivers are clean where children are safe healthy and educated and where a thriving green economy ensures our children can build satisfying careers in the same country as their families. In particular I thank the Auckland Greens. I especially acknowledge Katy Watabe Ron Miller Rod Galanti Gwen Shaw Neil Miller Nora West Tim McMains Jane and Pam and so many others for their incredible support encouragement and sheer hard work.  
I am not the first woman of Maori descent to come to this House from the glorious motu of Waiheke. My mentor and inspiration—and my friend—and a former Minister of Local Government the Hon Sandra Lee blazed that path for me. And I am not the first woman from our organic island farm to walk these halls; my friend and fellow olive-picker and grape-stomper the Hon Laila Harré a former Minister of Women’s Affairs holds that baton. And I am not the first organic grower from our farm to represent the great green family in this House. My colleague Greens co-leader Russel Norman beat me to the post.  
But I am the first descendant of Rauti Simmonds the first daughter of Ngati Huri to enter this House as a member. I acknowledge Ockie Simmonds from our hapu up there in the gallery. And I am the first in the Roche family—a huge family blessed as it was by the combination of natural Maori fertility and Catholic contraception—to enter this House. I am the eighth child and the youngest daughter in a family of nine children. My mother was one of three but from a large extended family and part of the clan McLeod of Waipu. I still have a horror of bagpipes being played indoors. My father was one of 16 children and I am one of about 84 first cousins on that side.  
I am sad that my parents Anne and Bob Roche have both passed away and do not get to see their daughter take her place in this House. However I am grateful for the support that I have received from my family. I acknowledge my whanau my children and my friends up there in the gallery who have travelled from far and wide to witness this day.  
It was my large family that prepared me for a political career. I learnt early that numbers count—and the importance of organising the numbers in the house to offset the power at the top. And I certainly learnt the skills in arguing. I had a lot of practice and I particularly thank my brother-in-law Pat Taylor for honing those skills over very many years.  
I grew up with my family in a railway house in the Frankton railway settlement. Mum worked for the post office and my dad was on the railways—good secure Government jobs which no longer exist today. In fact just this week the Prime Minister has announced more job losses to come in the State sector.  
I am not of the 1 percent who are so grossly overrepresented in every part of New Zealand political life. I was one of those kids who left high school with no qualification but I returned as an adult student some years later. I studied by day and among other jobs I sang telegrams at night to support myself. I was blessed to be challenged and supported by one of New Zealand’s greatest educators while at Auckland Girls’ Grammar School. Thank you Charmaine Pountney—I am here to pay it back.  
Emboldened by education and enraged by the injustice that delivered by an accident of birth to one class the jewels and another the crumbs I set out on a journey that began as a union organiser initially with the theatrical workers union hitching rides on trains in the guards’ van with my dad’s union mates and fighting for the rights of cinema workers around the northern part of our country. I have protested and picketed with the best. I can attest that love and politics can mix: my first date with my life partner John was at a union picket at the Devonport docks.  
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: So romantic. 
DENISE ROCHE 
: Romance! I have scrapped my way through disputes represented workers in courts and tribunals and had a solid education in the misery that is greed the blight that grew inequality across our land. I moved to the hotbed of activism known as Orapiu Grove Farm on Waiheke Island to be with my partner when our kids were small. I am grateful to that island. It is where I learnt to walk the talk as a Green.  
Waiheke is a great place to raise your kids and it is an even better place to learn the craft of political representation. It is a place where opinions are strongly held and freely given too—at all hours of the day—on the ferry at the supermarket at the library.  
I started my political career in 2007 by defeating a sitting Auckland City Councillor by just 11 votes and I put up with being called “Landslide Roche” for the next 3 years. That election catapulted me into the final term of the Auckland City Council and the debates on the future governance of Auckland.  
We do political debates a bit differently where I come from. We do them like they matter as if political decisions were the preserve of those affected by them. For this reason in Auckland Council Waiheke and Great Barrier Island have a rate of voter engagement that is the envy of much of the country. There is something in this that this House needs to learn from—how to make politics meaningful and relevant to our citizens. And I am sorry to say it is something that this House has been failing at.  
The 2011 election marked a historic low in political engagement: the lowest rate of voter turnout since 1877 which was before women got the vote. The biggest threat to democracy in this country is not the community of Ruatoki it is not the Taliban it is not the Exclusive Brethren and their abortive campaign to wipe out the Green Party. It is disengaged citizens. You will note that I do not call this “voter apathy” because as a Green member of Parliament I do not believe in blaming the victim. If our time in this House is to serve the interests of democracy then we need to urgently address and arrest this decline in voter participation.  
When the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance began the process that took the “local” out of local government in Auckland nearly a quarter of all the submissions it received were from the 0.8 percent of the region who live in the Hauraki Gulf islands. The commission had no option but to hold hearings on both Waiheke and Great Barrier Island and they were very well attended I can assure you. The upshot was that both our communities kept our own local boards. Many others in that forced amalgamation did not. The Gulf islands is a little place but you seriously do not want to mess with us.  
I am proud to be Ngati Waiheke and I acknowledge those from the motu who have travelled here today. And I am proud to be part of the community and voluntary sector too. Community organisations are the crucible of democracy the place where citizens come together to share their dreams and plan our common futures. They are an essential glue of society which shapes our norms and values without which we would all be the poorer.  
I am carried into this House on the shoulders of activists and organisations who fought for my right to be here. I think particularly of that historic and venerable institution the National Council of Women. It was founded in 1896 and the first president was suffragist Kate Sheppard. It is an organisation to whose tireless advocacy I and every other woman in this House owe our place. We have not honoured this contribution. In 2004 this House passed inept legislation based on an ancient definition of “charitable purpose” which denies the legitimate advocacy role of non-governmental organisations and which has resulted in organisations like the National Council of Women and others like Greenpeace being denied registration as charities. They cannot be registered because the Charities Commission has an allergy to advocacy. Australian legislators have realised this error and amended their legislation and I look forward to being part of a New Zealand Parliament that moves similarly.  
As I enter this House I look forward to being able to work across parties for the benefit of all our communities—like the bill that will be coming up soon to restrict harm from gambling. I can assure the House that even though I am the Greens’ gambling spokesperson I am not an anti-gambling zealot and I will prove that to you by selling you a raffle ticket during the dinner break. I am however deeply concerned with the harm caused by commercialised gambling and especially by the blight on our communities caused by pokie machines.  
Kiwis know that these machines reap their profits from problem gamblers. Kiwis know that they can harm whole communities which is why whenever they have been asked if they want more pokies people say no. The former Manukau City Council received over 6000 submissions asking it to restrict pokies. Active engaged citizens are saying no to pokies and will be dismayed by the banana-republic backroom deal being done by the Government where our laws are for sale and where the Auckland casino a monopoly provider is to be expanded in return for a convention centre—or was that 30 pieces of silver?  
Commercial gambling is deeply regressive and cynically exploitative. It is a transfer of wealth from the brown to the white from the women to the men and from the poor to the rich. Casinos are an engine of crime and inequality. 
As Simon Collins so cogently argued in last week’s  
New Zealand Herald  
feature we have become a land of inequality. The deregulation of the labour markets since 1991 has not brought the wealth and security to the working people that was promised in this House. We are not a better country for having dismantled generations of knowledge and experience in distributing fairly the profits of work and enterprise.  
We used to be a nation that prided itself on giving everyone a fair go but the human value of fairness and equality has been subverted by greed. It has been subverted by bankrupt financial ideology which has robbed the poor on behalf of the rich. The one mechanism available to working people to garner a fair share for their work—organised labour—has been systematically demonised vilified and stripped of rights that took generations of active citizens to build. I acknowledge the Ports of Auckland workers’ dispute to oppose the casualisation of their jobs and the Oceania rest home workers who are striking soon.  
If we want working people to invest their lives in our future as a nation we need to assure them of decent wages safe working conditions and economic security for their families or we are forever condemned to waving goodbye to our kids as they flee to societies that will respect them.  
I am proud to join the largest team of Green MPs that this country has ever seen. The last election saw a greater awareness that the Green vision is a sound vision. We are waking up to the fact that promises delivered for a 3-year election cycle will not deliver the best outcomes in the longer term. My children Mata and Joe and all our children are destined to inherit an environment much more degraded than the country I grew up in. We have a duty to them and to generations to come to address climate change and to clean up the mess we have been creating.  
And finally it is an absolute privilege to join a team of Greens who are determined to keep our principled approach to politics. I pay tribute to our Green Party MPs who left last term: Keith Locke Sue Kedgley and prior to that Jeanette Fitzsimons and Sue Bradford who together with all our MPs have demonstrated that principled approach to this House over the years. I hope to do as well. No reira tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa. 
Waiata