Tabuteau Fletcher: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 23 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:219. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First):Tēnā koutou. Te Whare e tū nei tēnā koe. Te papa e takoto nei tēnā koe. E ngā mate o tēnei waka haere haere haere. Tātou e ora nei tēnā tātou kuia mā koro mā tēnā koutou. Rau rangatira mā tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[Greetings to you the House standing before me and the ground lying there greetings. Farewell the deaths of this canoe depart and journey on. To us the living to the elderly women and menfolk acknowledgments. And so to the leaders a hundredfold greetings acknowledgments and salutations to you and to us all collectively.]Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch congratulations on your reappointment as Assistant Speaker. It is a privilege and an honour to stand before you and all of New Zealand for the first time. It is with much humble joy that I take this opportunity to thank those people who have helped me in my long journey. Firstly I thank my wife Karen. She has been a patient and loving person. We have been together 19 years. I am a proud husband and a lucky man. With my two daughters Morgan and Jaime I have a home that is full of fun and love and their support has been the rock I have held to. In my electorate we have an incredible passionate and hard-working team that I must acknowledge here today. The people I must thank are Lillian Emery Ann Wattam Coral Dolman Amy Uluave and my uncle Tom. I would like to acknowledge Heidi Te Are and particularly Don Newport a member of the party who has been putting up hoardings in Rotorua for decades. Beyond that I am humbled by the people who work so hard behind the scenes so that they can see someone in this Parliament who shares their vision their ideals and their values. I thank you all for your support.I consider myself a case study in perseverance and loyalty. My journey here has been a very long one: 21 years a member of the party with four general election campaigns under my belt. I would like to pay tribute to my leader the Rt Hon Winston Peters. His leadership determination and unwavering energy have seen New Zealand First increase its representation by more than any other party coming into this 51st term. It has also been a great team effort. I say to all of the board the candidates the members and the supporters of this party thank you and I will endeavour to be an articulate voice for you all.My journey started with my parents and their political activism. It was my mother and father who trained me to think to question and to stand up and be counted. My mother Maria father David and sister Stacey all passed away what seems like a lifetime ago but regrettably it was all so recently. So it is that I can still picture my mum and dad sitting in the gallery. They would be beaming and so full of pride for their son. My sister would be shuffling in her seat. I can hear her voice even now: “Be careful. Don’t stuff up.” Instead I am able to acknowledge Jen and Terry my in-laws. Their love and support in all things has meant a great deal to me.It is important to remember one’s origins. I am proud to say that I was born and raised in Rotorua. I grew up on the beaches of Maketū Pukehina Lakes Rotorua and Tarawera and Waititī Stream but mostly the Blue Lake; in the thermal baths in Ōhinemutu; on the slopes of Tiho-o-Tonga; and in my grandparents’ home on Homedale Street. I remember the family business vividly a store in Murupara called Tabuteau’s Drapery where my dad and his brother worked for decades selling to the forestry workers and their families. My dad and his brother became integral parts of the Murupara community. During my campaigns especially people would come up to me and ask about that Tabuteau name and the connection. They would tell me stories of my mother and father and his brother. The legacy they left to their community and me was made up of integrity compassion honesty and hard work. This is my legacy and I am so very proud to be born of it.For the Commission Opening of Parliament a bus of 40 of my hapū and whānau made the trek to Wellington from that stream in Waiteti. It was a bus full of Ngāti Ngāraranui. We are a proud whānau. Our family is representative of all New Zealanders. We are kids in school—in Catholic schools and kura—we are mums and dads we are teachers we are lawyers and we are businessmen and businesswomen. We are even former sports stars—All Blacks and Kiwi rugby league players the Black Sticks international medal-winning bowls champions and New Zealand titleholders in boxing. We are represented in the current Kiwi rugby league team. One of my whānau is the most senior Māori policeman in New Zealand. One of us is even a judge. What a family. I am so proud to have been born into this whānau. Further to that what a wonderful picture of Māoridom today a mix of real New Zealanders living good lives with some also reaching lofty heights in their many diverse pursuits—high achievers who are celebrated by their whānau.As with all people my lineage is made up of so many branches on that family tree. I can trace my Tabuteau name back to La Rochelle in the year of 1601. I am Ngāti Ngāraranui Ngāti Rangiwewehi and Ngāti Whakauē and through my Tauranga Moana Ngāi Te Rangi and Ngāti Tapu. I was schooled at Otonga Road Primary School Rotorua Intermediate School and Rotorua Boys’ High School. I went on to Waiariki Polytechnic and as a young man worked for many years in the tourism industry. Rotorua has made me the person I am today and I am so staunchly proud of my home town. Unlike many others after gaining my business degree at the University of Waikato I returned to Rotorua. After a few years in retail and returning to Waikato to add more economics papers to my degree I was invited to apply for a teaching position at my old high school—Raukura. It was the opportunity as a young man still in his 20s to take on the mantle of matua or teacher and I truly was given the vehicle and opportunity to grow into the man I am today. It was in this role of mentor and educator that I learnt to extend myself refine my own skills and develop expertise in myriad areas. In this time I also wrote my first piece of academic research about high-end interactive travellers and their impact on the Rotorua tourism market. I then returned once again to Waikato University this time to gain my graduate diploma in teaching and learning.I proudly claim that my students achieved at the highest level nationally. Several of my greatest joys were not my own but rather one of my business teams for example which won the supreme business award in the national Young Enterprise Trust competition. Not to be outdone by their peers a year later—for several years in a row in fact—my economics students would go on to place in the top 5 percent of the Auckland University New Zealand Economics Competition. In the sporting arena my junior mountain biking team dominated the national mountain biking competitions. My memory was jogged the other day by a member. As part of a team I supported a Russell McVeagh competition winner in one of my many years as a teacher. As head of our future pathways programme customising individual learning plans placing students in the workplace so they could learn on the job and also as the senior dean I can tell you that our secondary schools are doing a fine job with the funding they receive. Give our schools the support and funding that has been bandied about by Ministers and members with regard to alternatives to solutions for problems that I posit are of their own design and I implore the Government to watch with incredulous amazement as qualified teachers take our students to new heights of success. Our schools already run rigid professional development programmes for their staff. To take experts out of their classes will not help the students who no longer have their teachers in front of them. I suggest to you that there are already mechanisms in place to upskill our new and struggling teachers.Only 2½ years ago I accepted an offer to become the head of the business school at Waiariki Institute of Technology the same institution where nearly 20 years before I gained my diploma in business. Here I managed and worked with wonderful staff developed a suite of postgraduate qualifications and lectured in my favourite specialist subject economics. Institutions such as these are being asked to do more with less and less and although I applaud cost savings and efficiency it takes a wise practitioner to understand when cost savings have gone too far. Instead these ledger entries in fact no longer reflect the true cost the real negative cost to staff and invariably the students. We must seek to better understand our schooling system. To support their structures and to provide good and meaningful funding and well-trained qualified staff will mean the development and growth of a future generation we can be proud of. I know that in getting these fundamentals right we support our children and the future they represent.Rotorua is a region that serves as the life blood of this country. We thrive in forestry farming and tourism in particular. Our life blood has slowed and it is ebbing. Our regions need rejuvenation. Not only do we need to stem the tide of overseas ownership—most of the land in our forests is foreign-owned—but we must look to create value to create jobs. This can be achieved through clever management of our fiscal and monetary policies. I hope to play a role in these conversations and this rejuvenation even if it has to be one company at a time such as in my current voluntary role as a New Zealand business mentor. This role has meant nearly a decade of supporting local businesses in their endeavours to attain what seems to be that elusive goal of profitability in today’s world where locally owned small to medium enterprises undoubtedly struggle. We live in times of corporate giants and international turmoil. We live in the best little country in the world. It is a tremendous place to be but it is a tenuous position to be in. We are a small nation still fledging in our growth.My goal in my time here is to ensure that I bring my passion in business and macroeconomics to all discussions in this Parliament and with all of my colleagues we can make a positive change. I will be challenged. I will have to ensure that certain members do not allow this small and beautiful nation of ours to be swept away by unfettered and unrestrained international interests so far removed from the interests of the people of New Zealand itself. When our goals are long term when the people of New Zealand are our first priority when the mechanism of commerce and trade favours our own and provides a stable and robust platform then can we grow together and share in the wealth of our resources and the reward of our toil. When our own businesses flourish and thrive as they are competing with the rest of the world when they share their success and when they share in the spoils with their people then can I say we all win.It is with a level of dismay that I note just last week that Rotorua International Airport is to become domestic again. I have already spoken to many in Rotorua about this. These conversations bring to mind most vividly one of the biggest challenges I wish to address—a challenge I have looked to as an academic in my fledging research career. My last piece of formal research looked at the operations of oligopoly market structures trying to understand the pluses and the minuses of these structures in New Zealand. Let me allude to some of my findings by suggesting that there was little in the way of pluses for the average New Zealand household and I will be seeking to ensure that although businesses must continue to thrive importantly the average New Zealand consumer must be better off as a Kiwi energy user home builder supermarket shopper petrol user and domestic traveller.I am committed to finding solutions to many real issues everyday New Zealanders face. They include the need for more qualified teachers in front of smaller classrooms the need for controls on immigration—perhaps even if it is only to stop the property bubble from bursting in Auckland—and the need for more police on our streets. Let us create and encourage real investment with overseas interests and encourage meaningful returns for all rather than a wholesale sell-off of our land and assets to non - New Zealanders. Going forward we all need to be mindful of supporting the integration of three core pillars into our organisations: profit yes; the planet absolutely; but most important people. Let us not forget the people. To be a member of this House is a privilege. To be an effective Opposition is to ensure an open and accountable Government. I have spent most of my adult life working for the betterment of others. I will remember the privilege that is this role every day that I am here. I will continue to work hard for the betterment of all New Zealanders and will endeavour to ensure that this Government is always open and accountable. Kia ora and tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker.