Henderson Emily; Mallard TrevorDr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Mr Speaker tū ake tēnei. Tēnā koutou Te Āti Awa e ngā mana whenua o Te Ūpoko o te Ika. Tēnā koutou ngā hapū ngā whānau o te rohe o Whangārei me kī ngā kaitiaki ngā kaimanaaki. He mihi ki a koutou ngā hapū he mihi ki a koutou tohu o nehe. Ngā maunga whakahī ngā awa ngā moana. Tēnei te mihi o te mana o te Whare Pāremata ki ngā kaiārahi me ngā kaimahi o ngā wawata o te iwi. He karere tēnei mō ngā iwi o Whangārei hei mihi ki a koutou.[Mr Speaker I now take my stand. Greetings Te Āti Awa the authority of this land of Te Ūpoko o te Ika. Greetings also to the subtribes and families of the Whangārei district that is to the caretakers and carers of the land. I greet all the subtribes and all your ancient landmarks; the ancestral mountains the rivers and the oceans. This tribute is from the authority of Parliament to the leaders and fulfillers of the aspirations of the people. I am but a messenger for the people of Whangārei. Greetings to you all.]He mihi kia koutou ma to my family and my friends and my Labour team who have travelled all the way down to support me and to those at home I know are watching too. Huri noa tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa.Ka huri ōku whakaaro ki te tini me te mano kua mate. E te matua Rudy Taylor kua oti nei tō mahi rangatira moe mai rā. Rātou ki a rātou tātou ki a tātou. Me ū tātou ki te kaupapa kua takotohia.[Let me reflect upon the myriads that have passed on. Sir Rudy Taylor you have completed your chiefly tasks rest in peace. Them to them we to us. Let us turn to the agenda that is before us.]I am a sixth generation Pākehā. He tangata tiriti ahau. By birth I'm a Wellingtonian and the fourth generation to feel Ko Kāpiti te motu ko Pukerua te takutai engari i ēnei rā nō Whangārei ahau [Kāpiti is the island Pukerua is the beach but I now call Whangārei home].In fact the day I made my first stump speech last May was nearly 40 years exactly to the day that my mum and dad drove us into Whangārei seven-year-old me in the back seat with the first four of what would become six siblings. Mai i te ūpoko o te ika tae noa ki te hiku kua hoki mai au ki konei.[From the head of the fish all the way to its tail I have returned here.]We went from the head to the tail of the fish and now I am back full circle to my great honour as the Labour MP for Whangārei and also as a proud member of team Tai Tokerau alongside Minister Davis and Willow-Jean Prime for Northland. They were so generous in taking me under their wings but always behind us all was the wide wide wings of the late great Rudy Taylor lifting us all to where we are now in a position to make good on the Te Tai Tokerau saying It's the tail that powers the fish". But in what direction? Throughout last year's campaign the words of another big man Norman Kirk before his election to Prime Minister were a touchstone for the Labour Party. "New Zealanders" he said "don't ask for much. Someone to love somewhere to live somewhere to work and something to hope for." But it's the words he said afterwards that echo in my head. On the night of his election he said "And now comes the job of making dreams come true."We each of us come here with the hopes and dreams of thousands of people on our shoulders—in my case the hopes and dreams of the 98300 people of Whangārei—and for all of us now comes the job of making dreams come true. New Zealanders don't ask for much but in Whangārei over the last 40 years we got it less than most. I am not old enough to remember Kirk but I remember the Whangārei I grew up in. It isn't the Whangārei in which my kids grow up. Like the rest of Te Tai Tokerau Whangārei has never been wealthy but over the past 40 years we have got progressively poorer until in fact we bump along the bottom of the bad end of just about every set of statistics going. Now some of us do OK but as a Family Court lawyer and as a criminal lawyer I have seen what happens to the others. Violence drug and alcohol abuse suicide and neglect handed down from generation to generation over-crowded run-down houses filled with hungry sick kids and worn-out parents. After 40 years of neoliberalism and trickle-down economics that's what trickles down in Whangārei. That kind of poverty causes more than material deprivation it squeezes out that fourth Kirk necessity—room for hope room to dream. It creates what my mum after 30-plus years of running a crisis agency calls poverty of hope and nowhere more than for our young people.Yet Whangārei has massive potential. The same young people who sometimes feel they have no future are stunningly talented and we have amazing resources with which they could be building a great future. A stunning marine and coastal environment innovative home-grown industries and a nascent tech community set to explode. Not to mention the deepest best-located port with the easiest access for our overseas trading partners. But in order to realise that potential we need support. Only in the last three years under the Labour-led Government we start to see some real investment. Now we need to follow through and restore a level playing field in the North.The Labour Party of Kirk believed creating a level playing field was the State's first responsibility and the basic measure of a decent society. In the years since we've been shamed into thinking that ideal is in some way naive or even presumptuous that equity and justice are dreams we can't afford that a level playing field is just too much uphill work. Whangārei is over feeling ashamed. Because we are not naive. It is not naive to think a country can be run on the basis of equal opportunity and fairness. It is not naive to think it is worth shouldering responsibility for uplifting the vulnerable. It is not naive to expect that the interests of the people should be at the heart of their Government. And the truth of that was amply demonstrated by the last Labour-led Government which spent 2020 proving over and over that putting its people first is the best and smartest way to protect a country. It is the ethos that helped build this country. It is what has sustained us through the last dark months. It is the kaupapa that can see us thrive into the future. That is the dream I am here to help secure. That is the job I am here to help get done. With help Whangārei can achieve our dreams. And what's more we know achieving them will help this country achieve its goals including for example an improved coastal shipping and rail network utilising the best and deepest port in New Zealand.Now I know now is not the easiest time to have these dreams. As a country we're all aware of how precarious is our tiny lifeboat balanced on the edge of this global storm. We know that the safety of all our people has to be the economic priority but it's my job to raise them anyway as the representative of the 98300 people of Whangārei. Not just because I represent Whangārei but also because if leadership is about ensuring people's survival it's also about articulating the dreams that will see them thrive. However big the seas you have to cross first it is about articulating the dreams that show us where on those seas we are aiming.Even so and looking at the world outside and the scale of the problems inside it is hard not to be pessimistic about my chances but it's Whangārei itself that gives me hope because it's there I've seen change happen. As a courtroom lawyer working in a system under strain is not new to me albeit on a somewhat smaller scale and nor is working to turn around a system whose practice has come adrift of its ideals. Both the Family Court and the Criminal Court are under immense strain and there are times when neither does the job they set out to do. Nowhere in the Criminal Court are the cracks more evident than in the plight of vulnerable defendants and vulnerable witnesses: children rape complainants those with issues that impact their ability to communicate in and understand trials.Now it may be shocking to hear but I know as a lawyer and as the daughter of a lawyer and as an academic who studies lawyers that lawyers are in this job to protect people not harm them. Yet we do harm not only to individuals but also to the search for truth. And we do that harm through some of our most time-honoured centuries-old practices. It's hard to turn a ship that thinks it's going in the right direction but six years ago in Whangārei we did just that. We designed a pilot that became the District Court sexual violence court and the basis of a national training programme for judges and lawyers. It wasn't easy but now more and more lawyers agree that if a defendant or a witness is going to struggle to communicate or understand standard trial process we change the process. Some still see that change as a threat but the rest of us know that if the way you're acting is endangering the very thing you're trying to achieve change is good.There is still much more to do in the Criminal Court and a lot more to do in the Family Court and some of that we can discuss when we debate the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill much of which was also piloted in Whangārei—I told you this tail moves the fish. As a nation there is so much more we have to move but if a bunch of crusty lawyers can abandon centuries of tradition because it's not fit for purpose there's hope for us all and there isn't really any other moral choice but to try. We have to give those kids in Whangārei in Levin in Moerewa and in Kawerau—we have to give our kids back Kirk's room to dream room to hope. We cannot lose another generation's promise. And on the environmental plane science is telling us very clearly there's absolutely no time for delay. It's for these reasons I stood. But as a parent I can say hand on heart one of the worst moments of parenting is when you realise the buck stops with you. Most especially we cannot pass this buck to our kids and expect their activism to somehow do the trick while we get on with business as usual. No one is more scared of leaving the job to us than our children. In declaring a climate emergency Prime Minister you said that our children feel this crisis in a truly visceral way. You were right. They are anguished. They are angry. They doubt our preparedness to do the job. And I know this up close and personal because up there in the gallery four of them are mine. But just as our lawyer colleagues want justice and change tack to get it as parents as grandparents as aunties and uncles there's not a one of us who doesn't want what's best for our kids wouldn't give everything for our kids.That being so the country that dreamt up the eight-hour day whose mothers first fought for and won the right to vote whose every citizen one way or another descends from voyagers and visionaries is a person who risked everything for the dream of a better life for their children this country can face up to the challenges rise up to the challenges. It can create new dreams and become something even greater.Just last week at my first Waitangi I watched our Government face up to the challenge of restoring our partnership in Te Tiriti just as days earlier it faced up to the challenge of the first Climate Commission and the few days before that it began the challenge of rebuilding Oranga Tamariki all for the sake of that dream of a better future for our children because ours is the job of making dreams come true. And to those four kids in the gallery and all the others should you ever doubt that commitment because it's taking too long or we hit hurdles the little song that our family chose today is the song that my grandma chose to have sung at her funeral as a message to her children—that generation today my parents my aunts and uncles have come here to sing it to me. I sing it for you.If I have words to make a day with youIf I had words to make a day for youI'd sing you a morning golden and newI would make this day last for all timeAnd give you a night deep in moon shine.If I had words to make a day for youI'd sing you a morning golden and newI would make this day last for all timeAnd give you a night deep in moon shine.[Applause]SPEAKER: I call on Dr Gaurav Sharma to make his maiden statement. Sorry just hold that up. Because there was an interruption I thought all the people were in who needed to come in. I'll call the member in a minute but could I just get some indication from security as to why all these seats aren't full already? [Pause in proceedings] Can I just ask the messengers upstairs to open both doors there so we don't have people coming through one at a time thank you. I call on Dr Gaurav Sharma to make his maiden statement."