A transcription of the valedictory statement of Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive) : Those who may wish to time my speech will note that I am starting 10 minutes late! I have heard MPs say that from the age of 14 years they wanted to be Prime Minister. I must admit I never had any ambition to be a member of Parliament. My early ambitions were to be a New Zealand cricketer or an All Black. And with Dan Carter out, if Graham Henry is still looking for depth at first five-eighths, I would be happy to pick up the phone. I did not have, therefore, a searing ambition to be a member of Parliament. That might be because I went to a school called Seddon Tech, a school in those days—looking back now—for street kids, of whom not much was expected. But educational planners were wrong to set their sights for us so low, and some of our best teachers did not do so.
One of my classmates was Bruce McLaren, a polio victim, who at 15 years of age was building a racing car in the school’s engineering workshop. He went on to win the New Zealand Grand Prix—not in that particular car, I might say, although he did win the New Zealand hill climb championship in it, because it had only one gear and the car went 80 miles an hour in it. We did not know him as Bruce the famous racing car manufacturer; we knew him as just Bruce the kid with polio. I gained confidence from kids around me like Bruce, who showed that we could be anything and do anything we wanted to be or do. So I grew up with a conviction that one person could make a difference.
As Irish statesman Edmund Burke once observed: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men to do nothing.” Growing up in poorer working-class suburbs of Auckland I noticed that the power pylons were in Māngere, Ōtāhuhu, and Mount Roskill, not in Remuera, Epsom, or St Heliers. The sewage treatment plant was in Māngere, off Puketūtū Island in the Manukau Harbour, not on Brown’s Island, off St Heliers or Mission Bay beaches in the Waitematā Harbour, where it was actually originally planned to be. There were no Māori in the All Blacks teams to South Africa. The proliferation of nuclear weapons and New Zealand’s involvement in wars that were clearly not ours—and, in addition, in the case of Viet Nam, irrational in the context of the history of that country—were all carefully considered New Zealand Government policies.
My own philosophic development through this period was heavily influenced by my conversion to Catholicism as a teenager, and a resulting commitment to Christian teachings in support of social and economic justice. So I joined the Māngere Bridge branch of the Labour Party. On the first night they made me vice-president—at the first meeting I went to. I was appointed to be a delegate at the first meeting I went to of the Manukau Labour electorate committee and they made me president. I began to wonder whether at that rate I would end up in Wellington as the leader of the party by the end of the next week.
At the tender age of 27 I stood for, and was elected to, the Manukau City Council, together with my then socialist colleague Roger Douglas. We set about the public purchase of large tracts of land on which to develop our new city. The idea of selling public assets never occurred to either of us. We made the use of libraries and swimming pools free of charge. And later I was elected to the Auckland City Council and the Auckland Regional Authority, and president of the New Zealand Labour Party. To the extreme annoyance of many politicians on all sides of politics, who never forgave Time magazine, from completely out of left field the magazine selected me as “a New Zealand leader of the future”. Mike Moore, in particular, never forgot.
I worked with Norman Kirk, who was the greatest political orator I ever heard, and, later, Bill Rowling, when I was president of the New Zealand Labour Party. Bill was the most underrated politician I have ever known and one of the grittiest and most courageous politicians I ever met. I remember Bill and me looking at grim polling news over a beer in the lounge of his leader’s office in 1981. The poll trends indicated that if they continued like that until election day, Labour would get no votes whatsoever. We actually went on to win more votes than the Muldoon-led National Party, but still lost—an early cause of the electoral dissatisfaction that led to the change to MMP. My message to Phil Goff, therefore, is to hang in there—elections are not over until they are over!
To beat the National Party of the day, we had to catch and roll over the much-vaunted—justifiably in my view—political machine of Sir George Chapman, then the highly effective National Party president, and we did! By 1984 Labour had more than 100,000 party members. I will not ask how many party members parties have got these days, but I doubt whether it is mass membership like that.
The year before, I moved from the city of my birth, Auckland, to my adopted city of Christchurch. The people of Sydenham, and now Wigram, have been both loyal and generous to me, through four political parties—which must be some kind of Guinness Book of Records record—and nine consecutive general elections. The greatest satisfaction I have had in politics is to be able to help thousands of individuals and hundreds of communities in ways that almost no other occupation can make possible.
But it gave me no satisfaction at all to see the Government we had all worked so hard to elect in 1984 sheet inequality into New Zealand in a way that I could never have envisaged. The gap between rich and poor widened by 127 percent in 6 years—or 14 percent a year—between 1984 and 1990, and in my view New Zealand has never recovered from that enormous chasm. GDP between 1984 and 1993 grew by half a percent a year on average, while the world economy was growing rapidly. Compare that to the Clark-led Government of 1999-2008, where in real terms New Zealand’s GDP grew by 36 percent—an average of 4 percent per year, or eight times the growth of the Rogernomics period. No one says change was not necessary, of course, but the scale, timing, and impact of the change were borne largely by poorer New Zealanders. We are still dealing with child poverty, the decline in core services like education, health care, and housing, and radical inequality. According to OECD figures, poverty in New Zealand is highest among children—around 15 percent of them. None of us in this House can be proud of that. The top 10 percent of households in New Zealand now own 500 times more than the bottom 10 percent. That is the kind of society that our ancestors left in droves.
Inequality affects everything about our lives, it is unfair, and it is avoidable. That is why I left the Labour Party in 1989 to form the NewLabour Party. I genuinely thought at the time—along, I must say, with almost all other commentators—that I was heading for personal political oblivion. Quite a few members of Parliament assured me with some enthusiasm that I was. But the lesson in that is that it is really worth sticking up for what you believe in.
The promises broken by successive Governments, both National and Labour, from 1984 to 1993 led to the dramatic changes that have taken place in Parliament under MMP. I remember that 93 percent of the population was against the sale of Telecom in 1990. I was in this House when Richard Prebble got up and said that the country was “lucky to have a Government of such courage that it would stand up to a lobby group like that”. It was no wonder that people rebelled against an electoral system that delivered such outcomes, and in choosing MMP they did, in my view, make the right decision.
Between 1853 and 1984, when I first came to the House, 1,102 MPs had been elected to the New Zealand House of Representatives. Of those 1,102, 25 were women. Currently, there are 38 women in this Parliament—more than were elected in a total of 131 years under first past the post. People would do well to think on those things when the referendum is held later this year. There are now more Māori, as well as Asian and Pacific, MPs. Parliament is now more like New Zealand, and if people do not like it they should look in the mirror, because they will see themselves reflected here. So MMP was the right choice for New Zealand.
I have no doubt that I also made the right decision in joining with others to form NewLabour when I did, then taking it into the Alliance with other parties, and, later, when the Alliance was set to become a threat to an enlightened Government rather than a supporter of it, forming the Progressives as a coalition partner for Labour. I have no regrets about any of that. In the same circumstances I would do exactly the same again today. There was no point being part of a party when I could not, in all honesty, ask my constituents at that time to vote for it. I ended up with a Labour electorate committee with 24 members, 23 of whom were unemployed. How can you ask people like that to commit themselves to putting you back into Parliament? And there is no point in asking your constituents for their vote if you do not intend to take on the opportunity and responsibility of being in Government, regardless of the risk of doing so that smaller parties face. Because only by sitting around the Cabinet table and helping to make the decisions can you make the greatest contribution to the well-being of those you claim to represent. As I have often said, one bad day in Government is better than a thousand good days in Opposition, and anyone who has been in both knows how true that is.
I pay tribute to Helen Clark, who had the clearest and most insightful understanding of anyone I have ever worked with in politics, and to the positive difference the Government she led made to this country.
My term as Minister of Agriculture as well as Minister for Economic Development, and many others—as Pete knows, too numerous to try to elucidate—demonstrated to me over and over again how the real strength of the New Zealand economy lies in innovation. Ernest Rutherford once said: “New Zealand doesn’t have much money so we have to think.” Our core industries—sectors like agriculture, horticulture, forestry, and fishing—are, contrary to urban mythology, all high-tech, science-based industries. Our food production ability and potential have never been more economically significant for New Zealand than they are today. Countries in our economic zone like India and China are the dynamic economic powerhouses of this century, and we are on the ground floor, ready to grow with them. They need high-quality food producers like New Zealand like they need no other partners.
I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to my wife, Carole, who has stood with me through 27 tumultuous years, and to my family and extended family—many of whom are here today—who know how much time, energy, and cost all this has taken and caused.
My extraordinary, long-serving electorate staff, who started this journey with me in 1983, are still with me. I do not know anyone in the House who has had the same electorate organiser for 27 years, but if there is someone I would like to know. In 1990 Jeanette Lawrence said to me that I was going to win Sydenham. I said: “Look, don’t delude yourself, Jeanette. No one has ever done this before and it can’t be done. I’ve booked a plane back to my manufacturing and engineering company on Monday, and we mustn’t fool ourselves.” She said: “I tell you, you’ll win by 4,007 votes.” I won by 4,003, and I swear to God she knew the four people who had not voted. Liz Maunsell, Shona Richards, Marty Braithwaite, and dozens of volunteers help 1,500 constituents every year, through my electorate office.
My parliamentary staff have worked tirelessly and well beyond what could reasonably have been expected. Sally Griffin, David Cuthbert, John and Josie Pagani, and Tony Simpson, you have all been valued colleagues.
I also pay tribute to parliamentary staff, the Speaker’s office and the Clerk’s Office, the VIP drivers, who will always be remembered by anyone who has held ministerial rank, and the messengers. My thanks for your unfailing courtesy and assistance over so many years.
And to my former NewLabour, Alliance, and Progressive Party colleagues who are present in Parliament today, my grateful thanks for your invaluable contribution throughout what has been a remarkable journey: Sandra Lee—who actually led the first Māori party in this Parliament—Matt Robson, John Wright, and Grant Gillon, not to mention Reg Boorman, my former Labour colleague, whom I once had to persuade not to engage in a fisticuffs bout with Richard Prebble at a particularly robust meeting of the Labour Party caucus in the Rogernomics era.
Also my Labour Party colleagues, particularly Phil Goff and Annette King. We have been on a long journey together, and, at the end, are now on the same side again. We have Kiwibank and Air New Zealand to remind us that publicly owned assets can be run successfully by high-quality Public Service and other appointees of the Government in the interests of all New Zealanders.
And as far as Kiwibank is concerned, I will always remember Annette King’s contribution at a particularly vital final Cabinet policy committee meeting, which I have never disclosed—and I will probably get hung for doing it, but, there we are, this is my only opportunity, I think. After months of exhaustive advocacy by me of the New Zealand Post business case for the bank—I had to knock down every objection, and they were multitudinous, one by one—Annette King finally turned to Michael Cullen, after 3 hours of this, and said these immortal words: “Michael, Jim’s beaten back every argument against the bank we’ve ever put up—for God’s sake give him the bloody bank!”. And Michael Cullen, in equally immortal words, said: “Oh, all right then.”!
Finally, I want to mention two areas that have been central concerns for me over many years in this Parliament where I hope that work will continue into the future: suicide prevention, and prevention of drug and alcohol abuse. These areas are sometimes sidelined because they are complex and hard to solve. They are not sexy in the same way as many other issues that we front. Progress is often frustrating. Yet they are indicators of a community in that to the extent that it does not address the needs of some of our most vulnerable citizens, nor has the will to make necessary changes, it fails in its responsibility to care for all of our citizens.
To those critics—who seem pretty voluminous these days—who constantly belittle and cynically demean political participation and representation in this Chamber, I can do no better than quote the words of former United States President Teddy Roosevelt, who said, in a speech on citizenship: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who knows at worst, if he fails, he at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall not be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
My task now is to do what I can to help my adopted, beleaguered, and loved city of Christchurch to recover from the disaster by which it has been struck. It has been a privilege to serve in this House, and I want to end by again thanking my constituents for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do so. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Source: Office of the Clerk/Parliamentary Service.