HOLLY WALKER (Green) : Ka titiro atu ki Pukeatua e tū mai rā, ka whakarongo ake au ki ngā ripo o Te Awa Kairangi. I tupu au i raro i te raukura o Te Ātiawa i Moerā. Tēnā koutou katoa. E te Rangatira o te Whare, e te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. E ngā mana nui, e ngā mema koutou katoa, tēnā hoki koutou. E ngā tini mate kua whetūrangitia ki te kupenga wairua, haere, haere, haere.
Ki tōku kuia, ki tōku pou tokomanawa, ka piri tonu koe ki taku ngākau, ka tata tonu koe ki taku puna mahara. Ki a Rod Donald, ahakoa kīhai māua i tūtaki, i whakamanawa koe i ahau ki runga i tēnei haerenga. Ki a kōrua, menemene mai, hōmai ō ihi, ō wehi, ō wana ki a au. E moe kōrua ki te pō i waenga i te tini, e moe, e moe. Rātou ki a rātou, tātou te hunga ora, tēnā tātou katoa.
[I gaze upon the prominent landmark Pukeatua standing over there, and listen to the whirling waters of the Hutt River. I grew up under the feathered plume of the Te Ātiawa tribe at Moerā. So salutations to you all. To the prominent figure and Speaker of the House, greetings to you. To the charismatic great, all of you members, I acknowledge you, as well. To the vast and many who have passed away, farewell, farewell, depart.
To my kuia, to my pillar and ridgepole, you remain close to the seat of my affections and thoughts. To you, Rod Donald, even though we did not meet, you inspired me to make this journey. And so to you, two dear people, smile please, give me your power, awesomeness, and qualities of inspiration. Sleep there in the void among the many; sleep, sleep and rest. They the dead, to the dead, and to us the living, I salute us all .]
I never met Rod Donald. To many people it will seem amazing that just 6 short years after his death, there is already a Green MP who never met Rod. To many it will seem very sad—indeed, it is. I first joined the Green Party, as both a member and a staff member, in January 2006, just months after Rod’s death. Although I never worked with him, his absence at that time was palpable. The party was reeling from his death and reeling from a tough election result, which had seen our numbers in Parliament reduced from nine to six. It is often said that it is not easy being Green, and in 2006 it most certainly was not. I am therefore immensely proud of the way the Green Party has rebuilt in the intervening years, so that I now stand in this House as one of not six but 14 Green MPs representing the best election result the Green Party has ever achieved. We have cemented our place very firmly as the third party of New Zealand politics, and in many ways as the true Opposition.
I am now one of seven new Green MPs in this 50th Parliament, and together with the second generation of Green Party co-leaders, Metiria and Russel, we are an entirely new caucus from that first elected in 1999. But although the faces have changed, the Green Party principles and values have not, and though I did not know him, I think it is safe to say that Rod would have been proud of the team that has risen to speak tonight.
Because I never met Rod I never got to tell him that he was partly responsible for the formation of my political consciousness. It was 1997 and I was sitting in a sweltering upstairs classroom at Hutt Valley High School watching a video in fourth form social studies about the 1981 Springbok Tour. Suddenly, there was a young Rod, resplendent in his fluoro vest and orange bike helmet, clashing spectacularly with his shaggy red hair and beard. He spoke earnestly into the camera about why he was putting his safety on the line to march in the front lines of the increasingly terrifying anti-apartheid protests. I was moved, fascinated, and, strangely, jealous.
I went home and told my mum that I wished we had issues like that to protest about these days. She laughed and told me there were plenty. I started paying attention and realised she was right. So I have Rod to thank, in part, for setting me on the path to politics, and I also have my mum, Wendy Walker, who is here tonight, to thank for that and so much more. Mum, thank you for your unstinting love and unbelievably dedicated parenting—especially in those early years when it was just you and me against the world. You have made me who I am today. For reasons that are long since forgiven, my mum found herself on her own with a small baby in 1982. She had the support of her mum, my Nana, who passed away, sadly, aged 92 last year, before she got to see her eldest grandchild elected to Parliament. My mum also had the support of her sister Heather, and many other family and friends, for which we both remain very grateful.
But when faced with bringing me up on her own, my mum was also able to rely on the proud tradition of the New Zealand welfare State. For the first part of my life we lived in a council flat in Moerā, and mum received the domestic purposes benefit. This support guaranteed that I had the essentials—a safe home, enough to eat, and the loving ministrations of an attentive caregiver. Every child—and I mean every single one—deserves these essentials.
While I was a preschooler mum used the training incentive allowance to train as a kindergarten teacher. She started teaching not long after I started school and has been a much-loved and respected teacher at many kindergartens around the Hutt Valley since. My colleague and co-leader Metiria Turei also used the training incentive allowance when she found herself with a small baby and no qualifications. She got a law degree and has taken care of her family ever since. Today that support would not be available to them. We all know that John Key grew up in a State house and that Paula Bennett was a sole parent—now they are Ministers of the Crown. With the fantastic education I received at public schools in the Hutt Valley, I grew up to win a Rhodes scholarship and get elected to Parliament, aged 29. But, in the words of Russel Norman in his maiden statement to this House, these stories do not mean that a State house kid, or a public school kid, or a DPB mum can do anything. They mean that the State’s commitment of resources towards housing, education, and income support really does make a difference. Nāku te rourou, nāu te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi.
[With my food basket and your one, the people will be sustained.]
The commitment of State resources towards housing, education, and income support; the belief that when we guarantee the essentials to every child, we guarantee them opportunities for life; and the abhorrence of gross inequality and injustice—these are the issues that drive me. I am honoured to be entrusted by my party with the portfolios of children, housing, and youth, so that I may make progress on these issues during my time in this House.
Although these driving issues are primarily about social and economic justice, there is a reason that I am a member of the Green Party, and it is not just that it was Rod in that video; it is also that, like many New Zealanders, I was raised with a deep love and appreciation for our precious natural heritage. For this I have to thank my Dad—one of them—Simon Davis, who is also here tonight. He joined mum in the not always joyful task of raising me when I was 3 years old. He took me outside, threw me in rivers, coaxed me up hills, strapped skis to my feet and pushed me down mountains, and showed me something extraordinary—that we live in the most beautiful country in the world but that we have a responsibility to look after it. So, Dad, thanks for making me green, and for always pushing me out of my comfort zone, so that I have now found myself leaping off the biggest cliff yet and here into Parliament.
I joined the Green Party because its policies on the issues I care about reflect my own beliefs, and I do not have to compromise to adopt them; because the Green Party does politics according to Ghandi’s exhortation to us all to be the change we wish to see in the world; because when the Green Party thinks there should be a spokesperson for children, it appoints one; because the Green Party takes gender equality seriously; and because the Green Party is the only party that understands the inextricable links between our environment, our economy, and our people, and builds those links into everything it does.
The world is changing. Green parties around the world are riding a wave of success, achieving their best results ever, and, in the case of one German state, electing a Green Party Government. That tide that has been turning around the world is now turning here in New Zealand. The future is green, and the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand is ready. But the increased ranks of Green MPs who have spoken tonight would not be here without the blood, sweat, and tears—and there were tears—of thousands of amazingly dedicated Green Party members and supporters. I want to pay tribute to all of you who have put us here today: to the provincial and national campaign committees, to the party executive and paid staff, to the national campaign manager, Megan Salole, and her team, to the Young Greens and other party networks, to the other candidates like James Shaw, whose extraordinary efforts saw the Green Party come second in the party vote in Wellington Central, and to the non-violent army of volunteers around the country, thank you. In particular, I want to thank the members of the Hutt South Greens campaign team—too many to name but many of whom are here tonight. Thank you, team, for the leaflets delivered, meetings attended, meals supplied, stalls staffed, data analysed, sausages sizzled, and hoardings erected around the mighty electorate of Hutt South. Ehara taku toa he takitahi, he toa takitini.
[My strength is not of a single warrior but rather of a vast number.]
At this point it is appropriate to acknowledge the amazing kākahu that sits on my shoulders tonight. It was woven by longstanding Green Party member and leader Danna Glendining over 22 months, under the guidance of kuia at Te Rau Awaawa in Hamilton, and gifted to the party at a pōwhiri in January. This incredible taonga is woven from the feathers of Pākehā birds, including caged battery hens, who have found a freedom in death in this kākahu that they never had in life. I am honoured and humbled to wear it in this House tonight. Danna, thank you for this taonga and for everything you have given the Green Party over the years. I will be doing everything I can to convert your hard work, and the work of Green Party supporters around the country, into good green change in Parliament.
And that good green change is urgently needed. We are staring down the twin barrels of climate change and peak oil, and this Government is squandering the window of opportunity we presently have to lead the world, live up to our clean, green image, and retool our economy to meet the challenge. Our freshwater resources are in crisis, and this Government is burying its head in milk powder, encouraging the rapid intensification of commercial agriculture and the irrigation of our iconic landscapes, and trying to spin us the line that cleaning up our rivers is compatible with this approach, when we know it is not. We have seen disaster and destruction wreaked by oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico—and here on our own shores—and this Government is still soliciting big oil and gas to drill in our waters. And New Zealand has one of the fastest-growing gaps between rich and poor in the developed world, and this Government is still pretending that its corporate welfare policies will trickle down when we know that they do not and will not.
In her maiden speech to this House, Jeanette Fitzsimons said this: “Governments have allowed, [even] encouraged, the huge gap that has opened up between rich and poor and they can, and must, close that gap again.” Yet here we are 15 years later and the gap is wider. I carried Jeanette’s old briefcase into the House today, and I am ready to get stuck in. As you have heard from my colleagues, reducing the gap between those who have the most and those who need the most is now one of the defining political issues of our time. Just last week, the New Zealand Herald ran a series of articles highlighting the yawning chasm that has opened up between the very rich and the rest of us since the failed neo-liberal experiment of the 1980s and 1990s. The world is waking up to the realisation that inequality is good for no one. Groundbreaking research has shown that the more unequal a country is, the worse it does in almost every social, economic, and health indicator. People in more equal countries live longer, do better at school, are less likely to be victims of crime, and suffer less from drug and alcohol abuse. Our own statistics in New Zealand bear this out.
Equality and social justice in some form or other have been the preoccupations of my career so far, from speaking out as the editor of a student magazine—and, it must be said, not always getting it right—to being a small cog in wheel of the Treaty settlement process, to writing a Masters thesis in Oxford on Māori disparity, to advising the last Green Party caucus on social issues. Now I am here in this House to make reducing inequality and ending child poverty my missions as a lawmaker. By the time I leave this place, may we have made real progress towards closing the gaps and guaranteeing the essentials for every child. That is my commitment. Waiho i te toipoto, kaua i te toiroa.
[Keep it close together, not wide apart.]
Before I conclude, there are some thanks that cannot go unsaid. They are to the many people who look after me and nourish me emotionally from wherever they are in the world—in particular, my sister Sian and my brother Adrian; my other Dad, Tim, and my Australian whānau, especially Sam and Roz; my cousin Sarah; my parents-in-law, Lesley and Rick; my sisters-in-law, Bronwyn and Katherine; and Kitty, who is part of the family whether she likes it or not. But, above all, I thank my partner in life, and in civil union, David Haines. Dave, I cannot even describe how much you have given to me, not only on the crazy journey here but in every part of our lives together—but you know. You shore me up, you carry me along, and you make everything possible. I am afraid that I am not always able to adequately reciprocate, and for that I am sorry. But I love you, and I love that every challenge is an adventure we embark on together
So I start my journey as a parliamentarian, shored up by my loved ones, and ready to change the world, one step at a time. Manaaki whenua, manaaki tangata, haere whakamua.
[Protect the land and the people, and go forward.]
Waiata, 'Purea Nei'.