Tim Barnett - Maiden speech

TIM BARNETT (NZ Labour—Christchurch Central): Michael Cullen said last week that after 12 maidens he felt as though he was in a nunnery. After 43, I feel as though it is becoming a habit. I have spent many hours over the past 2 weeks in this Chamber listening, sighing, and deleting passages from my draft speech that I had fondly imagined were unique inventions. But I promise that, like me, this will be full of fresh new material.

I want to talk about the two special things that I bring to this House. As Labour's only new electorate MP, I want to offer a flavour of the extraordinary place that I represent. I want to identify two themes for my time here. I find it difficult to put into words the debt of gratitude that I owe to this country. I emigrated here in 1991. I was not a refugee from disease, discrimination, or war. I was a frustrated resident of a crowded island in a continent turning in on itself. I was seeking fresh horizons—a place where innovation was encouraged, and optimism rewarded. I wanted to be part of a society that did not judge me by what my parents did or which school I went to—ironic, cynics might say, that I ended up in Christchurch. I arrived in that wonderful city as it was going through its most dynamic changes since European settlement. The last 6 years have been the most memorable of my life, as I made my nest in this new land.

Immigrants can see things in a way that local people never can. That is both a great strength, and a potential weakness. With apologies to Oscar Wilde: to be a fairly recent immigrant might be regarded as unfortunate, to be both that and gay looks like carelessness. I am proud of and open about my sexuality. As far as I know I was the first person in the world to be newly elected to a national Parliament having been open about their homosexuality throughout their campaign.

Many of my fellow maidens in this House have, rightly, spoken with pleasure about the racial diversity of this Chamber, and the record number of women MPs, yet none has spoken of the diversity provided by having an openly gay member of Parliament. The honesty of openness has a potential cost, but I can assure the House that the emotional cost of being secret about one's homosexuality is infinitely greater. The fact that sufficient voters in Christchurch Central accepted me for what I am is a great credit to the change in public attitudes in recent years.

Why am I a Labour Party member? I watched as the racism of my primary school teacher drove a young new immigrant to desperate tears. I saw Labour local bodies and Governments work tirelessly for race equality in Britain. I watched my father die from an avoidable industrial disease, and his trade union fight through the courts for fair compensation. I sensed the growing alienation of communities feeling abandoned by the free market, and saw the immense value of voluntary organisations providing a voice and a means of survival for those communities. I hear that 60 individuals own more wealth than there is in the whole of Africa. I admire the commitment of development agencies working at community level, mainly with women, to create change for good. In short, I believe that future responsibility and hope should lie in the institutions of society, not in the virtues of the individual. That is the message of Labour.

I am deeply honoured to represent the new electorate of Christchurch Central. Until last week I was deluged by people saying to me: "You must be bored waiting for the real job to begin." Nothing could be further from the truth, given the demands and the needs of 1990s inner-city New Zealand. My office has dealt with 190 individual cases and 850 inquiries since the election, involving people born in 15 different countries in all continents of the world. No wonder! The rich cocktail of my electorate includes a public hospital, which even the Minister of Health admits has to get its act together; the homes of four members of this House; the country's largest Somali community; 37 rest homes—more than any other electorate; 72 places of education—one with the country's only school-based Muslim prayer room; five gang headquarters; and the country's most beautiful and historic city centre.

Christchurch Central contains a higher proportion of private rental tenants and of single-person households than any other electorate in the country. Its income level on average is the lowest in the country outside south Auckland. The comfort of this building makes the reality and staying power of poverty near impossible to imagine. Poverty destroys hope and raises frustration to fever pitch. It starves children. It sustains privilege. It lasts for generations. I have lived in cities all my life. They have varied from Bridgetown, Barbados, to Belfast, to three different boroughs of London. I am passionate about city living. Many of my constituents use up all their passion in surviving. As I speak, in Christchurch Central people wait for news of how many of their family members living in volatile Kenyan refugee camps will be granted visas to move to the comparative safety of Christchurch; the twenty-fifth person of the day calls at the Methodist Mission food bank; tenants of one of the oldest remaining wooden retail buildings in the city centre pack up their belongings—demolition day in a couple of weeks; landlords in Linwood meet to plan how to evict tenants operating gang activities from their properties; varsity students, in orientation week, try not to think about just how much deeper they will be in debt by the end of this year; a meeting of school principals swaps ideas on how to fund-raise from non-Government sources for early intervention services to prevent record numbers of school suspensions again next year; community agencies warn that housing is so stretched that a tent city will spring up in Latimer Square.

It is always difficult for those of us lucky enough to avoid poverty to sense what it really means. During the election campaign I slept overnight in a cardboard box in Cathedral Square—part of a cross- party attempt to highlight the threat of homelessness. Of course it was all right for me. It was only for one night. But the cardboard box was not comfortable. I did not sleep much. I spent hours listening to the sounds of the city, the dull roar of traffic, the occasional siren, and, from the cardboard box next to me, the incessant ringing of Rod Donald's cellphone. I was unnerved by the accuracy of the maiden speeches of my predecessors, Sir Geoffrey Palmer and David Caygill. In 1979, David called for the establishment of a Law Commission and urged that school committees be given real power. That happened. In the same year, Geoffrey Palmer stated that New Zealanders had to decide what sort of country they wanted and how their resources would be used. By the time he left Parliament in 1990, his Government had made many of those decisions and had drafted radical resource management law.

I have thought long and hard about what I would want to be remembered for once my political life was over. I would like to mention two matters on which I intend to act. The first is the future of our cities. The second is the response of this place to MMP. Aotearoa New Zealand is the eleventh most urbanised country in the world, yet, internationally, we have a rural image. Eighty-five percent of our population live in urban areas. Only 5 percent of people live more than an hour's drive from a city. Yet we barely recognise, let alone address, the major issues of city life—few academic studies; no Government policies; little coordination. There are desperate issues in our cities—ever-growing tension between developers and the community, exposed by our free-market environmental law; local government yearning for more resources and the authority to plug the gaps and lead their cities into the next millennium; community groups so colonised by the contract culture, so de-sensitised by the competition for funding, that they fail to provide the community leadership required; increased immigration, which I welcome, not matched by adequate skills or language training; and an intelligent response to the demand for more roads, which can generate more traffic and damage the environment.

These are urgent urban challenges that can be solved only if this House does three things that it has too often failed to do in the past: think ahead, be imaginative, and work across traditional boundaries. I am the first urban affairs spokesperson for any political party in New Zealand. The challenge to me is to develop a plan for cities that draws on best practice around the world, and preserves what is special about our extraordinarily diverse urban areas. I worked for 16 years of my life as a charity manager. It is always comforting to be part of a popular profession. What a shock to come to this place, which attracts unpopularity like a magnet! Dozens of my fellow maidens mentioned this unpopularity. Such self-flagellation seems to be a compulsive habit amongst the new MPs in this House—it is strange that Pam Corkery failed to draw our attention to it.

The revolution of MMP will not be complete until this place changes as much as the electoral system has done. What could be done to make politics attractive again? I want to work for five things. First, we could make it easier to consider and legislate on issues of conscience. Company law does not have to wait for the luck of the members' ballot. Real issues that are massively important to many people- --such as the illegality of soliciting, an unworkably high drinking age, voluntary euthanasia, decriminalisation of use of cannabis—fester for years waiting for a brave select committee or a foolhardy maverick member to champion the cause, or for a massacre to make change inevitable.

Second, we could judge ourselves, at the end of our careers here, by what we have achieved for real people—Fran Wilde, by liberating the lives of gay men; Jonathan Hunt, by ending the torture of anonymity for adopted children; Helen Clark, by reducing the number of lives lost through smoking; Mike Moore, by introducing competition to domestic airlines; and Katherine O'Regan, by ensuring protection from discrimination for people with HIV.

Third, we could change how the Government does things, rather than just wait for the outcomes. The free market regards human beings as consumers and not citizens; unregulated, it can encourage moral corruption. Surely that is the real—almost entirely ignored—lesson of the Aotearoa Television saga. When the Government issues contracts that are expressed only in terms of outputs, which reduce human dignity to dollars and cents, then it is abandoning control over the abuses that happen along the way. It is giving everything a price, and nothing a value. It is blurring the difference between right and wrong. As long as the television programmes are made, expense accounts can boom and staff rights can be forgotten.

Fourth, we could do what no one else wants to do—take responsibility for planning this nation's future. The market and the media seem to think only as far as closing time. Members of Parliament must rise above that; we must be visionaries. Beware of spending too much time getting outraged about the latest scandal. What we are facing tomorrow and beyond requires the force of imagination, not wisdom from yesterday.

Fifth, we could examine what we really mean by working across traditional party boundaries. I have heard many dreams in those 43 maiden speeches. Those dreams will be delivered only through new forms of cooperation. That is not easy in an institution that seems to mitigate against cooperation. We 45 new members have to show that this is possible or yet another dream of MMP will have been shattered. We do not have much to build on. The superannuation accord has become cross-party working from hell. Mechanisms do not have to be as destructive as that; they can be constructive. I am pleased to report to the House that we have managed to organise five meetings of the cross-party South Island MPs group over the past 3 months without histrionics or resignations. We need more such networks of MPs with common interests, working as partners with outside pressure groups.

I can reasonably claim to have three predecessors in this place. Lianne Dalziel and David Caygill each represented parts of the old Christchurch Central electorate. And Chris Carter was the first MP to be public about his gay sexuality. The list and electorate aspects of MMP create predecessors who are still in this House and at their peak. Lianne Dalziel was a tireless advocate for the stark problems of Christchurch Central; she is an outstanding advocate for public health. Being selfish, I had always imagined that David Caygill would be the perfect person in this House to turn to for confidential and frank advice. I was very sorry to hear of his decision to retire. He was the supreme gentleman legislator. MMP has made us define constituencies in new ways.

Chris Carter, who maybe paid the highest of prices at the last election for his honesty, made this nation aware that it has an established and vigorous gay community. I am here to represent Christchurch Central. I am also here to remind each and every member of this House that they and their party have lesbian, gay, and bisexual voters. Just as I represent all the people of Christchurch Central, so I expect fellow members to understand and accept their duty to all the community, regardless of sexuality. Yesterday, Rana Waitai used his maiden speech to explain to us just how ignorant he was of gay people. I am patient. He will learn.

I want to finish, rather than start, by thanking with all my heart those who worked on my campaign and who work with me now in the Christchurch Central electorate. Our democracy is kept alive by volunteers who believe in a cause. We professional politicians owe such volunteers a lifetime of debts.