SUE BRADFORD (Green) Link to this
Kia ora koutou. E mihi nui ana au ki a koutou e ngā iwi, tātou katoa o tēnei wāhi, te Whare Pāremata. Tēnā koutou katoa.
[Hi there. I acknowledge you immensely, people—all of us of this place, Parliament House. Greetings to you all.]
It is 10 years, minus a month, since I first entered this place. This is a short time compared with the contribution of lifers like Helen Clark and Michael Cullen, whose valedictories we heard so recently. Little did I realise then that I would be next. Although 10 years is not much compared with the time served by many members in this House, it is long enough in the scale of a lifetime. Over the 4 months following my loss of the Green co-leadership election in May, it became clear to me that my heart was no longer really in this job, and that it was time for me to move on, despite the fact that so much remains to be done.
I never expected to become an MP. Some members may remember the run-up to the 1999 election, when Nandor Tanczos and I were on the receiving end of some fairly vicious attacks. I will never forget Helen Clark standing up publicly for me at that time in the media. Nor will I forget the Green Party for having the courage to support putting both Nandor and me in high places on the party list, despite our backgrounds in radical and street politics, and despite lots of criminal convictions in my case; I will not speak for Nandor. I tried to repay the confidence shown by my party by doing the best job that I could every day of my time here, even in the period since I lost a portion of my usually innate hope and enthusiasm earlier this year.
I know that it is an enormous privilege to be elected as a member of Parliament and to be paid a high salary to represent the parties and voters that put us here. I have always taken this privilege very seriously, remaining acutely aware that many hundreds of thousands of people in this country are living on wages or benefits way below what it costs to maintain even a remotely quality standard of living. Every time that MPs’ salaries have been lifted, it has been deeply embarrassing that there is no mechanism whereby, for example, our pay could go up only if the minimum wage was to be lifted to certain levels at the same time.
We all have an obligation in this House to do the best job we can. I think most of us here take that pretty seriously, no matter which party we are from. It continues to sadden me that so many people, particularly in the world out there of the blogs and talkback, so casually dismiss we New Zealand MPs as being corrupt, lazy, or incompetent, or all those things simultaneously. Although there are and have been a few exceptions, and I have noted a few in my time here, I believe that most MPs put their hearts into the job to the best of their ability. Those citizens who so easily condemn us would do well, I think, to contemplate what it would be like if we did not have a parliamentary democracy in this country but were subject to governance through the machete and the gun, as still happens, sadly, in so many other parts of the world. What we hold here is very precious.
In the last few weeks people have kept asking me what I think I have achieved in this place. Although I think it is far more appropriate for others to pass judgment on this, I will just make a few comments. First, I think there is no question that my member’s bill amending section 59 of the Crimes Act and removing the defence of reasonable force for the purpose of correction is the most significant thing that I have been able to accomplish here, and it will be what I go down for in history, whether I like it or not. I am deeply grateful that, with huge support from non-governmental organisations outside Parliament and from 113 MPs inside, we were able, in 2007, to pass a law that now means children are entitled to the same legal protection that we adults enjoy. I also commend John Key and the National Government for sticking to their principles on this issue in the face of huge pressure from the proponents of the recent referendum, the results of which were deeply flawed as a result of the confused proposition on which it was based.
I realise that the section 59 controversy is an issue that has not gone away. The debate is not over, and many New Zealanders continue to believe, sadly, that a parent’s right to physically discipline his or her child supersedes a child’s right to grow up free from violence. However, it is my firm belief—and research is beginning to demonstrate this—that ever since the child discipline debate began seriously, there has been a steady and growing change in thinking on this issue, with more and more people coming to believe that bringing up children without violence is better, not only for the children and babies involved but also for families, communities, and society as a whole. One day I believe that people will look back and wonder why on earth our country tore itself apart over whether there should be a legal defence for assaulting children. Meanwhile there is a job for all of us to do in working for a society in which all children and young people are treated as being worthy of innate respect, rather than as being the property of their parents.
Last week I was in a car-parking building in Auckland when a young woman approached me tentatively, in that way that most members will know, when strangers come up and are not quite sure who we are or whether they want to talk to us. She said: “Oh, you’re that lady”. I stopped, expecting her to say something positive or negative about section 59, and then she went on to say: “Oh, you’re that lady who got us proper wages. I took my school out on that demo we had in support of your bill.” That was a lovely moment, knowing that for some people that is what I will be remembered for. I sincerely hope that no Government will in future turn back the clock on the youth minimum wage.
I also welcome the support that came from every single party in this House for my member’s bill extending the time that some mothers can keep their babies with them in prison. I hope that this small but significant reform will help underpin further much-needed changes in the way that we deal with mothers and children who are caught up in the prison system.
I had a brief brush with Government too, in my one-term tenure as spokesperson on Buy Kiwi Made. Jeanette Fitzsimons and I shared the unique constitutional innovation of being Government spokespeople under the previous Government. Although, of course, the experience did not come near to the genuine participation in Cabinet to which both of us aspired, I learnt a little more of the inner workings of Government—perhaps I will not go into that here—and I was honoured to do what I could to help nurture New Zealand manufacturing, a sector of our economy that deserves a lot more recognition and support than it often gets.
Finally, I think the achievement that counts the most for me is that from the perspective of my own personal and political core values and those of the Green Party, I have never sold out. Before I went to Parliament, I talked with a number of close friends and colleagues, and asked them to let me know right away if they ever saw me forgetting where I came from or whose side I was on. They promised to let me know if I deviated, and if that ever happened, then I knew I would either have to change my position or leave. Happily, neither Parliament nor the Green Party has ever put me in the position of having to make that kind of choice.
I will now return to the Parliament of the streets, and I leave behind nine colleagues to carry forward our collective kaupapa as strongly and as clearly as I have always endeavoured to do. Kia ora.
The moment has come when I must make a few acknowledgments, with apologies to the many people whom I will not be able to mention due to a lack of time. First and foremost, I pay tribute to Jeanette Fitzsimons and the late Rod Donald for their inspirational leadership of our first generation of Green MPs and for their personal support for me, especially in those early years before there was much acceptance of the fact that I might actually be up to this job. I also thank all my fellow Green MPs over the years and Green Party members for their support and friendship, and for the fact that I think we were the first political party in Parliament ever to send MPs to officially take part in demonstrations overseas, when Nandor Tanczos and I represented the Green Party at the World Economic Forum actions in Melbourne in 2000.
I also thank former Speaker Jonathan Hunt for the kindly mentoring role that he took with me in my early years here. I acknowledge not only Jonathan but also Dr Paul Hutchison and David Parker for the friendships we formed on that rather memorable Speaker’s tour—those are other stories that I will not tell here.
Looking up at the gallery today, I am touched by how many people are here from the various community, church, and union organisations that I have worked with in the last 10 years. I would have achieved nothing in this place without the close working relationships that I have had with those people, and with other key people in sector groups across all my multifarious portfolios. From the beneficiary advocacy groups, I particularly thank people like Kaye Brereton, Tony McGurk, Quentin Jukes, Graham Howell, and Paul Blair for the way in which they have kept in touch with me, and have supported and advised me on how best to take the struggle for jobs and a living wage forward in this place of power.
Of the non-governmental organisation representatives involved in the huge task of amending section 59 of the Crimes Act, I particularly acknowledge today Beth Wood, Mike Coleman, Ian Hassall, Deborah Morris Travers, Robert Ludbrooke, Sonya Hogan, Murray Edridge, and there are so many more of them. The reasonable force defence was removed only because of their hard work and commitment over many years. The children of our country thank all of them.
I also acknowledge all my union friends, including the late Luci Highfield, for their support and encouragement in our collective endeavours to defend and improve wages and conditions for the working people of this country. From the racing portfolio—and I do not even know how many people knew I had the racing portfolio—I will just make a special mention of Dr Murray Blue of the Stratford Racing Club in Taranaki. He has always stood ready to assist with sound advice and a deep commitment to the welfare and well-being of the small clubs that make up the backbone of racing in the industry’s neglected heartlands.
I also acknowledge the many friends I have made across this House—again, I cannot mention all of them—from people like Katherine Rich, Chester Borrows, and Simon Power in National, who became unusual allies at times—eh, Chester—to the many Labour Party people, and there are so many of them I cannot name them; the Māori Party friends; and even members of other parties like ACT. I hope that the genuine friendships I have with some of those members will continue long after I leave this place.
I must take a moment to also mention the amazing staff who work to support us in our jobs here, from all the executive assistants who have worked with me over the years, the out-of-Parliament staff in Auckland and the Wellington-based Green staff here in the office, through to the Parliamentary Counsel Office staff, select committee officials, security guards and messengers, library staff, and so many others, without whom none of our work would get done.
Finally, I will take a moment to return to politics. There is a Leonard Cohen song that many members will know—being of my generation—that starts “They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom for trying to change the system from within”. That song has been a bit of a theme tune for me in the last 10 years, but I have to say that the 10 years I have spent in the maw of the system have not been at all boring. However, I am really looking forward to returning to politics on the outside.
We are living in a time of economic and environmental crisis. There appears to be no real willingness from either Labour-led Governments or National-led Governments to take real leadership on issues like dealing with the impacts of climate change or seriously reducing the deepening gap between rich and poor. Until we are prepared to take a long, hard look at our economic system, at how it works, and in whose interests it operates, we are all on a hiding to nowhere. Capitalism is not providing the answers that we need in order to find a way forward, and some of us at least must be brave enough to seek out viable democratic and peaceful alternatives.
People elected to Parliament are expected to lead, but doing the same things that do not work over and over again is not leading. Unless we are willing to challenge the status quo, to examine power relationships and inequality, and to do something about addressing core issues, nothing will change for the better for those who have the least, or for the natural world our species is so bent on destroying. There will be no safe and secure future as long as we have a system that supports and encourages inequality rather than seriously addresses the causes of poverty. Anyone who thinks that we are not heading for an economic crash is, I think, quite deluded. We had a big warning, we pretended for a moment that we would deal with it, and then we kept doing the same things all over again, believing in the meanwhile all that nonsense about green shoots.
If people in communities, learning institutions, marae, and workplaces around the country want things to change structurally for the better, we will need to be committed to working for change ourselves, without expecting politicians to do it for us or to come up with all the answers. The chances are that politicians will not take the leadership needed, not unless they are really pressed. I am going back out into the world, determined to contribute what I can to raising people’s awareness of the power that we hold in our hands if we really do want to change the world, and to help as best I can with the never-ending task of working to help to make our country a better place for all of us to live in, not just some of us.
Once again, I thank all my family, my friends, my colleagues, and my comrades for their love and support over the last 10 years. I look forward to continuing our collective mahi in the days, months, and years ahead. Kia ora koutou.