Looking back on a full year
What a year. Christmas is a fantastic time of year for sharing with friends and family and reflecting on the year that was. It’s been a busy one for me, advocating for you in Clutha-Southland, fighting where needed.
We’ve celebrated some major achievements in 2018, from saving the Te Anau Rescue Helicopter base through to lobbying the Housing Minister to increase the housing cap in Queenstown by $100,000.
I wanted to use this, my last column of the year, to reflect on the past 12 months as your local Member of Parliament for Clutha-Southland.
National announced if elected in 2020 we will reinstate full services to the Lumsden Maternity Centre.
After the protest march I led and the petition I organised to save the centre we had some good news as the National party listened to our calls.
It’s been an emotional roller-coaster for everyone involved and I want to thank you all for continuing to fight.
I also wrote to the minister asking him for certainty around the proposed blueprint for freshwater, the document Essential Freshwater: Healthy Water, Fairly Allocated.
This document provides some serious concerns for farmers around rules and regulations when it comes to activities like winter grazing.
Last month, I also launched the petition to save the Gore and Winton racetracks, which has received more than 1500 signatures in support. After attending a public meeting with concerned residents around the weed killer being used on flaxes across Southland, I told the meeting I would fight in their corner.
I managed to facilitate the removal across Southland and as a result, a partnership formed between NZTA and iwi.
I advocated for farmers for fair compensation for Mycoplasma bovis and those involved in the swede-seed mix-up, bringing the PGG Wrightson bosses to Gore for a public meeting.
After National announced an increase in police presence in rural New Zealand last year, it was disappointing to learn recently the plans for 24/7 manning of Balclutha and an additional rural station in Southland have been scrapped.
I put the question to the Minister for Police in the house on Tuesday on why this has happened and if he had read about the concerns people have here in rural Southland.
The Government needs to explain why it’s stripping away resources from Balclutha and rural Southland.
In Wellington, my member’s bills, KiwiSaver (Foster Parents Opting in for Children in their Care), which gives foster children financial security, and High-power Laser Pointers Offences and Penalties Bills are both progressing well.
I have assisted more than 1000 constituent cases across Clutha-Southland this year, all of which I’ve done my best to assist in the best way possible (not every one involves a protest march).
And last but certainly not least the biggest highlight for the year – my beautiful fiance´ e Penny Tipu said yes!
I want to take the opportunity to thank you all for your assistance this year and thank everyone who has visited me in my office.
Merry Christmas to you all and have a safe and happy new year.
I’ll be back advocating for you all in 2019.
The inoffensive letter T is being usurped by a rampant, invasive D. Someone should mount a campaign to prodect the indegridy of spoken English.
Call me the paper’s resident Grinch. While other people make lists of cards to send and presents to buy, I’ve been compiling an inventory of things that get on my nerves. Here are a few:
❚ I am not a kiwi. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a freakish-looking bird with nostrils at the end of its beak. I do not scurry around in leaf litter at night probing for grubs and worms. I am of the species homo sapiens, not apteryx australis. Accordingly, I cringe at the fashion across all the media for referring to New Zealanders as ‘‘Kiwis’’.
It’s patronising, cloyingly sentimental and just plain wrong.
It promotes a comforting nationalistic myth that we are all the same, with common characteristics, opinions and aspirations, rather than representative of what the philosopher Immanuel Kant called the crooked timber of humanity, in all its glorious complexity.
In any case, we managed perfectly well with ‘‘New Zealanders’’ until someone decided to infantilise us. It may be four syllables rather than two, but I think we can still get our tongues around it.
❚ That Air New Zealand engineers’ strike planned for the week before Christmas. Deja vu, anyone? Those over 50 will recall the Cook Strait ferry strikes that just happened to coincide with school holidays, or the walkouts by freezing workers that left yards full of sheep at the height of the killing season – anything to maximise the pressure on the employers to cave in.
A generation has grown up with no memory of the enormous economic harm done by industrial disruption during the 1970s. Some would say the subsequent labour law reforms which stripped unions of much of their power went too far. But by cynically and heartlessly calling a strike at the busiest time of the year for domestic air travel, the Aviation and Marine Engineers’ Association has obligingly reminded of us how things used to be.
The sense of nostalgia was sharpened by hearing the engineers’ spokesman interviewed on Morning Report. He spoke with an English accent, recalling an era when New Zealand unions were 1. What instrument plays the solo opening passage in George Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue?
2. Does the Australian creature called the boobook have fangs, feathers or fins?
3. His first names were Alfred Edward and he wrote a famous series of poems called A Shropshire Lad. What was his surname?
4. What is the only country that still has a head of state known as the emperor?
5. In Germany, what are kolsch, doppelbock and hefeweizen?
6. The 49th Parallel forms much of the border between what two northern hemisphere countries?
7. What character in Bugs Bunny cartoons took his name from a famous American national park?
8. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was the leader of what country?
9. What surname is shared by an English-born singer-songwriter named Graham, a former Black Cap named Dion and a New Zealand politician named Stuart?
10. Ma¯ori Hill, Corstophine and Roslyn are suburbs of what city? ‘‘And through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.’’ Genesis 22:18