National MPs Nicola Grigg and Simon Watts deliver keynote speeches

Selwyn’s new MP for National, Nicola Grigg, paid tribute in her inaugural address tonight to her great-grandmother, Mary Grigg, who was National’s first female MP.

She had been elected to the Mid-Canterbury electorate after her husband, Arthur, was killed in action in 1941.

“Nearly 80 years ago, this newly widowed mother of three stood in this chamber criticizing the Fraser government on some of the issues that have brought me here: agriculture, rural communities, and women,” Grigg said.

Grigg also paid tribute to another ancestor, Sir John Hall, a former prime minister; and three former national women from her region: Dame Jenny Shipley, Ruth Richardson, and Amy Adams.

Grigg was Sir Bill English’s press secretary when he was finance minister in John Key’s government and later went to work for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.

She admitted to leaving Parliament in December shortly after being elected “a bundle of nerves, doubts and with a very advanced case of imposter syndrome.”

“I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to handle the hours, the workload, the pressures, the expectations of this position, and I was afraid to go back.”

But he had spent the summer reading and American psychologist and researcher Dr. Brene Brown and his book Daring Greatly, inspired by Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 speech Man in the Sand, in which he said, “It is not the critic who counts ; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of works could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is really in the sand, whose face is marred by dust, sweat, and blood; who who strives with courage; who errs, who falls short again and again, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows, in the end, the triumph of great achievements, and who at worst cases, if he fails, at least he fails while he dares a lot. “

Grigg said it was “stressful and uncomfortable to enter the political arena and the public eye.”

“But now that we’re in that arena, we can’t be afraid to take risks, make unpopular decisions, face big problems, and sometimes fail, with all the backlash and embarrassment that comes with that.

“Any holder of a public office must dare a lot. And now more than ever.”

He wore a feather cape that was given to his family by Ngati Kere, Ngati Hinetewai, and Ngati Pihere from Porangahau around 1854.

She recognized Ngai Tahu as a tangata whenua in Selwyn and said that with the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi just 20 years away “we should all be looking towards that milestone with a view to achieving a just and equitable society.”

National’s North Shore MP Simon Watts followed Grigg.

He was deputy chief financial officer for the Waitemata District Board of Health, and also became a St John Ambulance Officer.

“As a St John ambulance office, I have been in houses with black mold on the walls, I have treated children with respiratory problems in overcrowded houses, self-harm due to mental health, and I have been with colleagues on the road while trying to save another life ruined by drugs and crime. “

He said working simultaneously on both ends of the healthcare system opened his eyes to the importance of bold vision and a coordinated approach.

“I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 21 months of age; I have had a lifelong relationship with a system that has been blessed with passionate professionals but is riddled with failed decisions.

“Time to fix that.”

He said he worked for a foreign investment bank during the global financial crisis.

“I saw that people in glass towers can also be heroes; they can work day and night to save the livelihood of people they have never met.”

He said that at this time New Zealand had a housing crisis and there was a lot of land to build on.

“There are no excuses for lack of vision … I want action to be supported by informed and decisive decision making,” Watts said.

“The answers and leadership will come from our communities, our employers, our workers and, yes, our Government.”

He believed in limited government, but that meant focusing on the things that only government could do: “regulate, legislate, investigate, but also cajole, inspire and lead.”