Labour's new New Plymouth MP Glen Bennett. Photo / Supplied
Eight more new MPs will give their maiden speeches to Parliament this afternoon - Act's Mark Cameron, James McDowell, Karen Chhour and Toni Severin then Labour's Emily Henderson, Gaurav Sharma, Sarah Pallett and Glen Bennett.
At just 9 years old Karen Chhour's home was so unsafe she didn't think she'd live to see her tenth birthday.
She ran away and was picked up by Child, Youth and Family (now Oranga Tamariki).
"Unfortunately my cries for help went unheard and I was sent back into the same situation I ran away from," the Act MP said in her maiden speech to Parliament.
"Around this time my mother's marriage was ending and she eventually ended up on the DPB (Domestic Purposes Benefit).
"What was going on at home was affecting me in my day-to-day life in many ways. I was quiet and reserved and easily upset.
"This made me a target for bullies. The bullying got so bad in Intermediate that it was decided it was best for me to leave rather than dealing with the problem."
Chhour described her mental health at that stage as "being in the toilet" and said she was at rock bottom.
Again she ran away but this time CYFs moved her to live with another family member.
"I was a teen moving around from relative's houses to friend's couches and back with my mother when I had nowhere else to go. I was bounced from pillar to post, and by the time I was 14 I had moved schools seven times.
"I could not keep up, so I did what so many have done before – I simply dropped out. I got a job, saved what I could and eventually moved into a flat and became completely independent. I worked the graveyard shifts at McDonald's, while I tried to continue my education by day doing a course."
At 18 years old she and her now husband, Meng, had their first child and soon after bought their first house. Three more children followed.
Chhour, from Auckland's North Shore, said ethnicity and culture should not be how Oranga Tamariki do what was best for children and called for the organisation to be "colour-blind".
New Zealand spends "too much time on the (isms) in this country, racism, sexism, and classism" and the words were used as weapons to distract from what needs to be done, she said.
"I was judged when I was younger, sometimes very openly, about just being another Māori dropout that would never get anywhere in life. I soon learned that it did not matter how hard I worked to improve myself, if someone wants to they will always find a reason to try and drag you down.
"We cannot just accept this is okay, but we also can't let this distract us from reaching our goals."
Mark Cameron believes he owes a debt he will struggle to ever repay to the New Zealanders who fought in World War II.
"To have risked so much, the loss to family, potential not realised, dreams never met and yet all those brave souls who flew on."
But the Northland farmer dedicated his maiden speech to "all the men and women farmers, the fishing folks and all of New Zealand's blue-collar workers".
Cameron said his mission was to return a sense of pride to rural New Zealand.
"We farmers are tired and weary of being political fodder for some New Zealanders' guilty conscience about their own environment."
He said Act would not accept "cynical soundbites" about "dirty dairy" and "suggestions animals are destroying the planet or that industry perpetually pollutes".
"Rural New Zealand deserves better than being told 'desist and diversify' by people with so little experience of how farming and industry actually works."
Cameron said his greatest goal in Parliament was to restore the understanding that farmers were "so bloody important".
As a small business owner, new Act MP Toni Severin says "the red tape and taxes that are constantly piled on us" means costs they often can't afford.
And according to a statistic she read in the Air New Zealand magazine last year which stuck with her, 97 per cent of the businesses in New Zealand were small businesses.
Severin said she was in Parliament to ask questions on behalf of those businesspeople.
"Once you have a successful business, people say things like, how lucky you are; you must be successful because you own all this, but what they forget is all the hard work we have had to put into our business.
"Long hours, personal money, one partner working at another job or two, no holidays; just some of the sacrifices we have made because we believe in our business."
Severin, from Christchurch, said the other reason she was in Parliament was education because "one size fits all schools do not work". She said politicians needed to have open minds.
"So often it's environmentalists versus farmers; teachers versus student learning; victims versus prisoners. We have to find balance and make sure all these groups are helped. We are letting too many people down on both sides of the fence."
James McDowall identifies as a "libertarian, vegetarian firearms enthusiast".
In his maiden speech, the Hamiltonian said he got into politics as a teenager after attending an Act function where he me Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble, Rodney Hide and a younger David Seymour.
"I found them all to be straight-shooting people who say it like it is and talked a lot of economic sense. I never thought I would eventually go on to represent the party in Parliament, but here we are – life is full of unexpected twists and turns."
McDowall said while his 3-year-old daughter Sofia didn't really understand his new job, she liked to tell her friends at daycare that her daddy works at the Beehive (which is home to the Government).
"Which is not quite true but you never know what the future may hold," said McDowall.
"And I do find it quite entertaining when she tells me to be careful of the bees at work. I actually think she's wise beyond her years."
McDowall said New Zealanders didn't give themselves enough credit for how well they look after the environment.
"I contrast this with scenes that I witnessed first-hand while visiting several towns and villages in Asia a few years ago. Residents were dumping all of their household waste, including heavy metals, directly into the tributaries of a major river. The banks were absolutely littered with rubbish that hadn't made it all the way down.
"That river flows into the South China Sea. This happens all over the world. So when I see images on TV of the 'floating rubbish islands' in the Pacific Ocean, I know exactly where that stuff came from."
It's not Norman Kirk's words about New Zealanders just needing "someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work and something to hope for" which rattle around Emily Henderson's head.
Instead she remembers what the former Labour leader said after winning the 1972 election: "And now comes the job of making dreams come true."
The Northland lawyer said each MP came to Parliament with the hopes and dreams of thousands of people on their shoulders - in her case she carried the weight of the 98,300 people of Whangārei.
Henderson said as a Family Court and criminal lawyer she'd seen the impacts of her city getting progressively poorer - violence, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, neglect, over-crowded houses, sick kids and worn-out parents.
"After 40 odd years of neo-liberalism and trickle-down economics, that's what trickles down in Whangarei. That kind of poverty causes more than material deprivation."
She said Kirk's Labour Party believed creating a level playing field should be the state's first responsibility and the basic measure of a decent society.
"In the years since, we've been shamed into thinking that ideal is in some way naïve and even presumptuous. That equity and justice are dreams we cannot afford. That a level playing field is just too much uphill work.
"Well, Whangarei is over feeling ashamed."
Henderson said she didn't think it was naive to think it was worth shouldering the responsibility to uplift the vulnerable and that was proven last year by the Labour-led Government putting people first.
As well as her commitment to Whangārei, Henderson said there was much more to do in the criminal and family courts which were under strain.
"Nowhere in the criminal court are the cracks more evident than in the plight of vulnerable defendants and witnesses: Children, rape complainants, those with issues that impact their ability to communicate in or understand trials."
As a midwife, Sarah Pallett has become used to dealing with unexpected arrivals - but said landing herself in Parliament was perhaps the most unexpected arrival yet.
Pallett, who in an election upset claimed the Ilam district off National's long-standing MP Gerry Brownlee, credited her predecessor for his 24 years of service to the electorate.
Growing up, Pallett said while her family didn't have much money they always had a roof over their head and never went hungry but her mother taught her the purpose of privilege and power was to advocate for and support those who had less.
Her mother died of breast cancer at 53 years old after years of writing off symptoms of metastatic bone cancer as being "in her mind", so was referred to psychiatrists rather than oncologists.
"Suffice to say that it has left me with strong feelings about how women's pain is commonly dismissed, and I see this sadly perpetuated in the amount of time that it can take for women to get treatment for painful conditions like endometriosis.
"I am grateful to this Government for taking action in this space. But we know that there's more to be done."
Pallett herself was diagnosed with breast cancer after moving to the UK when she was 36 but counts herself among "the lucky ones".
"The cancer was caught early, and that prompt diagnosis and state-funded treatment undoubtedly saved my life, yet cost me nothing.
"Personal experience should not be necessary to understand the benefits of universal healthcare, but it does tend to focus the mind when you are facing the possibility of leaving two small children motherless."
She emigrated to New Zealand with her husband and daughters in 2003 and recounted one of the "hiccoughs".
"In true Kiwi tradition I was asked to bring a plate to a party. Ever helpful, I literally took along not just one but a dozen empty plates. If one plate was needed, surely 12 plates would be better."
Pallett said soon after moving here she decided to become a midwife where she'd witnessed life at its most beautiful and it's most ugly.
Young pregnant women traumatised by years of abuse, new parents being greeted with empty cupboards, bruises on mothers, addiction, sneaking children into hospital for their first hot shower in months because their parents could afford the power to heat a water heater and babies suffering illnesses caused by mould and dampness.
"Many of those experiences involve women and systemic inequities. They resonate through many aspects of women's lives and into the lives of everyone around them. They resonate across generations.
"And when they are eliminated, we all benefit."
On Monday Glen Bennett got married in Parliament - on Tuesday he delivered his maiden speech.
The new New Plymouth MP said 1984 - when he wrote in his diary as a 9-year-old that he wanted to help people - was one of the most vivid years of his childhood after helping his prison ward mother.
"One afternoon, Mum and I got into the car and we were off. Mum said she had to visit one of the girls that had just been released from prison and her baby.
"To my surprise, we pulled into the old Onehunga dump. I remember thinking, 'wait a minute, we're visiting a mother and her baby who has just got out of prison, and now we're at a dump?'
"We parked out the back by an old workers' shed. I remember the smell.
"We got out of the car, with a box of things to give this woman and her baby. We walked up to the door of the shed, Mum knocked on the door and the woman and her baby welcomed us in. I can still picture the inside of that shed - what little she had was presented immaculately.
"We sat on the end of the bed as Mum chatted with the woman and I just gazed around the pristine room in the shed at the back of the Onehunga dump."
He remembered thinking it wasn't right for someone in New Zealand, let alone a small child, to live at a dump and that experience has shared how he hopes to make a difference in Parliament.
"I know what it's like to be on the margins, to be mocked and derided. And sadly I know that there are some in this country who have not moved past their bigoted attitudes. Jon and I have been called 'faggots' over our fence at home.
"On the campaign trail last year I was challenged for my 'pervertedness'. One person wanted to make sure that everyone knew, so that people would do the "right thing" and not vote for me. This man denied that I was a Christian and tried to wield the bible against me."
Bennett said senior Labour MP Andrew Little stepped in and told the man "this is not about your religion, this is about your prejudice".
New Zealand has come a long way but there was still a long way to go.
He said he was looking forward to championing projects in New Plymouth - the upgrades to Taranaki Base Hospital and to State Highway 3.
"This Government, together with the community in Taranaki, has established the framework for our region to continue to fuel New Zealand, to set an example of a just transition for the rest of the world.
"Some of my most important work here will be around establishing New Plymouth as a clean energy hub, with secure, well-paying jobs for workers in the industry and those that support energy production.
"That we truly are a clean, green nation."
The man who operated on Gaurav Sharma's father for 11 hours removing a bile duct tumour was the same man who handed him a stethoscope as a teenager.
The new Hamilton West MP was inspired to become a doctor after working in a retirement home and as a GP he treated a woman who was raped and beaten by her partner, rangitahi stuck in vicious cycles of meth addiction and parents who lost their kids to Oranga Tamariki.
After university he interned at the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva, working on non-communicable diseases in developing countries.
He later went on to work in Mongolian hospitals, travelling over 2,500km in the Gobi Desert from one clinic to another, then received a Fulbright scholarship to get his MBA at George Washington University.
"I realised that as a doctor I did not possess enough technical skills to launch, fund, and run a large-scale organisation.
"I was only able to care for my patients one-to-one but in order to make a system-wide change I had gaps in my knowledge that I needed to bridge."
In his maiden speech Sharma said living in Washington DC made him realise the good and bad politicians could make.
He ran in Hamilton in 2017 but found people who refused to shake his hand because of the colour of his skin.
"In the most recent election, I woke up one morning to find one lovely Hamiltonian was harassed and verbally abused by two sets of people for having signs supporting "a curry candidate".
"Racial discrimination is not new to me, neither in politics nor in other spheres of life. When I was at the university, a prominent paediatric surgeon bullied me for months and said, 'You people come to our country, I will kill you and ruin your career'."
"While these incidents do not represent the majority of people in Aotearoa who have embraced me with open arms and whom I now represent, it is important that we acknowledge racism is still alive in Hamilton and in Aotearoa."
Sharma was the first MP of Indian origin to win an electorate seat until his colleague Priyanca Radhakrishnan won her seat after the special votes were counted.
Sharma vowed to prove to the people of Hamilton that he was "worthy of the opportunity that has been given to us to make a change"
"I strongly believe that when it comes to Hamilton, West is the best."
