Valedictory Statements — Mark Cameron

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you very much for your kindness, sir—and all of you, for that matter—for allowing this brief amount of time to talk about my time there.

I didn’t think I would have the wherewithal to write this speech. My illness attached to my certain frankness a brevity—sorry, brevity; I mean frankness and candour I thought would be unappetising. Dialysis is a hell of a thing. I’ve come to learn life humbles us all in the end. None here are exempt, me included. We all have our shit—as we say in rural New Zealand—and I have certainly had my fill.

One does, on these occasions, I think, thank the few people that have got them to this place, and I will do exactly that.

David: you’re a bloody legend, mate, and a great mate. And I wish you all the best.

To the team, it has been awesome working with you; I love you. Nicole, you’re an awesome sister—the one I wish I’d always had. To the rest of you, you’re a fantastic group of Kiwis. Simon, brother, always be cautious of savings to be found in future lady products.

To Jodie, thank you, you are my best friend, my confidante, and the most driven, hardest worker I have ever known. Jodie, you make the world turn that little bit faster, and for so many reasons, I owe our success to you. My parliamentary career would not have existed without you.

The story of our providence, how we got here, our uniqueness, our place in the word, I would like to speak of. I was going to start my contributions with positive affirmations. What of the stoics, their influence—Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, perhaps Aristotle. Great minds of philosophy and polymaths. How these great minds moulded our world, our future, allowing us to look back to the past to understand, in fact, our future.

Or more recent influences like John Adams and others, the culmination of the 13 colonies, and their formation of the constitution and creation, ultimately, of the United State. A true marvel of recent history.

Perhaps of the modern age: Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, perhaps Thomas Sowell—the minds that understood the relationship between parties, buyers, sellers, and the dynamics of free markets, small government, less interference.

All of these great minds have shaped our future, shaped Western democracy, and freed our minds to pursue intrigue, debate, and, ultimately, compromise. Democracy works, in large part, because of these great minds and what they brought to the table for our inquiring minds.

I, ultimately, thought of these things, but I think it’s more important I talk about us: why we are here, the now. All of us, who we are, the 123 of us, and what we mean to this place. Mark Twain noted the most important moment in one’s life is the day of your birth and the moment you understand why.

After all, as I say, we are an odd bunch: mostly civil, a group of people that bicker, argue sometimes, all the while trying to mount a debate and find compromise. Periodically, behaving like petulant children. But that’s politics, I suppose. This is democracy in action, and it’s ours to embrace, to be grateful for, to celebrate, for it is a fragile thing.

Few dare to venture to this place. I’m sure we’re all well aware and understand why. Equally, few get the opportunity to help change the direction of travel, where we go, where we choose to take our country, where we choose to take our people. Truly, I say how lucky are we to be here. We are the travellers for a better tomorrow than today.

This political arena is our home. From Roman Senate to the birthplace of democracy to now, our freedoms and liberties are because of this place and because of you. Democracy needs New Zealand to work with the fortunate few who get to work in this place. You make it work because of your time and energy.

My friends, I started my speech by saying life humbles us all. My recent experience can attest to that. I was the kid of five or six who knew what he wanted to be: become farmer, walk with giants, great Kiwi blokes like my mentor Neil Sidwell and the likes. I was going to be that kind of man. I was going to carry the world on my shoulders; be all I could be.

I remember, fairly recently, sitting in the Chamber, House duty, nauseous, kidneys at 8 percent—most of you wouldn’t have known this—bugger all left, and I conceded that I was stuffed. How had this come to pass? People—a lot of the people I came to represent. I protested, reluctantly went home, dialysis commenced—it was May 2025. Man, I was pissed off. I had lost my boy to suicide and now this crap. Parliament is a people place, and it gave me purpose. I pined to be part of it. I needed to carry on. So I did dialysis in my flat and I went back to bloody work.

In December, I suffered acute heart failure. Boot hill had become all too real. I was out. I was done. My transplant operation vanished and hope of returning evaporated. I prayed for context, understanding—shit, hell, anything.

My friends here, all of you—and I mean all of you—the debate, the challenge, the ideas, what it meant to be part of such a special group slowly disappeared. I had to gravitate home. My dream of farming, my community, my love, and my country and country folk to become my motivation. At 20 percent heart function, I was told I might die. I affectionately told the people looking after me to bugger off, that there was too much to do.

I picked up my 6-kilo oxygen bottle, walking frame, and set off. Hot laps around the ward, two, three, then whatever I could muster—inches, after all, become miles. Unbeknownst to me, I was bare-arsed, which passers-by noted, “and into the flurry”, I responded and said, rather embarrassingly, after this was pointed out.

Context for all of us is everything. You know that you’re in a fight when there’s pressure, resistance—and I was in a fight. Yes, I had become very humble, very quickly. I tell you this because I want to show what drives this. Why we believe—why we in what we are doing. I look around the Chamber when I can and I know what I see: how humbling, privileged we are all to be there.

If I might, farmers don’t quit easily. We’re built out of the belief, trust, hope, and a passion to make tomorrow better than today. True desire starts in the heart with a single spark, and farmers have a belly full of fire. We know why this place has to work to find compromise: because our dreams depend on it to become a reality.

My heart is now 30 percent, and I’ll be back. I have to. I have debts to pay to those that believe, as I do, that our way of life is worth preserving.

When I started this journey I knew my time would be limited. Our caucus, like family, counted down the numbers like a concerned family would. Each month the kidneys declined further. We all knew where this was going, and it was getting harder for me. I battled on. Farmers needed me, and I needed the purpose of being needed.

We agreed farmers needed to be kept out of the emissions trading scheme, methane limits reduced, private freshwater assets managed better and in the hands of owners, and stupid winter grazing rules fixed. We came and we fixed those things. We had to. Our self-belief had been destroyed, and we’d fought back. It was our fight to lose, and it wasn’t going to happen without effort.

Any notion that feels good that taxes on food production is fantastical. “Greenwashing” hurts the poorest end of town first, and in a world where domestic prices compete with critical international trade and our essential export market, it is imperative cool heads prevail before we sign up to dumb crap that hurts our people—the poorest people in our country. We can’t have that. We’ve got to grow. We must not be emotively biased.

So many rules have affected farmers. Hope and belief was dying because of it. At 8 percent kidney function, I could be a passenger in this reality or a proponent for better outcomes and change—so here I am. Bugger off to the naysayers, I say. We challenge the nonsense, and we will restore pride in rural New Zealand. My battleground might have changed, but the farmers are grateful and passion is returning. We are remembering how much fun farming can be when we win.

In 1945, my grandfather returned back from the war a different man from years earlier, like so many, hurt in places so many of us did not see. Context won the argument. Those that lived it understood this. He was shot down in his third sortie, and, as far as I can understand, he did 30 more. What compels us—people, humans; gracious, what compelled them, pining for home, their sovereignty, their peace? One can only imagine what they went through to preserve these things, our way of life, their bravery beyond measure.

Our world is very different now, life vastly different. Our wars and struggles are different, but the fight to preserve our way of life has a parallel: that we fight for what we believe in, the things that bring context to our lives, meaning family and all of the above. For rural folk, I say the top four inches: our land, our animals, nature. My war is very different. I search for bravery, belief, hope, my way of life, home. I am determined that I will see those things again, as they were, in large part, everything to me.

And all of you—the people that make these types of realities happen for all of us—I ask: please believe, as I do, in rural people. They are worth fighting for. They are the economic spine of this country. And remember this: it is always hard to argue that fact when your mouth is full of their food.

To my country kin: stay farming, you bloody legends. I love you. You all go well and remember: don’t head home and hunt for tucker until a good day’s work is done, and never ever forget how important you all are, because this country would be on its knees without you.

Signing off and God speed to you all. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

[Applause]

Thank you, team. Thank you very much. Hugs to you all, and go well.

SPEAKER: Thank you, Mark. Those words are received by us all with our very best wishes to you.

Hon Dr Shane Reti

SPEAKER: I now call on the Hon Dr Shane Reti to make his valedictory statement.