Dr Shane Reti Farewells Parliament

Louis Collins

After 12 years and multiple stints in
both government and opposition, National Party MP for
Whāngarei Dr Shane Reti has farewelled
Parliament.

Reti reflected on his early years in
Parliament and the things he was proud of during his time
making a name for himself as the MP for Whangārei. He also
lamented the unfinished business he didn’t quite manage to
get to.

As a medical doctor by trade, Reti always had
the prospect of becoming Health Minister in his sights.
Nearly a decade after entering Parliament, he finally got
that chance this term.

You can listen to some of Shane
Reti’s speech by clicking the link near the top of the
article.

The full transcript, courtesy of Hansard, is
below.

I rise today to present my valedictory address
by way of reflection and by way of thanks.

I want to
start by acknowledging all the party leaders I have worked
under: John, Bill, Simon, Todd, Judith, myself for a week,
and Chris Luxon. We come to Parliament to make a difference,
and I hope, in some small way, that I’ve achieved
this.

Today, I will talk to a few highlights over a
decade, some stories, some lighter moments that few will
know, and hopes and aspirations still to be
completed.

Starting in my first term, then, as a
backbencher in a John Key – Bill English Government, there
are a few moments that stick out as one gathers experience
and learns a new role.

My first moment in that term
was getting rid of Wicked Campers rental vans, with their
disgusting, foul-mouthed, misogynistic slogans. After the
Brisbane-based company failed to turn up to Advertising
Standards Authority hearings and failed my request to visit
them in Brisbane, I commenced a campaign initiated by
writing to all councils and persuading them that vehicle
signage was actually a sign, and, therefore, their signage
by-laws applied.

They agreed. I followed this up by
writing to Visa and MasterCard, suggesting that they really
didn’t want their cards being used. By the time we had Z
Energy banning them from filling up at their forecourts,
they were done. This presented a new backbench experience
and a first taste of a national issue and national media
attention.

The second reflection in that term is
Hundertwasser Whangārei, a multi-party project that, after
20 years of delays, just as the gift was about to be taken
back by Vienna, was finally able to be built. I’ve always
considered this project a relay race, and, for a brief
period of time, I had the privilege of being the relay
runner.

I acknowledge the many, many people who
brought this to fruition-including Helen, Clive, Bill, Sue,
and David Wilson, who are here today. Now, Hundertwasser was
a different sort of advocacy for me, more towards my
parliamentary colleagues. Every week, the Hundertwasser
strategic funding team would meet to plan what the next step
was.

At that time, regional economic development had
passed from Steven Joyce to Simon Bridges. At one of our
weekly meetings, I mentioned that Simon was in Dubai,
looking to advance our Gulf Cooperation Council ambitions,
and that I could look to activate one of my colleagues from
my years in Boston, a high family Emirati in Dubai who would
likely be meeting with him.

This was agreed, and so I
placed a call to him in Dubai.

The call went something
like this: “Bu Yusef, may the sun shine on you. Bu Justin,
may the sun shine on you too. Can you tell me, are you part
of the high-delegation meeting with Minister Bridges this
week?” “I am.” “I want you to do something for me. I want
you to tell him how the people of Dubai can’t wait for
Hundertwasser to be built and that Emirates airlines will
land at Whangārei Airport.”

The next caucus meeting,
Simon makes a beeline for me. “Shane, unbelievable, I was
lobbied for Hundertwasser while I was in Dubai.” “Were you,
Simon? How unusual!”

Now, this was not the only time
that a senior Cabinet Minister in that term said to me,
“Shane, unbelievable.” In 2016, the Telecommunications Act
was being amended to resolve the broadband roll-out over
contested driveways and over existing power poles on private
farmland.

For us, this was very dependent on the
Northpower roll-out. Amy Adams was the Minister for
Communications, and I got a call to go to her office. Me and
Nathan Guy were there, and Amy says, “Next week, we’re
bringing the Telecommunications Bill to the House. We’ve
fixed the shared-driveways problem, but we won’t be
advancing fibre over existing infrastructure on private
farmland. The feds are completely against it and we won’t
win that fight.”

I said to Amy, “So, to be clear, the
Northpower model for rural communities won’t proceed?” She
said, “No, it’s done.” I got back to my room and thought,
“No, there must be a solution.”

So I called Anders,
the lead at Federated Farmers and said, “Anders, it’s Dr
Shane MP for Whangārei. I do understand the feds’ fibre
reservations. I get that. But if I can get every Northland
farmer to consent, will you give us a carve-out for fibre?”
He said, “Well, that will be quite a body of work but we
will agree if you do that.”

I then called Northpower
and met with them and legal counsel urgently on site in
Whangārei the next day. I outlined the issues and listed
their advocacy and we set up a plan that, over the next
three months, would become known as the Northpower
Proposal.

That weekend, though, I needed to let
formidable Minister Amy Adams know what I had done.

So
I bolstered my courage and texted her: “Amy, the feds have
said that if I get consent from every farmer in Northland,
they will carve out fibre access.” Amy immediately texted
back: “Shane, unbelievable. I told you this was done and to
leave it alone. You have the feds and Northpower in my
office first thing on Monday morning.”

Over the next
three months, the bill was recommitted back to the select
committee, consultations were re-opened, and, after further
negotiations with the feds, we got unanimous party agreement
for the nationwide roll-out of fibre over existing rural
infrastructure, with wide-ranging impact for rural
communities.

I want to acknowledge the select
committee chair at the time, Melissa Lee, along with deputy
Kanwaljit Bakshi, and members David Cunliffe, David Clark,
Clare Curran, Gareth Hughes, Ria Bond, Alfred Ngaro, Simon
O’Connor, and Brett Hudson.

You opened the path for
rural communities to receive fibre, and rural communities
thank you.

I then had two terms in Opposition, further
honing one’s craft and learning a new set of skills. It was
the first time I had encountered written parliamentary
questions, for example, and found them a particularly
powerful tool to challenge the Government of the day. I want
to acknowledge here my friend and colleague the Hon Peeni
Henare.

We came in at the same time, and, many years
beforehand, I was the GP for his first baby. So I’ve always
had a soft spot for Peeni. Ngā mihi ki a koe e
hoa.

To come back to written parliamentary questions,
from trial and error, it turns out that if you make a
mistake and send your written parliamentary questions to the
wrong Minister, that office then redirects them to the
correct Minister.

There were occasional times in
Opposition when I needed to send challenging questions to
Peeni, but I couldn’t attack Peeni, so I’d deliberately send
my questions to Andrew Little, and his office would transfer
them! Then, at the end of the day, you know how it is when
you critique how you’ve done-“Was I effective today? Did I
make a difference?”-and you have that conversation with your
inner voice, and if I had sent parliamentary questions, I’d
raise that question “And did you attack your mate Peeni?”,
and my inner voice would say, “Nah, not me; Andrew
Little.”

It was in Opposition that I heard some of the
most amusing things that I have heard in this House, not
often picked up by the cameras.

We were doing the
final reading of the Te Pūkenga Bill, I was the tertiary
spokesperson in Opposition, and New Zealand First MP Tracey
Martin was the last Government speaker. I had the call, and
I said to Tracey, “Tracey, imagine if we owned the
polytechnics, you and I-I’ll go you halves. If we owned the
polytechnics, would we be doing this tonight? The answer is
no.”

Now, what I’d done a few days earlier was
actually to secure a company name, the Shane Reti and Tracey
Martin New Zealand Polytechs Ltd. So I said to Tracey,
“Tracey, I’ve even registered a company name, ‘Shane Reti
and Tracey Martin New Zealand Polytechs Ltd’.” She shouted
back at me, “No, it’s ‘Tracey Martin and Shane Reti New
Zealand Polytechs Ltd'”. “Whatever! Would we be doing this
tonight?” And just at that point, Chlöe Swarbrick shouted
out, “Typical. When the Greens want to protest, they march
on Parliament; the Nats register a company.”

Then, in
this, my fourth term, I had the privilege of being a Cabinet
Minister in Government, taking the policies one has worked
on for years and actually deploying them. The Parliamentary
Library told me that completing the very first coalition
agreement policy of this 54th Parliament was in my
hands-namely the International Health Regulations
reservation, which needed to be in Geneva within 48 hours of
my being a Minister-and the second coalition policy as well,
announcing $30 million a week later to urgently increase
emergency department security for the upcoming summer season
and out-years.

There are many highlights as Minister
of Health: to develop a policy in Opposition for a third
medical school and then bring it into Government and
actually start building will change the landscape. It was a
privilege to bring forward the biggest funding increase ever
in cancer drugs. I want to thank Pharmac, Health New
Zealand, the Ministry of Health, and the many clinicians who
operationalised it, and the PM, and Minister of Finance, who
at the time simply said to me, “Shane, you do the policy and
we’ll find the money.”

A real highlight was extending
the breast cancer screening age group from 70 to 74. I
acknowledge the advocacy of colleagues Nicola, Louise, and a
senior BreastScreen Aotearoa expert in this room tonight.
This was a policy worked on for many years-a policy formed
in Opposition, then having it drawn from the ballot box,
then to first reading, and then implemented within a year of
coming into Government.

I will share with you here
what very few know and that probably led to the most lives I
have ever saved in my career in the six hours before I made
the formal breast-screening announcement in Nelson. Over
many meetings with Health New Zealand, we worked up the
operational detail and implementation plan.

The night
before the announcement, I was in Whangārei reviewing the
run sheet and there was something nagging at me. Something
was missing and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The
next day, with the big announcement that afternoon in
Nelson, I caught the 6 a.m. flight from Whangārei.

On
the same flight-indeed, the seat beside me-was a medical
colleague who I’d known for decades, who was also the Health
New Zealand lead on the programme. He was going down to the
big announcement also. I said to him, “There’s something
missing. We’re increasing the breast cancer screening age
for everyone from 70 to 74.” “That’s right,” he
said.

“Every year we will increase the age of
eligibility by one year, so that in four years’ time, the
extension will be complete.” “What about those who are
already between 70 to 74?”, I asked. “No, there is nothing
for them. People will age in.” That was the hole. I had
promised New Zealand women that there would be something for
everyone between ages 70 to 74. I asked, “Did you model
other options?” He said, “Yes, we also modelled a final
screen at age 74.” “How much was that?”, I asked. He said,
“$20 million.”

I landed in Auckland at 7 a.m. and
called Lester Levy. “Lester, there’s a policy hole and we
need to fix it and it will cost $20 million.”

“I will
get back to you,” he says. I landed in Wellington an hour
later and I got a call from Margie Apa. “Minister, we have
the modelling, we can deliver those extra screens, and we
can look to do it within baseline.” I landed at Nelson a few
hours later and made the announcement that breast cancer
screening would be extended for all women. Three flights
across six hours and the results to date have been success
beyond any of our imagination.

Here is what has
happened: the cancer detection rate-or CDR-internationally
for a successful screening programme is about four per 1,000
screened. In the first year of the programme, we were seeing
a CDR nearly triple that, at 11 per 1,000.

Here’s the
thing: it’s all happening in that last-year scan-that policy
I added on late notice on announcement day. In this older
age group, we are seeing screening numbers way beyond what
was expected, especially for Māori women, especially in
Northland and East Coast. What none of us anticipated and
what the modelling didn’t take into account was the response
to it being the last free scan. People are signing in
because it’s the last one that is free.

To return then
to my lead statement, I may well have saved more people
across six hours and three flights than at any other time in
my career, and that is truly a privilege.

There is
always unfinished business as a Minister, and I too have
some. I will place just one on the table here now.

To
the fizzy drinks industry, I was coming for you, and you
knew it. I had worked on sugar policy for years, and I met
formally with industry representatives at the end of 2024
and outlined my plans.

They said to me, “Could you
wait until after the busy Christmas/New Year period?”, and I
agreed. I told them I didn’t need to use words like “sugar
levy” or “sugar tax”, because New Zealand consumers would
force the change.

Here’s why: the evidence put to me
was that one of the most popular cans of fizzy drinks in New
Zealand had 10 grams of sugar in it-several teaspoons-but
that exact same can of fizzy drink from exactly the same
company in Australia only had 7 grams of sugar.

Let me
put it another way: some of our fizzy drinks look to be
nearly 40 to 50 percent more sugared up here in New Zealand
than exactly the same can of fizzy drink in
Australia.

This was also the case to varying degrees
across other popular fizzy drinks in New Zealand. How is
that possible? With high diabetes, obesity, and
cardiovascular rates in New Zealand, how can we possibly
explain that and, even more so, allow it? I say to the fizzy
drink industry: please explain why you have been
deliberately sugaring up New Zealanders, and then
reformulate to at least the baseline in Australia.

I
am the first Māori to win the Whangārei seat, and the 15th
Māori to win a general seat. Serving the people of
Whangārei has been a privilege. Together, we have
progressed the four lanes, the single-biggest economic
driver in Northland. We have built a game-changing
radiotherapy centre, saved vulnerable people’s lives at a
remodelled Salesyard Road, and built the biggest Kāinga Ora
housing facility in regional New Zealand.

Wellington
can be tough, and the beltway can be narrow. When the
rigours of Wellington has impacted, returning to the
electorate each week has anchored me and reminded me of my
purpose, especially with my squash mates: the Brown
Brothers, Matty, Bondi, Jonny, Willie, and Steve. I thank
you.

In closing, there are others I need to thank: my
EAs and SPS’s over the years-Judy Morrissey, Andrea Harris,
and Angela Bray-my senior adviser, Jonathan Franklin; and
press secretaries Charlotte Hendall, Gabrielle Henderson,
and Peter Thornbury.

To all the private secretaries
and agency executives, I thank you also. To my local
electorate office team over the years-Vanessa, Paul, Lynn,
Diana, Shannel, campaign chair Ken-and to the people of
Whangārei, I came here to do something, not be something,
and I gave it my all.

Finally, to my family-many of
whom are here today-Mum; Dad; Michelle; children Justin,
Melissa, Angela; grandchildren Maisie, Nico, Luke, Hayley,
Connor, Charlotte; Christine’s stepchildren George, Noelle,
Michelle, and Amelia, thank you.

And to my partner,
Ivonne, who has been with me from the very beginning of this
journey, thank you for helping me bring this to life. Thank
you all for your understanding when “papa Shane” missed your
birthdays, recitals, or sports events. I will do
better.

To all my parliamentary colleagues across the
House, both past and present, thank you for letting me be a
part of the wider team. It is not clear to me that what we
do here is still well described as the politics of the left
and right, but maybe it is better described as the politics
of top and bottom.

To that end, I wish everyone in
this House the wisdom we pray for at the start of each day.
Tēnā koutou. Tēnā koutou. Kia ora mai tātou
katoa.

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