New National Party MP Mike Sabin gave his maiden speech yesterday. Here are some excerpts.

With that in mind my policing career was soon focused in the area of drug enforcement, primarily because I felt the best way to make a difference was to focus on the cause of the problems and one quickly comes to the conclusion in that vocation that drug and alcohol abuse is the cause more often than not.

My career in the police shadowed the introduction of Pure Methamphetamine (or P) into NZ, an area I developed and expertise in, but while working on squads running undercover and electronic surveillance operations I literally saw NZ explode from virtually no P problem to the worst in the world within 5 years.

Our well-developed drug culture saw us primed for the only hard drug in the world that can be made on your kitchen bench from readily available retail chemicals.

Those 5 years have changed NZ forever and led me to the conclusion that the fight needed to go back to the top of the cliff. Quite simply Mr Speaker I knew we wouldn’t win the war trying to heal the wounded.

This desire to find a better way gave rise to MethCon Group, a drug education and policy company I founded and operated from 2006. The mission was simple; empower employers, students and community with education while looking for policy solutions to help provide government with better tools.

I sprang to public prominence over this time, a deliberate effort to give the issue a voice and sense of urgency.

It was a long, difficult and often lonely journey Mr Speaker, one that many told me was futile, one that many told me was someone else’s problem to fix. Nevertheless I stuck to the task for no other reason than my belief that something needed to be done. …

Mr Speaker, while there are some who would say I am a one-trick-pony, here to further the anti-drug cause, far from it, my journey into politics has come about as an evolution of many professional experiences leading me to the conclusion that if one wants to support their community and nation to reach its real potential there is a need to be around the tables where the decisions that most affect our communities are being made.

The reality is Mr Speaker, my efforts with the P issue demonstrate more my on-going willingness to try to make a difference than my focus on that particular issue alone. … I just wanted to try and find solutions, while many others were finding ways to tolerate the problem.

Mike Sabin is a prohibitionist.

I’d now like to share a little about what I believe in.

I am proud to be a representative of the National Party because its founding values resonate with who I am as an individual, central to this – personal responsibility, reward for hard work and enterprise, limited government and equality of opportunity and citizenship. …

Personal responsibility, the very source from which self-respect springs is intrinsically related to the individual’s willingness to accept responsibility over one’s own life. To do so is to give value, purpose and freedom to the soul. To refuse it leaves a hole from which the spirit of the individual will slowly but surely drain.

Yet years of socialist ideology, welfarism which has evolved to provide perverse incentives to opt out and the insidious encroachment of government on the minds and lives of citizens has seen the notion of personal responsibility pilloried like it were the ramblings of capitalist zealots.

Personal responsibility is a good thing. But it has a flip-side. The flip-side to personal responsibility is individual freedom and it, too, is a good thing.

So in conclusion Mr Speaker who am I?

A proud family man with a blended family of 6, richer in spirit for the good AND bad experiences in my personal life – poorer (financially) for the fact that I have managed to amass so many children in the process!

I am passionate about Northland and NZ and the pursuit of potential therein.

What do I believe in?

That personal responsibility is just that – the responsibility of the person – not the government

That carrots work better than sticks, but both are necessary.

That the first question we should be asking of New Zealanders is what is your dream? And then aim to create a social and economic climate to help make those dreams possible.

And why am I here Mr Speaker?

For the implementation … quite simply I want to help turn visions into reality.

Sabin believes in personal responsibility, but when it comes to individual freedom he’s going to hit us with sticks.

Enjoy the carrots of office, Mike.