For a variety of reasons, my younger brother and I chose to leave home when I was 11 and he was nine. We'd planned to travel from Hawke's Bay to the goldfields in Central Otago, live in old mining huts, and make a living panning for gold. We managed to get to Wellington, but we were stymied by Cook Strait, and ended up living for a bit over a week on the streets of Wellington, huddling together for warmth on cold, rainy nights in flax bushes, trying to figure out a way to get across that Cook Strait. Let me tell you that Wellington is a cold, hard place when you're a child living on its streets. I remember this every day when I come to this House, and it serves to remind me that while I'm here, I need to do my best to ensure the policies that go through this House do not have unintended consequences that hurt our country's children. 