When I heard that Mike Moore had passed away, I was in Kaikohe, standing in the middle of a field, waiting and listening to the Rt Hon Winston Peters, the Hon Shane Jones, and the Hon Nanaia Mahuta making some announcements. It struck me that I was really only half an hour away from the place where Mike Moore grew up. That place was Kawakawa—funnily enough, the same town that I grew up in. 