I was born in Germany, and on my dad's side I whakapapa to the Irish immigrants who worked the scheelite mines of Arrowtown. My grandfather worked as a delegate for the Waterside Workers Union in the 1951 strike. My grandmother achieved dux of her school. After completing primary level, she dropped out to look after her siblings, as did so many girls in her day. My father knew what it meant to walk to school without shoes. However, he also enjoyed a roof over his head, the roof of a State house, thanks to the Social Security Act of 1938, passed by the Labour Government under Michael Joseph Savage. When my dad won a scholarship to medical school in Otago, he broke an inter-generational cycle of poverty, and the hairy issues that can go with it. 