General Debates

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Today it is time to reveal to all New Zealanders once and for all that the minority Labour Government is being led not by a Teflon lady but by a tinselled time-server. In fact, this is no longer a Labour Government, and its hangers-on in the other parties do not really matter. Savage, Fraser, and Kirk will be spinning in their graves so fast they could be hooked up to the national grid. There has been a political sea change in New Zealand in the last 2 months, and we saw it straight after Easter. We can tell by the frightened faces of the Beehive drones and the MPs around her. They know that their so-called heroine of “Helengrad” has become the queen bee of crisis. Some obsequious, self-serving, obedient courtiers in the media have given her the longest honeymoon in our country’s political history, but even they now realise that one just cannot silk-purse a sow’s ear.

Let me list the crises we have in this country today. We have a power crisis. Everyone knows that but the Prime Minister—but she has gas for her cooking and heating, so it is OK. We have a law and order crisis. We are the only country in the Western World where crime pays, and if the grossly under-resourced police do catch serious offenders, this Government gives them deferred sentences into home detention—offenders like drug dealers, murderers, rapists, and violent offenders—and beyond 100 of them, as we heard today. It is a slap in the face for the victims, the taxpayers, and all law-abiding citizens.

We have a health crisis. Tens upon tens of thousands of New Zealanders are denied hospital treatment and dumped out of hospitals whilst we treat non-taxpaying overstayers at huge cost to the New Zealand taxpayer. But, worse still, we lie about their status. Someone who will never work, we call a worker, while tens of thousands of New Zealanders miss out. We have an education crisis. We have prostituted our secondary and tertiary system for foreign students, whilst thousands of New Zealanders leave school not being able to read or write properly. We have an immigration crisis. Three-hundred thousand people in New Zealand today do not speak English.

💬 Larry Baldock: How many?

Three-hundred thousand do not speak English. We kick out qualified English-speaking professionals who could contribute, and who are contributing, to our economy, but we welcome some Middle Eastern takeaway bar worker who cannot speak English. That is Lianne Dalziel’s policy. We have serious Asian crime in Auckland. It is up 750 percent, and “United Nations Helen” buries her head in a beach of crime and denies it is all happening. She denies all the facts. Policemen go public in the New Zealand Herald, outlining their predicament in trying to get on top of crime in Auckland, and she and her Minister of Justice—both from the same fringes of political science academia—claim it is not happening. They are not fit for their jobs. One cannot say, though, that the Prime Minister is losing it, because she has never had it. We all know that. If we look at every election campaign, we see that she never goes public, she does not hold meetings, and only an obsequious media umbrella disguises her inability to do her job.

But the Teflon is coming off. Every day since Easter she has come into the Chamber and got creamed. In a long political career, even longer in the case of my colleague Dail Jones, we have never seen any leader get done so badly. She is so bad, she is making Jenny Shipley look good, and I say: “That’s real bad!” She cannot talk straight, she cannot talk direct, and Parliament has sunk to a new low because with Helen Clark the buck stops with the drain-cleaner. With Helen Clark the buck never stops with her, or any Minister, but the drain-cleaner. She is overseas, strutting the world stage, and so seduced by her self-importance that foreign policy is made on the hoof. Now, we have one ally left, and it is called France. As they say in the Tui’s advertisement: “Yeah, right!” I can say from experience that around the Copperfields consultations, and around the clusters in the corridors, and the sourness of the sisterhood, amidst growing criticism by the men in the Labour caucus, things are starting to go—not like they used to be. As for the Māori Labour members—

Debate interrupted.