General Debate

Today the ACT party asked the Minister of Housing whether he is aware that the Housing New Zealand Corporation has developed and implemented a two-world view within the corporation—a Māori view and a Crown view. It was clear that the Minister did not have a clue. That Minister does not know what is going on in his portfolio. That is the same Minister who has the worst record of failure for ill-advised flagship programmes in the whole Labour Government. He has wasted millions and millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.

We now have the totally unacceptable situation where the corporation—the State agency that houses tenants from dozens of different nationalities—has implemented racist policies that create a Māori world view and a Crown world view, promoting special treatment for Māori. According to the chief executive, Helen Fulcher, the two-world view “is based on an acknowledgment that the two Treaty partners have different ways of looking at the world including beliefs, values and experience. By looking from both of these perspectives we can develop a two-world view for the Corporation which will underpin the way HNZC operates internally and the way we develop relationships externally. … we are only at the beginning of a long and really interesting journey.”

A request under the Official Information Act has revealed that in breach of all of our New Zealand laws stating that in this country one cannot discriminate on the basis of race, the Labour Government has implemented policies that have introduced special treatment for Māori clients and special treatment for Māori employees, creating two tiers of privilege. Under Housing New Zealand Corporation’s two-world view, millions and millions of dollars have been spent on consultants, travel, meetings, and hui, as well as on race-based recruitment and training.

For the first time in the history of the public service in this country we have a Government that has introduced recruitment policies meaning that unless a person agrees with Māori grievance ideology and buys into this Government’s politically correct agenda, that person cannot work for Housing New Zealand. It is an outrage that we now have a Government that employs people in the public service based on racial ideology, and that they cannot be hired by the corporation unless they pass Labour’s race test.

I know people who have applied for jobs in the corporation, and in other Government departments like the Department of Corrections—and I understand that such policies are also going on in the health sector, in the police, and in a number of other areas—and they have chucked it in, in disgust, because they do not buy into political correctness at the level that Labour is thrusting it down their throats. They do not buy into having two different types of privilege—one for Māori and one for the rest of New Zealand.

According to the training documents, there is even a transformational vocabulary in the Housing New Zealand Corporation. One cannot say that one is “confused”; one has to say one is “curious”. One cannot say that one is afraid; one has to say one is “uncomfortable”. If one is furious, one has to say one is “passionate”, and if one is disgusted, one has to say one is “surprised”.

Steve Maharey must accept full responsibility for undermining the integrity of the public service, for pushing even more political correctness on to New Zealand—a country that is sick and tired of political correctness—and for promoting reverse discrimination by introducing special privilege for Māori.

I leave Government members with this question: can they name one person who lives in a warmer, dryer, safer house as a result of Housing New Zealand Corporation’s two-world view? The answer is no. The members over there know it, yet they are thrusting this stuff on to the public service and unsuspecting New Zealanders. It is not only that; Labour’s spin machine has tried to tell us the opposite—and it is not true.

To dream the impossible dream, to fight the impossible fight—an octogenarian first-term MP becomes National’s leader and sinks without trace. What is now obvious to everybody is what the Daily News recently remarked upon. At 18 percent and falling, Dr Brash is at levels that Bill English was at when National dumped him a year ago. A year ago National was struggling in the polls. A year ago the National caucus was dispirited and dejected. A year ago the National Party had no policy to speak of. What has changed? Nothing has changed. It is still struggling, it is still leaderless, and it is still a policy dead-zone. Don Brash was supposed to be the answer—now they cannot even remember what the question was.

How has National’s new line-up responded? The Dominion Post called the front bench “missing in action”. The Christchurch Press lamented the paucity of talent in the National caucus. About the only National member doing any visible work, according to the conservative columnist Matthew Hooten, was Bill English. Let us look at the competition he has for being the soufflé that rises twice. Katherine Rich had a welfare policy, and Roger Sowry called it the best policy paper ever written by a sitting MP. What did Don Brash do? He canned it. Simon Power had a real job once. What did Don Brash do? He canned it. Gerry Brownlee, who is proving about as useful on the foreshore as any other beached whale, is not happy. He criticised the iwi ownership of the Ārawa lake beds, but he supported it for the Taupō lake beds. Judith Collins wants to force children in potentially abusive situations to tell their parents that they are having abortions. Her caucus canned that, so she is not happy. Georgina te Heuheu is still there. That is a mark of great courage and some mana, but one has only to look at her to know that she is not happy.

John Key wants to keep the Superannuation Fund and give back taxes. Don Brash does not, nor does Standard and Poor’s, so John is not happy. Nick Smith is still recovering from his judicial discovery of the separation of powers. He is not happy. Roger and Lynda are going. Mr Speaker is not standing in his seat. Shane has stayed off the tractor. None of them are happy. Paul Hutchison knows more about health than Judith Collins but she got the job, so Paul is not happy.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): The member will use members’ full names.

The good Dr Hutchison, the member for Port Waikato, told a general practitioners meeting in Queenstown that there were too many district health boards and primary health organisations, and that they needed rationalisation. Judith Collins said that that was not National Party policy and that she was not happy.

So where is all this leading? Don Brash’s polling is back down to the margin of error and he faces a potential early retirement. The Nats have the gruelling decision whether to dump him now and lose the next election, or to lose the election first and then dump him. John Banks potentially has a new future in the National caucus. Simon Power has a glimmer of hope. John Key, Katherine Rich, and the other policy wonks have a chance to make policy. But they are not happy.

Meanwhile, Labour is delivering. Under Labour we have a Budget that is good news for Kiwi kids. We have a strong, growing economy with the best growth in a decade, and the lowest unemployment in two decades. We have a secure retirement with a protected superannuation fund. We have State assets proudly owned by New Zealanders, like Kiwibank, that are paying their way. We have a future for our young people, with more resources by far for education and training, Gateway programmes, and apprenticeships. To wrap up, Don Brash is failing and his caucus is not happy; he will be gone by lunchtime. Labour will govern for another 3 years, and the public will be happy.

If Darren Hughes was ever worried about having to get past David Cunliffe to become the next leader of the Labour Party, that sad, pathetic little speech from David Cunliffe will have pushed Darren Hughes into a different limelight and a different spot. David Cunliffe is the only member who, when he rises for the Labour Party to start to speak, has the junior Government whip sinking below his desk with his hand on top of his head, shaking his head. Darren Hughes is fully supportive of a man who cannot give a speech in this House without starting with some corny line that he has dug up from the “100 Best Lines” from “Webster’s Best Speeches”. If ever Darren Hughes thought he would have to climb over the corpse of David Cunliffe to become the next leader of the Labour Party, let me say to him: “Don’t panic.” It will be a very small step indeed, after that sad little speech.

Having said that, Mr Cunliffe did not refer to the complete shambles that local government in New Zealand is currently in. Chris Carter is totally out of his depth. As the Minister of Conservation, his output classes in the area of management of natural heritage have failed in 21 out of 35 performance measures. He was ignored by Margaret Wilson—admittedly a reasonably regular occurrence in that caucus—when he tried to advise her against the Te Arawa lakes settlement in Rotorua. The poor man is a total lightweight, and now, after making a hash of conservation, he has moved on to make a complete hash of the local government and district health board elections.

As my colleague Nick Smith pointed out, Chris Carter said at a local government conference in 2004 that the introduction of the single transferable vote was a great example of the successful partnership that exists at present between central and local government. That Minister is now in a bathroom somewhere, washing his hands of that matter, and saying that it has nothing to do with him. I never thought I would stand in this House and say this, but bring back Sandra Lee. She would not have made a mess of this like that Minister has. She would have at least managed to see the elections go through.

Whatever happened to the Westminster convention of individual ministerial responsibility? It is worth having a look at what Philip Joseph wrote in Constitutional and Administrative Law in New Zealand: “The convention of individual ministerial responsibility holds Ministers responsible for the general conduct of their departments.”

Bob Semple would be rolling in his grave. He gave the advice many years ago in this House that he was responsible but not to blame. Annette King has stood in this House and said that the buck stops with her. What does Mr Chris Carter say? “It is not my fault, it has nothing to do with me. Nothing to see here. Let us move on to another exciting speech by David Cunliffe.” Let us move on to what else Philip Joseph has to say in his textbook on administrative law: “A Prime Minister will sacrifice a Minister whose personal failings cannot be publicly defended or are an ongoing liability to the Government.”

I ask the Prime Minister to think very carefully about allowing Chris Carter to continue in that job. He should take responsibility for what has occurred. Eighteen district health boards have been affected around New Zealand. Seven local councils are in complete disarray, and tens of thousands of votes have been counted—or not counted; who knows. It makes Florida look like a walk in the park. The buck stops with the Minister, Chris Carter.

I ask members to remember when Helen Clark became Prime Minister. She said there would be new standards of Government. What is Chris Carter doing to those new standards of Government, when he refuses to take responsibility for the debacle that has occurred in these local government elections? As my colleague Nick Smith said, it is all very well for Chris Carter to wander around at photo opportunities with a tuatara on his shoulder, but these local government debacles that have occurred in the last week will be the millstone around his neck. His time is up.

It is interesting to speak here today. We have had the very strange sight that was like some weird version of Men in Black, whereby people in black suits were wandering around a lake in Rotorua. We would have expected, perhaps, the great shot fired by Dr Brash to be the subject of the debate today. But no, what happened? One of the icons of New Zealand, Sir Howard Morrison, put him in his place, and National members shut up rapidly. They figured out: “Whoops, we bombed that one again. We had better flip and flop all over the place about the local body elections.” But they have not talked about the results.

Let us have a look at Auckland. I am very proud to say that in my electorate, six out of six members of the community board were Labour candidates. Three out of four of the city councillors in the electorate, the boundaries of which I share with Mr Simich, were Labour candidates. Four of the six members of the licensing trust were Labour candidates. What is the score for the ACT – National coalition that masquerades in Auckland as Citizen and Ratepayers Now? Zip, zilch, gone! Dead in the water! Some of the candidates abandoned ship beforehand.

Of course, ACT members had to come here today and bring out the old Māori bashing technique again. ACT is polling down at 1 percent, and disappearing. If those members want to talk about integrity, let us hear about that fella called Brian Nicholle. What a wonderful campaign manager he proved to be. Let him run the campaign for National and ACT next time. They will not be worrying about 24 percent or 20 percent; they will be worrying about minus 24 percent.

What have we heard about here today? We have heard about how the votes did not get counted. Opposition members do not want to talk about where the votes did get counted. No, they were judged good and proper by the people, who said that they do not like people who sell pensioner housing. Up in Maungatūroto, where the invisible leader of the Opposition was last week drumming up votes—it is a great place; I bet if we asked most New Zealanders they could not tell us where it is, but it is a great place, and I have been there—what did residents say to the great leader? They asked him why he wants to sell Kiwibank. The area is heartland National territory. The people there say that they like Kiwibank, that it is the only bank left in their area, and that the Government did a good job by putting it into place. But we have not heard about that in this general debate. Dr Nick Smith is the great hit man, the one with the huge success rate. Do members remember the carpets and all those wonderful stories we heard from him—“Mr Reliable”, somebody whose every word we could believe?

💬 Hon Pete Hodgson: The rug doctor.

The rug doctor, yes. They have him lined up. I want to know why Bill English is not speaking today. He is the only effective member of the Opposition. At least he gets it right half the time. All the rest of them are flipping and flopping and going all over the place. Mr Key says one thing and Mr Brash says the other, Dr Hutchison has one view and Judith Collins has a different one, and next week somebody else will poke his or her oar in. Yes, I agree that Katherine Rich wrote the best policy paper the National Party has produced. It is the only one, but nobody is allowed to see it because Dr Brash’s strategy has changed. There are no big hits on the Government any more. Let us to Maungatūroto and answer the big questions: “Why are you taking away Kiwibank?”, the people up there asked. What a shambles this Opposition is in, worrying about the fact that some computers did not work and the votes were not counted. There will still be a district health board next week.

💬 Sandra Goudie: Is the hospital still open?

The hospital is still there. And yes, it is damned annoying for those people who cast their votes and those candidates who are waiting, but it is equally damned annoying for the National Party and ACT people who got turfed out of their positions all over Auckland City because the Auckland population said: “We hate that style of politics. We don’t want it any more. We don’t want local government selling pensioner housing, Kiwibanks, and anything else they can lay their hands on.” That is what the National Party and ACT need to think about—a sound and utter rejection by the people of Auckland of their politics. That is the historical thing Mr Carter was talking about in this local body election. The people did not get fooled by a label that read “Citizen and Ratepayers Now”. They knew what they were being asked to vote for, and they said: “It stinks. We don’t like it. We’re not going near it.”

Mr Simich knows all about it, because in the area we share an interest in—our two electorates bound each other—the people resoundingly voted Labour. The person who ran Mr Simich very close last time is now the youngest Auckland city councillor ever, as far as I am aware. She was a very good candidate and will make a great city councillor.

I rise to deal with a press release put out by the Minister of Defence today, in which he criticises me and my party of trying to garner publicity off the grief of the Bain family. Let us put a few things on the record here in the House so they may be clearly understood.

This issue was brought to the attention of the Minister of Defence back in March 2002. I am now told that information is available to the Government showing quite clearly that this issue was first brought to the attention of the House by Marilyn Waring sometime before that. I assume that the Minister of Defence has access to all that information, more so than I. This issue arose when the Bain family first gave its concerns about a number of issues, but the one that upset the family the most was the inappropriate use of photographs of their deceased son used as training aids.

Let us be clear what the Minister was told. I wrote to the Minister and pointed out these matters. I told him that the Bain family was not satisfied with the information it had been given surrounding Grant’s death at the time, and that the revelation of the use of those photos had only made the situation worse. I outlined a number of things to the Minister, and in my letter pointed out to him that the Bain family had made a number of inquiries. The family had requested a copy of the report of the inquiry into Grant’s death and was told it was not entitled to it. That is in my letter to the Minister. I also told the Minister that I found all of this totally contrary to the manner in which Private Manning’s family was treated, and I was disappointed and puzzled that this should be so. I requested that the Minister personally ask the Chief of Army to look into this issue and have an officer visit the family with the aim of satisfying its needs and putting right this whole sorry affair. The Minister claims he did everything that was asked of him in that letter. Well, the question is this. Did the Minister do so? He says in his letter to me: “I am now satisfied the matter had been dealt with as best as it can be given that it is some 21 years since the tragic death. Army will remain responsive to the needs of the family, and I await the decision of the family as to how they will proceed.” He washed his hands.

If, as the Minister said, he had met my request of satisfying the family’s needs, then he would have known that the family has never been satisfied with the explanations given. The family was still so concerned that it brought in its local MP, Shane Ardern, to assist it, as well. He again wrote to the Minister and asked for further assistance. Again, this Minister washed his hands. Now this Minister says that some people are using this case to garner publicity. Well, is that not rich? It is this case that the Minister and the Prime Minister have gaily referred to as an alleged murder, and they have used it as justification for the actions they have taken to initiate an independent inquiry into the goings-on at Regular Force Cadet School. So, quite the reverse; it is the Government, the Prime Minister, and the Minister of Defence who are playing off the Bains.

This case stood on its own merits. It deserved investigation. Not one, not two, but three MPs during the time of this House have raised this issue, and this Minister, who gets paid a small fortune and who has the joy, the pleasure, and the responsibility of looking after our Defence Force, did nothing more than palm it off. He did not follow up. He did not take on board the concerns of Shane Ardern. He did nothing until suddenly it looked as though the Government was going to be embarrassed. The only thing that motivates this Minister is when he gets three bad trots on the Holmes show night after night. That is what motivates this Government. It is poll driven: “How do we look? Oh my God, let’s do something!”

Well, I have a request for the Minister. As he has suddenly found it within his heart to look to people in time of need, might I bring to his attention the petition from Damien Patrick Nēpata and George Illyah Nēpata, and the recommendations of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee that said that those two boys should get compensation, which he, the Minister, rejected. I bring to the Minister’s attention the case of an able seaman. I will not say his name, because the Minister knows that in 2000 I brought to his attention a case about an able seaman, who to this day I still believe was not looked after by the military. He was subsequently medically discharged. His life has never been the same. Did this Minister care? No, he did not. He overlooked the case. Maybe what it needs is: “Mr Holmes, please help us out. Please put this naval rating on to your TV show.”

I rise to demonstrate clearly that Dr Brash’s political posturing is driven purely by a poll drop—he is down in the polls trying desperately to raise his public profile. What does Dr Brash do? He comes to Rotorua, which I proudly represent, and holds a public meeting. But he keeps the location secret. “Flip-flop Dr Brash, bellyflop, Dr Brash, and your merry men.” This posturing secretly with a small—a very small—group of supporters on our beautiful lake edge did nothing for the Opposition’s image. The leadership of the Opposition has clearly become a real concern. The rifts are already showing in the Opposition, and it is very clear, when Dr Brash uses such poor political judgment to come to Rotorua to make such a misguided statement as he did on the lakes, that he did not seek Georgina te Heuheu’s very, very valuable advice.

Even Jane Clifton said: “From top of the polls to puny laggard. What has happened to the political athlete, Dr Brash?”. Yes, in our district of Rotorua we are concerned about the lakes, but not the ownership of the lake beds. Dr Brash read that really wrong. We are concerned about the water quality of the lakes. It is a hot issue. Why did he not come and hold a good public meeting, and come out with another of his second major public policy announcements? Ownership of the lakes is not one of those.

Since he made that statement the press has run hot: “Rotorua leaders condemn Nat’s stance on lakes deal”. At home we do not like it, and it has no traction whatsoever. An image of the doctor, the old sort of colonial tea planter framed against Lake Rotorua—a tourism Mecca, in the nation’s eyes—will not add any value to the iconic status of our lakes. Why did he not come and give his second major announcement on policy? Because he has gone feral on it, and he has decided that that strategy was not working. Was this the No. 2 major policy roll-out that we all waited for? In July he was on a roll. Now he is flip-flop on policy yet again. This was, we think, the No. 2 major announcement, 3 months too early, or over a year too late. It shows yet another lack of political judgment, and one would have to ask where he is getting his advice.

The polls will not peak feverishly in Rotorua for National. The people see the lack of support for Te Arawa ownership as a worrying move to the far right. We are a proud, moderate community—tātou, tātou, we together. At home we understand the issues of diplomacy and the generosity of Ngāti Whakauē and Te Arawa. They gave the reserves, Hospital Hill, the very site that the city is built on. Who rose up most to speak against the National stance? It was yet another icon of Rotorua, Sir Howard Morrison. He said “What I am really up in arms about is the fact that people like you do not trust the word of your bicultural partner—Māori; the bicultural ethos of this country is Māori and Pākehā, and you as a treaty partner are just blaspheming and demeaning Māori to the worst degree.” It stinks. We hate it.

Sir Howard Morrison also said: “My angst is with Mr Brash and all of them using Māori as a scapegoat to vent for their own opportunist ways to try and stir up another hit, like Ōrewa. I guess our people are sick of being used as a political football.” That is the message from home, Dr Brash.

Let us talk about the deal that Dr Brash talked about when he said: “A deal’s a deal.” There has been a very, very strong reaction to this deal. Margaret Wilson said that the deal was unfair and should be reversed. The 1922 agreement could not properly be described as a sale. It was a classic case where one party to the negotiation had considerable power to the detriment of another party. That is why there has been a sense of grievance in Te Arawa ever since. Our Government will get that right. I say, ask Georgina Te Heuheu.

The previous Mayor of Rotorua, Grahame Hall, has spoken out. Paul East acknowledged the generosity of Te Arawa. So did Don Stafford, a local historian, and Arapeta Tāhana, the previous chair, and Anaru Rangiheuea. The list goes on and on. The Opposition should be embarrassed.

We have just seen one of the greatest stuff-ups, compromising thousands of voters in their one opportunity to exercise their democratic rights in the latest local body and district health board elections, and what does Minister Chris Carter say? He says: “It wasn’t me.” The Hon Chris Carter, like some of his colleagues, is well over the speed limit in running away from this issue. Of course, the faster he runs, the bigger the mess! But the enormity of this problem is too great to run away from, or to try to dump on anyone else, as the Minister seems intent on doing. So the mess just keeps getting bigger.

The time frame has now been extended from what was meant to be a reporting back today to possibly 3 weeks, but essentially the Minister does not know how long it will take before there is a result for the thousands of voters and the hundreds of candidates who are waiting. If the Minister had his say he would probably say that it will not happen today, but it will happen. But effectively he does not know when. So there has been a press release saying that it will be maybe in a week’s time. Now it looks like that could be 2 or maybe 3 weeks, but essentially no one really knows. In the Minister’s rush to avoid the mess, he said in answer to a question on the single transferable vote (STV): “The 10 councils that have chosen to adopt the single transferable vote system did so through their own choice.” That is what the Minister said.

I have to tell folks that that is not true. It was not through their own choice. Although some of the 10 councils did choose to use STV, others were forced to use the STV system because of referenda that were successful in getting support to do that. But essentially the Minister did not answer the question correctly. He answered the question incorrectly. His answer was untrue. So the Minister Chris Carter clearly needs to reacquaint himself with the legislative processes put in place by his Government and that he as Minister is responsible for implementing. He needs to get his facts right and to answer the questions correctly.

That is the same person with oversight and responsibility for a major democratic voting process, so no wonder it crashed and burnt! This is another fit of political correctness that has tripped up this Minister, big time. His lack of oversight has seen thousands of voters and the validity of their vote thrown into contention. It is the Minister’s lack of oversight that has seen hundreds of candidates left at the side of the road, not knowing whether they are going to be left in the dust or picked up, or whether they have been elected. The results will mean that they also do not know how long they will have to wait for a result. That was quite clearly borne out today by my learned colleagues during question time.

The Minister Chris Carter is responsible for ensuring that the process we use in exercising our democratic right by way of a vote is sound, and that there are no glitches, especially from the STV system, where there is already a lack of transparency and which has also been driven by a Government agency. New Zealand Post was using subsidiary Datamail, and Datamail called the process “intelligent capture”. If one looks at some of the press releases, one sees where it used that term. Datamail has no experience with the STV voting system and was using it for the first time. The Minister of Local Government, Chris Carter, has the responsibility for the oversight of that process in conjunction with the Minister of Internal Affairs. But what happened? It turned into an absolute fiasco because they just did not exercise their responsibility effectively. I wonder whether they also call it intelligent capture, because it has turned into a debacle. The Minister Chris Carter should resign, if he cannot get this right. The election was crucial. It was about local bodies and district health boards. He should resign in view of the fact that this has turned into a mess.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): I call Mark Peck.

💬 Jill Pettis: Thank God for small mercies!

I thank my honourable colleague for saying: “Thank God for small mercies!”. I have always regarded myself as being something like that. The junior Government whip interjected on the previous speaker and asked why Sandra Goudie was not on the front bench. It is quite simple really. When we look at that fearless member, and the way she does her business on behalf of the people in her electorate, we see that she allows Bill English to go around and bad-mouth Cambridge High School, and worse, she put out a press statement criticising Ngāti Maru iwi for holding to ransom the Sylvia Park development in Auckland, and almost exclusively after—

💬 Hon Mark Gosche: It’s in my electorate.

Well, she was interfering in the honourable member’s electorate, but she was so fearless in putting out that statement that the moment she found out that Dr Brash—[Interruption] The member should stop chirping. She is displaying all the intelligence and wit that she displayed this morning at the select committee—and can I say that people have compared her with orange roughy. Well, that is not fair, because orange roughy has far more brain capacity than the member has. She put out this statement and as soon as she found out that her leader, Don Brash, is involved in the company connected with the development, and that the ACT party president, Catherine Judd, was involved and handled the public relations for that firm—

💬 Darren Hughes: She went very quiet then.

She did not go quiet—she withdrew it! She did not have the conviction to stick to the line that she took at the outset, and that speaks volumes about that member. She will never be on the front bench, because she does not have the ability to stand up and do anything at all on behalf of the people of her electorate. One of the things that is a great delight about announcing one’s retirement is that it gives one the freedom, occasionally, to tell junior members in this House some of the things they need to learn if they are going to be around here for any period of time.

I have been given the honour by my party to sum up on our debate. It really goes this way in relation to the National Party—lack of leadership and the riderless horse, and I have the poll results and they are fascinating. If we go through them we find that of all the political parties listed in the poll results the only one that is actually dropping in the polls is the National Party.

Every other party is either going up or staying the same, but the National Party is dropping. There is a danger in that for the National Party because we remember—and Bill Gudgeon will remember this—when Winston Peters took a huge jump in the polls just before the 1999 election. It was like Mount Everest, and then just as quickly he took a huge drop. After the Ōrewa speech we saw a huge jump in the polls for the National Party, and, guess what the trends now show? They show the drop. There is nothing unusual about that. Anybody who has any rudimentary understanding of anything to do with politics, business, and so on, will know that there are certain cycles. When we have a massive bump in the way that this occurred, there is a correction—and the correction in this respect is to say to National members: “Listen, you are leaderless, you are a riderless horse, and you are a one-trick pony.” The only trick that Don Brash has been able to use to get any publicity this time around was the Ōrewa speech where he attacked Māori.

He tried it again in Rotorua. It became such an embarrassment that he and Mr Brownlee went to Rotorua just in the last few days to try to fix it. They did not bank on running into a Māori woman who was simply going for a walk with her dog that day on the foreshore. When she heard what Don Brash had to say, she cried. She does not see it as an ownership issue. She sees it as a landlord-tenant issue. Her iwi put the pole in the lake to signify their claim on it. They have never denied people their right of access to that particular lake, and for Don Brash to say that he would give them money but no ownership of that lake bed was despicable. That is why National is going downwards in the polls—and may it continue to plunge!

This afternoon during question time I asked the Minister for ACC, the Hon Ruth Dyson, a question about the invitation to Steve Longford from Australia to be a keynote speaker at the Accident Compensation Corporation’s forthcoming Bold Perspectives, Shared Objectives conference in March next year. The Green Party raised the issue because we cannot really understand why the Accident Compensation Corporation felt inspired to feature Mr Longford given that his web profile identifies him as an FBI-trained criminal profiler with a specialisation in “deception detection”, unless the underpinning aim here by the corporation is to use the gentleman’s expertise to get more people off income-related compensation more quickly through a presumption that better “deception detection” will achieve this.

In response to my questions, among other things, the Minister suggested that this gentleman has been invited because of his specialisation in family violence. We have looked again at the material readily available on the web and at this stage we have not found anything in his resume that indicates anything to do with family violence. Instead, Mr Longford’s contribution to the Australian conference the Minister mentioned earlier says in part: “Keynote Steve Longford, one of our four forensic profilers in Australia: The detection of deception is based on criminal intelligence and incorporates body language, social psychology. Do you know when someone is being deceptive? Is someone purposely hiding information from you?”. That was the focus of his speech at the conference in Australia. This is why the Accident Compensation Corporation has invited him here.

When this is allied to the fact that Mr Longford’s company focuses on intelligence and investigation management for counter-terrorism, and Government and corporate fraud, and compliance, I think it is pretty clear what it is that the Accident Compensation Corporation has invited him over to do.

I realise that some MPs in this House probably think that countering claimant fraud and getting people off accident compensation as quickly as possible is one of its core purposes. The Green Party, however, subscribes to a somewhat different view—that the rehabilitation part of accident compensation should be primarily focused on helping and supporting people until they have genuinely recovered to the point where they can achieve real vocational independence; not on pushing people off because of dodgy computer certificates or treating people as criminals by case managers using behavioural profiling techniques such as those espoused by Mr Longford.

Claimants report that individual rehabilitation plans often seem to be a token exercise, with a speedy exit from weekly compensation entitlement through the vocational independence assessment process being the goal, rather than restoring the claimant’s participation to the maximum extent practicable. That perception is reflected in the petition currently before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, calling for a committee inquiry into Accident Compensation Corporation claims management. I hope the committee picks up that petition.

I am afraid that the step-by-step computer course that attracted media attention yesterday is not an isolated incident. Accident compensation claimants around the country are reporting that the inclusion of similarly short and inadequate courses in individual rehabilitation plans under the guise of retraining is widespread. These courses give claimants no real skills that enhance their employment opportunities; rather, they result in just a piece of paper that shows that they have completed the course so they can be entered into the vocational independence assessment process, and thereby have their compensation stopped. When experiences like these are combined with the invitation to Steve Longford to next year’s conference, the Green Party cannot help but feel that this is indicative of an Accident Compensation Corporation mindset that all claimants are potential malingerers and the primary focus is to exit them from entitlements as quickly as they can.

Restoring an injured person’s participation to his or her maximum extent practicable should mean what it says. It does not mean making a token effort at vocational rehabilitation. It does not mean treating all claimants as criminals, malingerers, or deceitful fraudsters, and profiling them so as to exit them from the scheme as soon as possible. It does not mean forcing people off accident compensation—and into the dole, if they are lucky, but often into nothing at all.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.