Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

While I was suntanning over the Christmas break, National and United Future were pontificating on the virtues of their parties. The leader of the so-called “Clayton’s Family Party”—the United Future leader, Peter Dunne—again pontificated on Radio Pacific and in the papers on how his party stopped the cannabis bill, which I applaud. But he did not say that United Future could have stopped the despicable Civil Union Bill and the Prostitution Reform Bill from becoming law in this country. Yes, his party could have done that. Shame on United Future! It rolled over again for the minority Labour Government in relation to those two bills.

To the Labour Government, I say quite frankly that in relation to the economy at the moment the surplus it has in the kitty did not come from this Government. In 1996 the Rt Hon Winston Peters—whose party was in coalition with the National Government—interfered with the dollar, and that is how the rural sector has helped the Labour Government’s surplus. I say to the Government that I think the land access legislation will become a contentious issue for it, and I urge the Minister of Agriculture to look at that bill very, very carefully in the coming year. The Prostitution Reform Bill will come back to haunt the Government in this coming election. United Future also will be haunted, for allowing the Prostitution Reform Bill and the Civil Union Bill to become law in this country.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The next speech is a split speech.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance. I could be wrong on this, but my understanding of the Standing Orders is that matters containing messages are not to be displayed on the tops of desks in the House. I would ask that the matter be removed.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Yes, that will be removed, thank you.

The start of election year is a good time to reflect on the issues that most deeply interest people in our democracy. If New Zealanders relied on many media outlets and the Opposition parties, they would not realise that reliance on welfare benefits—which skyrocketed under the Rogernomics policies of the 1980s and 1990s—has stopped mushrooming, or that unemployment is at its lowest level in generations. It can only be hoped that this year’s media coverage of the election will step up a gear and focus on the real, pressing issues of deepest and most widespread interest to the voting public.

For most people, the foremost social or public issue is about winning better access to education for themselves and their children. It is about access to affordable, high-quality health-care, especially for the young and the retired. For some of our families, having the opportunity to own a home is the biggest ambition and most cherished dream they have. Pollsters tell the news media companies that those are the issues that readers and viewers care most passionately about. Those bread and butter issues of social justice are all invariably closely connected with a lot of other issues that might provide better TV pictures but in relation to which, in truth, politicians are much more likely to deliver hot air than real progress. I am talking about the law and order auction and about welfare and race relations, which are used in the same way.

We know that if we could get every single young adult into education, training, or a paid job with prospects, then welfare dependency and crime would decline even further than they already have. We know that because, under the Labour-Progressive coalition Government elected in late 1999, the number of people in employment has increased by a quarter of a million, the unemployment rate has collapsed to 3.8 percent, and the 1980s and 1990s explosion in welfare has been arrested, with many indicators now turning positive.

The Progressive Party is proud of all those steps taken for regional economic growth and for better and more effective health-care and education for all New Zealanders. But that does not mean there is not a long way to go to achieve social justice for all. For instance, we cannot ignore any longer the iniquitous and burdensome student debt that is hampering our development and blighting the lives of hundreds of thousands of students, past and present. Nor can we continue to turn a blind eye to the problem of adult illiteracy and functional illiteracy.

In a survey of adult illiteracy in New Zealand in the late 1990s, it was shown that the majority of Māori, Pacific Island people, and those from other ethnic minority groups are functioning below the level of competence in literacy required to meet effectively the demands of everyday life. Over half of New Zealand adults are operating at the level considered to be the requirement to meet the demands of everyday life. We are similar to the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom but lag behind Sweden, where close to three-quarters of the population is operating at a level at which they cope well with the demands of everyday life. Of particular concern is the high concentration of adults with very poor literacy—around one in five New Zealanders. In December 2004, a New Zealand Treasury paper found that there were five adult literacy levels, with level 1—the worst—being illiteracy or poor functional literacy. A total of 26 percent of the population were in level 1 for either prose, document, or quantitative literacy, and 15 percent were in level 1 for all domains of literacy. Out of a current population of 2.65 million people aged 16 to 65, a staggering 530,000 people have literacy skill at level 1, and 45 percent of the working-age population is at level 1 or 2. Serious attention needs to be paid to this problem, and the Progressives want to do that both in the present term of Government and following the next election.

At present a non-Governmental organisation, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, with its Greenlight video-based programme, is leading the way in overcoming illiteracy in New Zealand. It had 6,000 students last year and has 6,000 this year, but it should not and cannot bear the burden. We in Government have to make sure that as part of our programme we pay serious attention to adult illiteracy in New Zealand.

What a relief to National members it must be—to those aspirants—that Don Brash has an outing only once a year. The casualty rate otherwise would be just too high.

I think that Don Brash’s ideal portrayal of women was in the Hollywood classic, The Stepford Wives. He wants that notion of women who actually do nothing and make no waves for their leader.

I want to congratulate Lynda Scott, Georgina te Heuheu, and Katherine Rich on refusing the demeaning role that he would have them play in the National Party. While we are on congratulations, I want to congratulate that leadership aspirant, Simon Power. I am told he is the person who convinced Katherine Rich to reconsider her resignation. Well done—he will need the vote when it comes time for his leadership bid.

What a contrast we had last week between the misery and the backward-looking vision of Dr Brash and the proud, positive vision of a strong, inclusive New Zealand, outlined by our Prime Minister, Helen Clark, in her state of the nation speech. She described 5 years of achievement by this Government, working in cooperation with New Zealanders. Growth is higher than the OECD average for the past 5 years—National does not like that, but it is true—more than a quarter of a million new, real jobs have been created in just 5 years, and unemployment has come down by 44 percent from September 1999 to September 2004. [Interruption] Dr Smith can like it or not, but crime is at its lowest rate in 21 years.

I find it particularly interesting that there are 100,000 fewer New Zealanders living on benefits—a 23 percent drop. But what was Dr Brash’s greatest ambition? It was 50,000, in the same time period. National took 10 years to achieve what this Government has achieved in 5 years Frankly, I do not think that Dr Brash and National are even half as good as Labour. We fixed the demolition of apprenticeships by Bill Birch, with 7,000 new Modern Apprenticeships. Health spending has gone up by 40 percent, and education spending has gone up similarly. The Working for Families package, benefiting 300,000 families, is worth over a billion dollars.

We are looking to the future, as well. Labour is continuing to build on that programme in order to move New Zealand forward. We are lifting labour productivity, increasing participation rates in the workforce, and developing new savings initiatives. We are working with New Zealanders to build a strong, inclusive country in which all New Zealanders can participate—a country in which all New Zealanders can take part and of which they can be proud.

The choice this year, as we move into election year, is to have an inclusive, positive, proud country for all New Zealanders or the backward-looking misery of Don Brash.

That was a short and unspectacular contribution from the Speaker-aspirant. That poor member, who was led up the garden path for the best part of 5 years and led to believe that he would be the next Speaker of the House, is in for a rude shock upon your departure, Mr Speaker, because the job that that member has been looking for, for 5 years, and probably been promised for 10, has just disappeared from right in front of his grasp.

That Minister, the Hon Mark Burton, talked about 5 years of looking forward. Well, we on this side of the House would refer to it as 5 years of interference—5 years of interference from a Prime Minister who acts like a big sister in the sixth form to all New Zealanders throughout this country of ours. New Zealanders are actually quite capable of getting on with their own lives and of making informed decisions for themselves about how they wish to lead their lives. Instead, we have a sort of bossy, sixth-form head prefect who is running around New Zealand busily telling New Zealanders how they should be running their lives—in their homes, in their workplaces, and in their play times. New Zealanders are sick to death of it. They are sick to death of being told what to do by Helen Clark, the sixth former who is running around bossing this country.

I want to wish all members a happy New Year, and to say that after 6 years of sitting through six prime ministerial addresses, including this one—and a few of those have been addresses from the throne—one thing still amazes me about Helen Clark. I have to ask how a set-piece debate, with no interjections for 20 minutes, with a packed press gallery, and with five previous speeches having been delivered by the Prime Minister in the same environment, can be delivered in such an appallingly dull, uninspiring, and boring manner. One would think that after having had a crack at it six times, the Prime Minister might actually inject a bit of life, inspiration, and verve into the speech. But, no, we had the same old droned-out monotone that we have had every year at this time, when the Prime Minister thinks that she would much rather be doing other things but feels compelled to be in this House giving that boring speech. So she thinks that what she will do for the rest of New Zealand is to make it even more boring than she did last year.

This Prime Minister has decided that her idea of an inspiring speech full of soaring rhetoric is to include the word “dream” six times in one paragraph, and one believes, as she obviously does, that if she just includes the word “dream” six times in one paragraph, that will be inspiring enough. But she is a person who can take a spectacular occasion and make a very unspectacular speech—not once, but six times since I have been in this Parliament. It was hopeless, actually, and the sad attempts by Labour Party MPs over the last 13 hours of debate to try to make it less of a flop have failed dismally.

What a tired, dull lot this Labour Party has become. What a tired, wrung-out, dull lot members opposite have become. The Hon Jim Anderton has turned into a sort of guest ambassador in Parliament for the Progressives—he sort of wanders in and out at will, without making any contribution to the mechanics of government, at all. While Steve Maharey, his benchmate, who was sacked from the tertiary education portfolio for making a hash of it—[Interruption] He was sacked from the tertiary education portfolio, now his Jobs Jolt package is a shambles, his career is over, his life of blameless excellence is finished, and he is going nowhere. Whereas Annette King has already been told, very publicly: “Don’t hold your breath, Ms King, for the health portfolio, because that’s off to Pete Hodgson.” Well, what a vote of confidence in Annette King that was—to publicly let New Zealand know that dear old Annette King is about to lose her job and it will go to Pete Hodgson. Well, that will be inspiring! And does not Trevor Mallard suddenly look competent as the Minister of Education compared with the Associate Minister, David Benson-Pope, who has made a complete hash of the matter within his first 2 weeks as Minister in charge of schools. The National Certificate of Educational Achievement is in a shambles; scholarships are a farce. All that David Benson-Pope can say—a man who, the House will recall, was previously responsible for fish—is that there are no issues on the table in education. Well, that Minister is in for an uncomfortable ride.

Then there is George Hawkins, who is in a league all of his own. Because of caucus factions in the Labour Party, George Hawkins is still in a job. This side of the House is going to make Helen Clark sit through question time every day until the election and regret the day she did not bite the bullet and do what every New Zealander who worries about law and order knows she should have done—that is, sack George Hawkins when she had the opportunity. Ministers know they are in trouble in question time when Michael Cullen asks them two supplementary questions. It is the kiss of death when Michael Cullen gets up in this House in question time and asks two supplementary questions of a Minister. When that happens, the Minister is gone.

Through it all, Phil Goff sits there with his head down, wishing he had just invited another three or four people to the barbeque. Well, it is just too late. I want to know where Ruth Dyson was over the summer with regard to the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) helicopter debacle. While Anne Tolley in the East Coast collected thousands of signatures, and Nathan Guy in Ōtaki collected thousands of signatures, where were Darren Hughes and Moana Mackey? They were on holiday. Ruth Dyson was on holiday. I have news for Moana Mackey and Darren Hughes: going on holiday at that time will be the single biggest tactical mistake they will make this year. Their communities were crying out for representation on that ACC helicopter issue. I tell them they are in very serious trouble in their electorates.

One thing we do know is that if we put enough pressure on a Minister in election year, we get whatever we want. They cave in like a pack of cards. Ruth Dyson, Darren Hughes, and Moana Mackey were on holiday while National candidates were working their guts out on the ACC petititon. But where was Darren Hughes? His car was parked in the parliamentary basement, probably while he was overseas during December. Did we see Moana Mackey sticking up for the people of Gisborne? She was nowhere to be seen. Those members know it, and the people of those communities know it. I say, just look at the polls.

National will finish this year by wiping this Labour Government off the face of the earth. By the end of September Don Brash will be the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and we will be finally rid of Helen Clark’s bossy, sixth-former, older-sister interference in our lives—of which this country has had a gutsful.

“Dream on!”, I say; “Dream on!”, I say to that sour, bitter member. He is a member who is given to anger, a member who can display anger and can pretend anger, but underneath it actually is anger, as well. He said of the colleague sitting to my left, Annette King, that she had had the health portfolio taken off her. Can I just remind the House that no one has held the health portfolio for 6 years, as Annette King will have done, since Don McKay, the member for Marsden in the 1960s, a person who influenced my own childhood because I grew up in the electorate that he represented. Can I remind the member—the angry member—who has just resumed his seat that when his Government was last in power it got through five health Ministers in 9 years, and that since then it has quickened the pace and gotten through five health spokespeople in the last 5 years. Who knows where that will lead, because soon it will run out of caucus members to shift that portfolio to.

While we are at it, the member—the angry member—who resumed his seat also had a go at my colleague further along on the front bench, Steve Maharey, and said that that member had got the sack, too. Well, let us have a look at tertiary education spokespeople and former Ministers on the National Party side. The first one I can recall was Lockwood Smith, the guy who broke his promise and who, as the years went by, jumped out of windows around universities to avoid students. But then Wyatt Creech took it on and he had a different approach altogether. He never went to universities. They were politician-free zones for years during the 1990s. Then we had Max Bradford, who gave tertiary students a bit of “biffo”, and that was one of the reasons, though not the main one, that he was removed from politics altogether. The concluding speaker for National is a sour, bitter, and angry man, and so he should be.

He also mentioned that there were troubles with the rescue helicopters, and that National Party members worked their guts out. Well, let us look at the facts. The facts are that they started a petition from their beach bach, and, while they were doing that, the Government—

💬 Hon Annette King: Fixed it!

What did it do? The Government fixed it. Start a petition or fix the problem—take one’s choice. So let us not go there.

A week is a long time in politics, as they say, and certainly last Monday morning National members were looking chipper. They had come back from their holiday. They were all rested up and all energetic. They were all finished with their annus horribilis of 2004. Members know the one—the one that began so splendidly with Ōrewa I, when they bounced in the polls in a spectacular fashion. Then they thought they had better get a strategy to maintain themselves there, but they did not. They thought they should put out some more statements to make sure that the people knew where they were coming from, but they did not. So there was no policy development, no focus, and no consistent message. There was no anything really—no momentum. So that support evaporated, inexorably, and by December 2004 National was back to where it had begun. That concluded the annus horribilis of 2004.

But 2005 was going to be different. They had an opportunity—it is an election year, after all—and National said it was ready, willing, and able to go, and that it was going to take the fight to the Government. Hours later, Katherine Rich was gone. Before lunchtime she had gone. The caucus split was all over the media. Named members of the National caucus—named members—were openly expressing their regret, or their distress, or, in one case, sharp criticism. The unity had exploded. Then, over the week, the media ran endless analyses of how it had happened and what a graphic display of mismanagement by Dr Brash it was—and it is Dr Brash’s mismanagement that we have under scrutiny here.

This is not something that happens with all National leaders. One would not expect it from Bill English. One would most certainly not have expected it from Jim Bolger, who stayed on as Prime Minister of this land for 8 years. He got rid of his Minister of Finance after 3 years but it was not a bloodletting; it was just a mere by-election and there were no problems. Dr Brash cannot do that. Dr Brash has no ability to do that. This man, actually, has limited ability to do anything. He cannot, for example, win elections. He tried 20 years ago, and he lost a blue-ribbon seat on the North Shore twice. Even his own election by his caucus, which was done by a majority vote—thin as it was—was won by accident. How do we know? Because of the celebrations the night before by Bill English and company, and because of the behaviour of Dr Nick Smith in the days that followed. That election was won by accident. We all know how that happened. It is now a matter of unwritten history.

So winning elections is not exactly a forte of the current Leader of the Opposition. He does not have a strong history; actually, he has no history. But it does not matter; maybe this guy’s skills lie elsewhere. Maybe he has certainty of policy. Maybe he is good at holding the line. Maybe he is good at staking out an agenda. Let us have a look.

The most serious and systemic error of Dr Brash has been his failure to contest the middle ground. He does not know how to contest the middle ground. Middle New Zealand votes Labour, which is why Labour remains ahead. Instead, Dr Brash has not contested the middle ground. Instead, he has looked to the right, where he is himself most comfortable, and in doing so he has taken his party from centre-right to right. He has managed to exclude, one assumes, ACT from Parliament altogether come the next election, therefore losing his coalition partner—a careless thing to do—and he has taken his own party from the centre of politics out to the fringes.

But, wait, there is more. Even if he has never won an election, and even if he has taken his party out of the centre and off to the perimeter of politics, might Dr Brash none the less be able to articulate a clear message and stick to it, so as to provide the attraction of certainty—a man who knows what he wants even if one does not agree with what he wants? Well, no. No, he does not offer any assistance there, either. This is the man who ran both for and against the so-called “Cullen fund”. He is for, and against, civil unions. He is for, and against, tax cuts for rich people. He is for, and against, 4 weeks’ leave. He is for, and against, a change in major nuclear policy. It is a case of “gone by lunchtime” stateside, but never say a word back here.

Then, last Sunday, in the latest instance of personal and political uncertainty, Dr Brash, a self-described agnostic, came on the television and breathlessly advised the nation that it was time for him to come forward and confess the Treaty of Waitangi sins of the past. To whom this agnostic might confess is unclear, but when he said it on the 6 p.m. news on Sunday night an apolitical friend of mine spluttered her disgust at his duplicity and left the room. So the alienation continues, and so do the mixed messages. All last week, Dr Brash was saying that Tame Iti is a bad guy, but come the weekend he sits next to him. He cannot win elections, he cannot position his policy, he cannot give a firm direction, he cannot stop flip-flopping, he gives out mixed messages, and he cannot get on with women.

Losing one woman after Ōrewa was careless; losing two in 2 years is a pattern. Not only did he lose Katherine Rich; he dumped her. As the story started to break early last week, I assumed—because one likes to think ahead—that he would swap the health and social welfare portfolios, leave her in position, and say openly that there had been some disagreement but that that was the best way to handle it. He did not do that. He dumped her. He changed her from the front bench to some other position. He set out to humiliate her, and that is a fairly interesting thing to do. He could have used the risk minimisation strategy I just outlined, but he did not follow it. He turned the spotlight on himself, it stayed there all week, and it will stay there for longer than that.

Dr Brash will lose the next election and then, aged 65, will leave Parliament, to be forgotten except for his actions in the 1990s, when he squeezed the life out of the New Zealand economy.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The time for this debate has concluded. The first question is that Mr Peter Brown’s amendment to the amendment be agreed to.