General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. It is my very great pleasure, as a member from the Wellington region, to take the lead in this debate today. I want to say how interesting it is that when John Key sees a Bill English supporter as a possible candidate to run Marian Hobbs close at the election, John Key does his best to undermine his campaign. That is what John Key has done. He knows that Blumsky is on Bill English’s side, and that is why he has very deliberately undermined his campaign. That is what happens when Tories scrap; that is one of their approaches. But it is interesting that so far before the election—due in September—the various alternative leaders after Dr Brash ceases to be the leader are already jostling for position and sticking their knives into people who are not even in this House, before they have a chance to get here. That is what John Key does.

It is particularly interesting that that member has not named which schools the teachers will be going from. We have 2,700 extra teachers over and above the roll growth, and he will not say which schools the teachers will come from. He will not say which of the hospitals he will close as he gets rid of the 3,300 extra nurses. That is the number of extra nurses. There is a new hospital in Helensville. Will he take the nurses out of that hospital?

💬 John Key: No.

Oh, so he will not. He will pick on Mr Brownlee’s electorate. He has promised to slash the numbers in the State sector, and that—[Interruption] Maybe what John Key will do is to take out some of the 950 extra doctors who are now in the system, and not use them.

💬 John Key: No.

He will not take out any of the 900 doctors. Well, what about the prison officers? Will he slash the number of prison officers? He will slash the prison officers and let the criminals roam free. That is the approach of John Key.

Maybe John Key will take out some of the 400 new Child, Youth, and Family Services social workers who have come in during the time of this Government. There has been more than a 50 percent increase in the number of social workers. They are public servants. John Key is quiet now. I tell members that he will not deny the cuts for the social workers—that is John Key. What about the police? There are 1,080 extra police staff. Will he knock them out of Wellington Central? Is that not an interesting approach? We have Tony Ryall on the one hand saying Wellington needs to have more police, and John Key on the other saying National will cut their numbers. What an approach! But we know, of course, that Tony Ryall is on Bill English’s side, and that is why John Key says that—and it is confirmed with a nod and a wink from Gerry Brownlee on this occasion.

There are some interesting facts that need to be said. National says that we have a bloated public service. But after the cuts of the “mother of all Budgets” of 1994, when Ruth Richardson had done her worst—[Interruption] John Key knows when he is in trouble, does he not? He gets noisier and noisier. In 1994 we had a lot more public servants than we have now, after Ruth Richardson had done her worst. What has happened in recent years? The public service has grown at about the same rate as the growth in jobs in the rest of the economy.

Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith: About the same.

Well, at about the same rate. People are getting more and more jobs. Actually more people are paying tax, so we do need to have some more people at the Inland Revenue Department. We have more students and therefore we have more student loans, so we need to have some more people at Work and Income in order to do the processing for that.

Is National’s leader to be John Key or is it Bill English? That is the question.

Let me start by making this point very plain: I make no personal allegations against the Prime Minister, Helen Clark. I have read and re-read, like most members in this House, John Tamihere’s interview, and I do not think that he actually makes allegations against Helen Clark. But what he says is something that is very serious, and it is something that New Zealanders need to know. It is this: that Helen Clark has surrounded herself with homosexuals with a homosexual agenda. That is what John Tamihere has said. He has said that Helen Clark’s advisers and key people are not representative of New Zealand. In fact, John Tamihere goes on to say that they would not know what being a father was like. They would not know what it was like to go to sports. That is the point that John Tamihere has made. I do not think that John Tamihere has a problem with diversity; I think the issue is the uni-dimensional approach that Helen Clark, her advisers, and her Cabinet have taken.

It is all very well for Helen Clark to stand up and say the interview is drivel. It is all very well for Helen Clark to stand up and say that John Tamihere had had too much to drink. It is all very well for Helen Clark to stand up and say that he was stressed. I notice that the gallery and the media say that they go with John Tamihere’s motivations. But what needs to be dealt with here are the facts of what John Tamihere is telling us about this Government. That is what is interesting about the article—not John Tamihere’s motivations and not Helen Clark’s spin, but what John Tamihere was saying. I note that the New Zealand Herald states that John Tamihere has been honest. I think that is the problem that Helen Clark and this Government are dealing with. John Tamihere has been honest about the fact that there is a very narrow lesbian cabal advising the Prime Minister, that there is an overwhelming dominance of the union movement in this Government, and that if one steps out of line one gets punished with close to fisticuffs. That is what John Tamihere said. We can see that, because even the great, brave John Tamihere is going to be brought back here, whipped like a dog, to give a “girlie-man” apology. That is what we are going to see from John Tamihere.

But the issue is this: this is supposed to be a House of Representatives. It is important that we represent all New Zealanders. Whether they are lesbians, gays, brown, black, or yellow, that is important. But it is wrong for a Government to represent just a very narrow segment of society and to run that agenda. That is the claim that John Tamihere is making against Helen Clark and this Government, and that claim is not being responded to. That is the problem that the Government fronts. I ask this: when did Helen Clark last take a child to sports—to practice, or to a game?

💬 Hon Annette King: When did you last take your wife?

Well, I did that last Saturday, and the Saturday before then. I tell Annette King that that is what I did and that John Tamihere makes a point, because this Government does not know what it is to be a hard-working family with other concerns. What is the phrase that John Tamihere used? I tell Annette King that the Government has nothing to do but to plot, plan, trick, and cheat the United Future party on my left. The United Future members are good Christian people who do not even realise that they are being cheated and tricked. But we know that Michael Cullen brags about it. He brags about it to John Tamihere, and when John Tamihere raises it we have to accept his word, do we not? He is an honourable member.

No one from the Government has stood up and given a personal explanation that what John Tamihere said was false. No Minister has made a ministerial statement, and the Prime Minister has not made a statement to this House that it was false. We have seen deep into the dark side of Helen Clark and this Government from the one person who would know: John Tamihere, who has been in Government for 5 years, and sitting around the Cabinet table for 2 years. He knows, he had told us, and the New Zealand Herald is right. It is an honest account.

Tempted as I am to deal with the diversions that we have seen for most of the afternoon, I want to talk in the time available to me about an issue that affects the lives of a large number of New Zealanders—that is, the way in which Pharmac administers pharmaceutical policy in this country.

As I speak in the House this afternoon, 100,000 New Zealand diabetics are suffering from their illness, yet under Pharmac’s policy only 3,000 of those 100,000 have access to the medications they need. The New Zealanders who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease get no assistance in the way of Pharmac funding for medications that deal with their condition, nor do those with Parkinson’s disease receive some of the new medicines being developed. The dopamine agonists are not funded, nor is the latest catechol-0-methyl transferase inhibitor, Contan. Adult patients with rheumatoid arthritis are not being funded for their medication. In fact, some of them are paying $500 a week privately at a time when Treasury tells us that the average wage is $554 a week. Only 210 out of 3,500 relapsing and remitting multiple sclerosis sufferers have subsidised access to Betaferon. The rest either suffer in agony or pay privately. The Government and others have made a huge—and proper—cry about the need for better detection of breast cancer and better treatment for breast cancer sufferers. In fact, at the moment only those with advanced breast cancer get subsidised medicines out of Pharmac.

This is a crisis. The reality we have in this country is that New Zealanders have less access to new medicines than people living in every other country apart from either Portugal or Japan. We are a small market economy of just 4 million people, and we are not an attractive market, anyway, for pharmaceutical investment. Yet we see the absence of a coherent medicines policy, which is leaving New Zealanders exposed and suffering.

In this House a few weeks ago a lot of concern was expressed about the failure of the flu vaccine supply policy this year, but in actual fact we now discover that that is just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Last year alone, sole supply problems occurred with Allohexal, Ativan, Ferrograd Folic, and Ponstan. The year before there were a whole series of other conditions. Going back even further, we find that other conditions have not been funded.

Now, Pharmac has the gall to say that last year it funded 15 new medicines. On investigation, it can be discovered that 10 of them were medicines, and five of them were actually special foods. But New Zealanders after New Zealanders are suffering because of the way in which successive Governments have applied that policy. I know of small groups of people in this country who suffer unusual conditions and who need assistance, often at a costly price, that they cannot get from Pharmac.

When the issue of a national medicines policy has been raised, the Minister, as she acknowledged in the House this afternoon, has ruled it out. Allegedly, according to the Ministry of Health, it would cost around $60 million to implement. There is now a position where there is no confidence in our drug-buying agency—a position where most New Zealanders feel that Pharmac’s primary function, rather than negotiating the best price for pharmaceuticals, is now making clinical judgments about what pharmaceuticals are appropriate for particular conditions.

Every member will know of the cases that come before them, on a frequent basis, of individuals who say: “I have been told I need this for my particular condition, but all I can get a prescription for is some generic set of alternatives.” It has gone too far. We face a situation where we need a coherent strategy that brings the pharmaceutical equation into our overall approach to medicine. What we have had for too long has been an approach that has seen pharmaceuticals as somehow either an attractive added extra that we cannot afford, or the product of some vast set of multinational conglomerates with agendas that are other than beneficial to the people of New Zealand.

The net consequence of that attitude, and of a chronic underfunding of Pharmac to do its work, is the crisis situation we now face. So we can talk about other diversions in this House, if we like, but those realities will remain.

Anyone observing the House this afternoon would have been struck by the absolute mess that the House had got itself into for the simple reason that the Prime Minister does not want to acknowledge that what John Tamihere said in the Investigate article is true. The Prime Minister wants to pretend that somehow Mr Tamihere is the one who is different, not her close cabal of advisers.

For years National MPs have been saying things about Labour Ministers, the inside workings of the Labour Party, and the advice stream on the ninth floor along the lines of what Mr Tamihere said in Investigate magazine. Those things have not been picked up on because we are in Opposition, and they are what anybody would expect to hear from an Opposition. But that man is on the inside. That man has said that it looks rosy on the outside, but it is not rosy on the inside. Because he is saying what is actually happening, and because he has exposed the truth of how the Labour Party reaches its decisions and of how the Prime Minister decides what she will or will not support, it has a greater resonance.

Not one member of the Labour Government should be comforted by the way in which the editorials, the talkbacks, the smoko rooms, and the households of this country have embraced with some relief the fact that someone has finally told them what is really going on inside the Labour Party. As for the great support that the Prime Minister claims for her party, the editorials are right, too—it is a thin veneer of support because the Government likes to tell people what they should think. New Zealanders are good people. They are prepared to give people the benefit of the doubt, but they will not be happy to finally learn what drives this current Government, what motivates Helen Clark, and what sort of disciplined structure operates inside the environment of the caucus and Cabinet.

Mr Dunne, who has just resumed his seat, must be one of the duped whom Mr Tamihere talked about when he spoke of the deception that Michael Cullen puts across minor parties in this House. Mr Dunne stood here today and said that the Government does not fund some 97,000 diabetics appropriately, but, at the same time, he chooses to support the Government when it chooses to fund sex-change operations in our public hospitals, instead. The United Future Party might want to say that the John Tamihere issue is of no great moment. But it, of course, was the sensible party that wanted New Zealanders to hear things the way that they really are.

I ask just how safe Helen Clark is today as leader of the Labour Government—and Labour members will be up now, one after the other, to endorse her. Mr Tamihere has told her that he has solid support from 10 members and support from 15 others on any given day. Half of the Labour caucus has the jury out on the Prime Minister. She has seized upon this opportunity to try to put in the wedge to cement her position. But no matter what sort of an apology Mr Tamihere might like to put out there, we know that he will not deny the truth of what he has told Investigate magazine. He will not deny that the Prime Minister has a problem with the support systems in her office, he will not deny that Mr Cullen regularly puts it across supporting parties, and he will not deny that the Labour Party is overly dominated by union influences and the gay lobby—and that they are all pandering to Māori interests in this country.

That is not where mainstream New Zealanders are. I make one response to Mr Hide’s speech: he is right. Helen Clark has no idea of what it is like to work out whether the mortgage can be paid at the end of the month, whether school uniforms can be afforded, or whether new shoes can be bought for the kids when they go into their winter sport—or what it is like to stand on the sideline on a cold Saturday morning at sports. But Mr Hide should mark my words; there will be photographs of the Prime Minister doing exactly that. They will be put out there from the ninth floor spin machine within a week. That is the way Labour members operate—duplicitously.

I am pleased to rise to speak after Gerry Brownlee—for those who are listening to their radio at home, he was the previous speaker. He is one of the four or five people who, obviously, are about to contest the leadership of the National Party, given how badly Mr Don Brash has been doing.

Members on this side of the House have just come back from their congress, which occurs prior to each election campaign. It was a fantastic occasion. People turned up in large numbers, enjoyed 2 days together, worked through, and prepared for another win by a Labour-led Government in the election later this year.

I know that on the other side of the Chamber disappointed people like Maurice Williamson, who has been on the back bench for so long that he does not know what it is like to be on the front bench any more, reduced from the once-great man he was, are just barracking from the back benches—the nine-penny seats. I know that he would love to be back there, but he knows that he has another 3 years to go.

I shall tell members why. One of the major divides between the Government and the National Party and its supporters is the issue of public services. We have seen over the years a divide from the National Party, which has routinely cut public services whenever it has had the chance. I know that from my own experience of becoming the Minister in charge of child, youth, and family issues, and finding that the National Party had paid for social workers only up until the time of a change of Government. The day I became the Minister, people from Child, Youth and Family Services said that I had a choice that day, because the money had just run out, of firing 61 social workers, because the National Party had not provided any money for them. That is the nature of the National Party when it comes to public services. We on this side of the House have reversed those cuts, increased public services, and ensured that we are in a position whereby we are able to provide good quality public services for New Zealanders.

John Key, the other pretender to the throne, who is waiting to move on the leadership issue, has today let out from his Pandora’s box the return of the National Party’s same old “cut public services” agenda. John Key tells us that he will get the money for his tax cuts by cutting the numbers of public servants. He has not told us that the money for tax cuts will come from Child, Youth and Family Services social workers; he has not told us it will come from teachers, doctors, or nurses. He tries to pretend that he will get the money from the core public service—the “bloated public service”, he said.

I will take one example of what he means. He said that he wants to take money from an organisation like the Tertiary Education Commission, because it has spent about $200 million since it was set up. I tell Maurice Williamson and other National members what that actually means. That money pays for Modern Apprenticeships. The National Party has already said that it will cut Modern Apprenticeships—it does not like that programme. The money will come from the Gateway programme. The Gateway programme is hugely successful in all schools that are decile 6 and lower. We know that the National Party will cut it, because it repealed the apprenticeship legislation in 1992. The Tertiary Education Commission provides for major programmes like training opportunities and youth training. It employs all the coordinators for the Modern Apprenticeships programme out of that money. In other words, it employs people who are doing concrete jobs that we now know the National Party will cut from its programme. John Key is saying that the National Party will have to get that money by cutting it from organisations that deliver core programmes like Modern Apprenticeships. That is where the money will come from.

I guess we have to applaud John Key for his honesty, because we do not hear much from anybody else in the National Party about the kinds of cuts that would have to take place to get money for the tax cuts. John Key is doing exactly that for the reason raised earlier by my colleague—that John Key is in the other camp from the National Party candidate who is running in the Wellington Central electorate. He wants to make sure that he does not make his move into Cabinet in the way that is planned by Mr Blumsky.

So we know what John Key’s plan is, but overall what we now have, going into this election year with a National Party that is desperately trying to find issues, is a clear divide. The National Party will cut public services to pay for its tax cuts. The Labour-led Government will commit itself to quality public services for all New Zealanders so that they can get good education and good health. We know that the public want it, because 52 percent have already said they want exactly that.

It was very kind of Minister Maharey to prove once and for all for anyone listening that John Tamihere was right. I must say it is awfully nice when he hands us a freebie like that and admits that we will be the ones forming Cabinet after the next election, not his lot.

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: A motley crew!

Yes, an absolute motley crew.

On a more serious note, what we heard from Mr Maharey—we know it is all smarmy and of no substance—is in fact what this Government is doing to the people of New Zealand. John Tamihere was right on a lot of points. One of the points he made that was absolutely right was that this Labour Government spends so much time pandering to a couple of its special interest groups—the unions, gays, and Māori rights people—that it completely ignores the very people who pay for all the services that the Government gets to hand out. Those people are the taxpayers of this country—the middle New Zealanders. For the benefit of those members over there, who would not know an ordinary middle New Zealand person if they fell over him or her, I point out that those middle New Zealanders are the people who pay their taxes, go to work, raise their own children, look after their kids, and put their kids first.

John Tamihere said that Helen Clark and her very, very staunchly feminist cabal would not know about taking the kids to sport on Saturday. We need look no further than the Families Commission, which was, of course, brought about by United Future’s deal with Labour. United Future was duped into signing up to it—and to a definition of family that meant whatever one happens to think it might be. It could be a gang, one’s mates, or whatever. The Family Commission is having a big opening in Auckland for one of its big projects, and it is having it on Saturday morning when ordinary New Zealanders take their kids to sport. That is what families do.

What did Mr Tamihere say about this Government? He said: “I tell you what, if I was on the other side mate I’d have cut the”—and he used a bad word—“Labour Party to pieces over moral issues. There’s a huge pendulum swing against what my leadership stands for.” That is what he said about Helen Clark, and that is what he said about the Labour Party. The reason he said that is because, as Mr John Carter said—and he is absolutely right—it is true. The Labour Party despises the very people who vote for it. If we need any confirmation of that, let us hear some of the words of the honourable Minister Ruth Dyson. She talked in the House, back in September 2002, about women going out to work and doing jobs like cleaning or, what she called, “degrading low-paid work” and “low-end, dead jobs”. I said then, and I will say it again, to that Minister, to that party, and to the people who have never done a 3 o’clock shift in the morning with little babies who cannot sleep, that the people who do that sort of work are not low-grade people and they do not do low-grade work. They are people who earn their right to vote in this country, and they earn their right to be taken seriously.

The Labour Government has Ministers like David Benson-Pope, who would not know a hard day’s work if he fell over it. If Labour members actually took these ordinary people seriously, they would stop pandering to the little special-interest groups that they think they have to win over. That is all Labour thinks about. It does not care about the people working in the factories. It does not care about the people who actually do the work. The only thing the Government cares about is sucking people into the unions and sucking them into thinking they have to vote Labour. Well, they do not have to vote for Labour. Help is on the way, and it is in the form of the National Party, and they should be really pleased. The reason for that is that we value work and we value the people who actually do it.

💬 Darren Hughes: We want this woman on the television right through the campaign!

We do not value people like Mr Hughes, who spent all of yesterday looking like Santa would not come this year and looking like he had been crying all day into his little teacup. That is what we do not value.

The member who has just resumed her seat is the only person in this House who can fake sincerity with such conviction and at such top decibels. “Congratulations!” is what I say to that member. I have always enjoyed the writings of Karl du Fresne. He is a highly respected and long-time commentator here in Wellington. I read something he wrote recently. He stated: “Ever since the Muldoon era, with its disastrous ad hockery, National has followed a policy of pure, naked expediency.” I could not agree more with him.

I have to tell the House about the latest piece of pure, naked expediency: the announcement of the new Opposition spokesperson on finance, Mr John Key, that a National Government would reduce the size of the civil service. John Key thinks that if he reduces the size of the civil service he will be able to fund the tax cuts for his mates. He thinks that is a winner. He thinks that New Zealanders do not like civil servants. John Key thinks that if he mounts an attack on civil servants he will be able to get the old talkback lines going, as people all whinge and moan about the fatted, bloated bureaucracy around New Zealand. He thinks he may even gain a percentage point in the polls if he attacks civil servants. John Key is even prepared to sacrifice Mark Blumsky, who lives in the city of civil servants, if he thinks he can get another vote. Of course, National Party members often sacrifice their candidate in Wellington Central. Every time there is an election they say that it is time to sacrifice their Wellington Central candidate, and he or she is gone. So Mark should look out, because he will be gone.

However, the mistake that John Key has made is that he would not know a civil servant if he fell over one. A civil servant in New Zealand is also a doctor or a nurse, but John Key will not tell New Zealanders which doctors and nurses he will sack. I want to know today from the next speaker from the National Party which doctors and nurses are for the chop. We want to know which ones are to be sent down the road, which ones will be cut out of the system, and which ones will be stitched up by the National Party. I believe National will stitch up a lot of them. If we look back at how many doctors and nurses we had when we came into Government, and then look to see how many we have today, then I have to own up. I put my hand up, because there has been a huge increase in civil servants in the health system. There has been a 22.6 percent increase in the number of doctors in the health system. I am sorry; I own up. There has been an increase of almost 20 percent in the number of nurses. I am sorry; I am responsible. I take the blame for that. We now have more doctors and nurses in the health system. That, for people in the National Party, is terrible. Of course, if there are more doctors and nurses, then they can probably help more people. But when one wants to give one’s mates tax cuts, so that they can have another few bob in their pockets, then the number of doctors and nurses has to be cut. But then those mates cannot get the health services they need.

I want to know which doctors and nurses will go. Will it be Plunket nurses? Will they be the first to go? We have increased the funding to Plunket dramatically over the last 5 years, but I think that mums and babies will feel the effects if the number of civil servants is cut. Plunket nurses will be cut. They will go—that is true. Now let us look at the district health nurses, who do their nursing in people’s homes. They keep people in their homes, rather than their being in hospital. The numbers of those nurses will have to be cut if the civil service is to be cut. What about the public health nurses? They are the ones who give children their immunisations against preventable diseases and keep them out of hospital. Well, they will go; they will be chopped. If the civil service is cut, those people will go. Let us look at the doctors. Which doctors are for the chop? Which specialists will we not have? Will it be the ophthalmologists? Do they have to go? They are the ones who do cataract operations. I suppose if one is to reduce the bloated civil service by making cuts in the health system, then ophthalmologists are for the chop. What about the orthopaedic surgeons, who do hip replacements? They will have to go.

Let us have it put on the table what will be cut under National.

I know of at least one doctor and one nurse who will be cut after the next election: Dr Cullen and nurse Annette King. But I want to start today with a quote. The quote goes like this: “Like Theodore Roosevelt’s Gladiator in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly to spend themselves in a worthy cause and who at best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievements and who, at worst, if they fail, at least fail while daring greatly so that their place shall never be with the more cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

I wonder why I would start a speech with a quote like that. Who said that?

💬 John Carter: Who did?

It was said by John Tamihere to the Waitakere Rotary Club on 19 January this year. So the Investigate magazine interview can have come as no surprise to the Labour Party, because John Tamihere signalled his intention to go on the attack rather than to be with the cold and lifeless souls he was amongst. I think the man Teddy Roosevelt was speaking about is the kind of guy John Tamihere absolutely sees himself as being: a gladiator in the arena of life, the risk taker, the warrior, the one willing to go all out and put it all on the line in pursuit of his dream. That is what John Tamihere said, the man who takes control of his destiny, antes up, and puts it all on the table—well, actually, all into the tape deck on the table—knowing that it is better to dare greatly and fail than to play it safe.

I want to go into a few things that John Tamihere said. One could get into some of the personal abuse of some of the Government members, but I am not sure that that is actually very productive. My kids now think that “smarmy Maharey” is a character out of a Hairy McClary book, and they did not know what “smarmy Maharey” meant when I tried to explain it. So we got out the dictionary, and found out what “smarmy” means. Members should listen to this: it means sycophantic, oily, slimy, grovelling, creepy, and unctuous—and those are probably just Mr Maharey’s good points. That is what a member of the same caucus as Mr Maharey said about him. As for John Tamihere calling Chris Carter a “queer tosser”, again my kids could not work that out. My boy thought a tosser was a Scotsman who chucked big cabers. So he thought a queer tosser would be a Scotsman who tossed the caber behind himself. They could not work out what a queer tosser was.

John Tamihere said that Mark Gosche was sent here to Parliament by the union movement but was a total disappointment—well, we agree with that—so now Labour was bringing in the big guns, in the form of Maryan Street. I have to say that she actually gets the trifecta when it comes to John Tamihere’s score card: she is a woman, she is a lesbian, and she was the Labour Party president. But I tell John Tamihere that Maryan Street also gets a bonus ball. She gets an extra ball because she was the head of the trade union study centre at Auckland University—she gets more than the trifecta. John Tamihere takes David Cunliffe to pieces. He says David Cunliffe screwed up the mods. I do not know who the rockers are. I know some of the Labour members are off their rocker, but I do not know who the rockers are. But John Tamihere said David Cunliffe screwed up the mods through his naked ambition. That is what John Tamihere said about a member of the same caucus as himself. Then he said Dr Cullen can deal with a piece of legislation, as we all know, and he can dupe other members by changing a word. I want the people in this House to start to identify themselves. Are they “dupor” or “dupee”? They should get into lines, one to the left and one to the right—“dupors” to the right, and “dupees” to the left. “Dupees”, in case United Future does not know this, are those who were done over.

When it comes to one of John Tamihere’s key targets, I admit to this House that even I am too timid to use her name. It is that other “H” person in charge on the ninth floor. I find it hard to say this: I will not use her name because she puts shivers up my spine. I will call her “H2”—a very good reference point for the cold and timid souls that John Tamihere was talking about. He said that “H2”—that is all I will call her—is dangerous. She is a very dangerous woman, and I want New Zealanders to know she is running the country.

So the issue comes down to this. Let us listen to what the New Zealand Herald states about John Tamihere: “But he has been honest, too…. If his observations did not ring true, his colleagues would be laughing them off.”—and they are doing anything but laughing them off. Here are the options we now need to face. If what John Tamihere has been saying is the truth, then he simply cannot stay with that lot. Again, the New Zealand Herald editorial states: “… Mr Tamihere ought to leave Labour now with his pride intact and go to the election as the individual he is.” If Mr Tamihere is telling the truth that is the one option—he should go. If he is not, then the Labour Party should throw him out.

I want to begin today by talking about one of the many reasons that the young people in our school sector succeed as well as they do. A key element of that success is the fact that, once again in this country, behind New Zealand schools we have a strong, professional, and competent public service.

We have that because we need it to support the 765,000 students whom we are educating, and educating successfully, every day. Those students are diverse in their backgrounds and in their needs: they range in age from 5 to 18 years; 60 percent of them are Pākehā; 20 percent are Māori; 4 percent are Samoan; 2.5 percent are Chinese; and there are similar proportions of those of Indian descent—to name just some of the larger groups. In addition, the education professionals within the ministry safeguard the interests of some 2,700 students attending State special schools, and 28,500 students studying at a distance through the Correspondence School. It is this group of educationalists who provide ongoing professional development to the 44,000 teachers who are committed to the learning needs of our young people. Of course, all of this does not take place in a vacuum, and I do not mean the vacuum that Dr Brash uses on his garage floor. Those people, in 2,650 schools from Te Hāpua in the north to Half Moon Bay on Stewart Island, are doing a fantastic job for the future of our young people.

Now is the time for the members on the National benches, and John Key in particular, to front up and tell us which of those schools National is planning to close. How many of those teachers will John Key cut adrift? Which students in this country will miss out on the world-class opportunities our schools deliver, because National wants to take the great leap back to the bad old days when the only answer was to slash and burn the State sector? It has taken 5½ years, under a Labour-Progressive Government, to build up the schooling sector and the strong public services this country needs, after a decade of neglect. It was a decade in which National’s free-market, “cut the bureaucracy” mantra ruled. The ultimate price was, of course, the price paid by the generation of Kiwis who were told, under the National Party’s voodoo economics, that the State and that party’s philosophy, and looking after its mates, were more important than the learning outcomes of our students. Well, I think that was shameful. It is more shameful that National wants to repeat that folly all over again. We knew that it was a party without an emperor, but even the new suit of clothes is turning out to be just well-worn flannel pyjamas. The policy is not just threadbare; it is full of holes.

In the school sector there is a strong and competent public service that now delivers professional development to teachers and principals, after National left that to the free market. The result of that, lo and behold, is that schools are reprioritising funding meant for that purpose towards educational purposes. We now know how little professional development ever took place under National. Contributing to the professional development of staff across the education sector is a key focus for this Government. We will spend over $67 million this year alone on helping teachers and principals further improve their skills and knowledge. That is a 125 percent increase in funding since 1999. We are not so near-sighted as to disregard the need to invest in the teaching professionals who are the key people in our classrooms.

But I am delighted, and New Zealanders should be delighted, that National members have finally let the cat out of the bag. They have finally let their dirty little secret out for the public to see. The National Party wants to take New Zealand back to those dark, divisive days in which it chose to run our schools, our hospitals, and our other important public services into the ground. I am glad to know that average New Zealanders will not have a bar of that. We saw that in the New Zealand Herald poll yesterday. New Zealanders do not want to go back there. They came through that nonsense last time, and they know there is a better way. That way is about valuing people. It is about building strong and competent public services that benefit all New Zealanders, not just the National Party and its elite mates.

We have addressed the teacher supply crisis in our schools left by National from the last time it thought it had a good idea. Since 2000 more than 2,700 extra full-time teaching positions have been created, over and above those needed for roll growth.

I must admit that New Zealand First members have taken a great deal of joy from looking at recent events as they have unfolded between the National Party and the Labour Party. In fact, we have been laughing so much that it has held up our policy releases. So we will have to ask the Labour Party when it intends to call the next election.

One thing that concerned me as I read through the John Tamihere exposé was the words he applied to some of his colleagues. The particular word that I could not get my head around was “tosser”. I am intrigued by my National colleague and previous speaker Maurice Williamson, because I thought that coming from the National Party he would know what a tosser is. Evidently he does not. He had to go to the dictionary. For my part, I had to go to our researchers. I asked them: “What is this word that John Tamihere is applying to his colleague Chris Carter?”.

💬 Simon Power: What did they say?

R DOUG WOOLERTON: They told me what a tosser is. They had some other words for it, which I do not want to repeat. Quite frankly, I was shocked, and I said: “This cannot be.” I cannot imagine for one minute a person who has been a Cabinet Minister in Her Majesty’s Government saying these sorts of things about his colleague. Yet evidently that is what he did.

💬 Rodney Hide: But is it true?

R DOUG WOOLERTON: It could well be true. I do not know whether it is true, but that is what he did. He went on to describe other members of the organisation as “butch”. He talked about the Labour Party through the 1993 election, which was a wee while ago—I want to know when the next election will be, rather than what happened back in 1993—and cast aspersions on most of his colleagues, which, after we got over the laughter, we decided was very, very sad.

What we are seeing now, as we lead up to the election, is a battle between National and Labour. It is not a battle of wits or of ideology; it is a battle for power. This is purely and simply a fight for power—one to hold on to it, and one to gain it. I am sad that this is what the forthcoming election is turning into. I hope that the people of New Zealand are watching this battle very, very carefully, because there are alternatives. New Zealand First is the alternative that people need to look to, as we go through this battle.

Serious things are happening in this economy and this country—things that New Zealand First has predicted for many years would happen. They are coming to fruition now. It saddens us that we are seeing these two old parties bereft of ideas and just slagging each other. In fact, they are not even just slagging each other, they are slagging themselves and fighting amongst themselves. One party is riven from within. It has at least three leaders whom we know of. The other party is riven between the boys and the girls, as we see it. We do not think that is what an election should be about.

New Zealand First puts out a challenge to both the Labour Party and the National Party to give us some ideas. What are they going to do about the $9 billion deficit? What are they going to do about immigration? What are they going to do to get the productive sector of this country going? What are they going to do about these things? Mr Hide, who is trying to interject, would not know. We do not have to ask these people what is happening for our sake; we are asking on behalf of New Zealand. New Zealand First will be out there, not only highlighting the problems but also providing the solutions that we hope to take to this country. We are very, very confident that New Zealanders will say: “Yes, New Zealand First is the party we want to take us into the future.”

This Labour-led Government has a proven track record for promoting opportunity, not privilege; for inclusion, not marginalisation; and for long-term and sustained progress and security, not fear, in old age and in times of adversity. The Opposition offers nothing more than a return to the failed policies of the past—deregulation, privatisation, and cutting back on Government and public services.

How can people forget the impact of the 1990s on this country? I have heard members opposite talk about the need to support families. Ruth Richardson called National’s flagship Budget the “mother of all Budgets”. What an insult to every mother in the country that Budget was! It was the Budget, let me remind people, that slashed benefits and saw the minimum wage frozen year after year. It was the Budget that allowed for the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act, which destroyed minimum conditions of employment from one end of the country to the other. It was the Budget that saw the apprenticeship system handed over to industry, because industry could “do it oh so much better than Government.”, and it was the Budget that allowed the competitive market model to come into the health and education systems.

Do members remember Crown health enterprises competing with each other for diminishing health dollars? The creeping privatisation in both health and education was the legacy of the 1990s. Accident compensation was turned into a “pay as you go” scheme a matter of a few short years before it would have been fully funded. Lump-sum compensation was ripped out of the scheme in 1992, and then the employers account was privatised, paving the way for the full privatisation of a scheme that is the envy of the world. Market rents for State houses were imposed on people who could not earn a market income. National sold 13,000 State houses. The floor below which superannuation could not fall was knocked back under a National Government. That was an effective cut to the pension, of several dollars a week; and it was growing every year.

Not one Auckland road opened under a National Government. It cut spending on public transport. It sold rail and allowed the infrastructure of this country to be run down. Look what National did to the electricity system, for goodness’ sake! It left it in an absolute mess. That was Max Bradford’s legacy to New Zealand. National amalgamated traffic with police to deliver the extra police that John Banks had promised. Smoke and mirrors was National’s way of dealing with those promises. More cuts were on the way before we took office.

Why would anyone want to turn to a party that in April of an election year has not produced a single policy other than to promise tax cuts? That means reduced expenditure, without saying where it will come from, other than the public sector. We should make it clear and put it on the record that this means that National is promising fewer doctors, fewer nurses, fewer teachers, and fewer police. National is promising fewer social workers for Child, Youth and Family Services; fewer Department of Corrections staff, despite an increasing prison population; and fewer probation officers and Customs Service officers. If nurses think they would be able to hold on to their multi-employer collative agreement after a National Government takes office, I say: “Dream on!”, because it will not happen. Those Opposition members have been sitting on select committees saying they wished they had destroyed the multi-employer collective agreement of the teachers. The nurses’ agreement will be gone, as well. The only way those public servants will be able to maintain increases in their wages and conditions of employment is through their multi-employer collective agreements. This Government supports those agreements. National is opposed to them.

If National is saying it will cut back on public servants, what else does that mean? It means it will sell more assets. There will be more asset sales under National. What will it mean? It will mean: New Zealand Post—gone; electricity and the rest of it—gone; Accident Compensation Corporation—gone; Land Corporation—gone; Solid Energy, Kiwibank, and TVNZ—all of them gone. That is what would happen if National got the chance, and, of course, we already know that National has its eye on the roading network. This Government took office in 1999 and inherited the legacy of a run-down public sector, and all National is promising is to do it all over again.

Tomorrow’s Schools is a disaster, because bulk funding is keeping our schools in debt, neglecting and destroying the basis of our education system. Years of neglect have left a budget deficit that schools have had to catch up on, as new money has been made available. Although increases in operational grants on a per-student basis may have outpaced inflation, the actual increase in levels of expenditure has far exceeded those increases in grants, and funds raised locally—by parents and communities—have had to almost treble in the last 10 years. That has almost trebled the work parents are doing. Parents are paying more and working harder for their schools than they ever have, while this Government sits on a surplus that could relieve parents and schools of, at least, the most acute underfunding through operational grants and special-needs funding.

The Greens are entirely opposed to bulk funding, like operational grants, because it frees the Government from its responsibility to fund schools properly. Whatever the problem—information and communications technology development, health and safety, special needs, G3 equivalence, even the provision of support staff—the answer from the Government remains the same: “Reprioritise it and fund it yourself out of your existing operations grant.” But there simply is not enough money for our schools. Small schools face even more problems in not being able to make the economies of larger schools, and that is especially true of kōhanga, kaupapa Māori schools, and rural schools, which are critical to the development and maintenance of our rural communities. The problem is that too much of the school’s income is based on roll numbers, and the base-funding component is far too small. The special-education grant is a classic example, where children with moderate special needs do not receive the education they require, the education they deserve, because the bulk-funding model completely screws their school’s ability to provide adequate services.

The bulk-funding model is a complete and dismal failure. But this Government’s response is to create small pools of contestable funding, so that schools are left to fight over the scraps of funding like hungry dogs around a well-worn bone. There are as many as 35 separate contestable pools of funding in the education system. Contestable funds cost schools money and time, and the competition is fierce. Therefore, many schools and many students are missing out. Schools that are desperate to gather funds to run a quality education system are having to resort to the commercialisation of their schools—offering advertising space in their playgrounds, installing vending machines that spit out obesity, tooth rot, and diabetes–inducing foods, spending precious dollars on marketing education services overseas to attract fee-paying students, and even, we see now this week, threatening parents with legal action when they do not pay their apparently “voluntary” donations.

The Greens are appalled at these desperate measures that schools are having to undertake. They are all means to the destruction of our free, public education system. No schools should have to resort to such measures, but they are because this Government and previous ones have choked them, and, in part, it is because the increased commercialisation of schools and the increased number of fee-paying students are making our Government money. Is that what this Government considers the education system is for? Is it a revenue-generating activity?

Communities, teachers, and parents are not complacent about these issues. The New Zealand School Trustees Association has a campaign across the country to increase the operations grant by at least 10 percent. The Post Primary Teachers Association report talks about the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) and recommends an increase in the operations grant to help deal with this Government’s failure to implement NCEA properly. The New Zealand Educational Institute report of a support staff funding grant clearly demonstrates that support staff are losing out on money; that there is an increasing casualisation of that workforce, because their funding is coming out of the operations grant. Any increases in wage levels for these critical support staff positions are resulting not in more pay in the pockets of the administrators and the office workers, but in a reduction in their hours as their positions are being increasingly casualised.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.